By AARON BRACY
March 25, 2024
Big5Hoops.com
The Philadelphia Big 5 went 44 consecutive seasons with a representative in the NCAA tournament from 1978 through 2022. (There was no tournament in 2020.) Over that stretch, the five schools combined for 92 trips to the Big Dance that included national championships in 1985, 2016 and 2018 for Villanova.
Add in Drexel’s five appearances during that stretch and the combined number of NCAA berths is 97. (Drexel was not part of the Big 5 until this season.)
But this season marks the second straight year without a Big 5 team in the Big Dance. The reasons for Philly schools’ absence have some to do with each of the schools and some to do with the changing landscape of college basketball.
Let’s take a look at each school’s season, why they are not in the tournament and how they might get back there.
Here’s the schedule:
Friday: Villanova
Saturday: Temple
Sunday: Saint Joseph’s
Today: Penn
Tuesday: La Salle
Wednesday: Drexel
Thursday: All-Big 5 Selections
Penn
NCAA tournaments between 1978-2022: 17
2023-24 record: 11-18, 3-11 Ivy League
Leading scorers: Clark Slajchert 18.0, Tyler Perkins 13.7, Sam Brown 10.9, Nick Spinoso 10.8
Leading rebounders: Spinoso 7.9, Perkins 5.3, George Smith 3.2, Slajchert 3.0, Andrew Laczkowski 3.0
What went right: The Quakers improved to 3-1 on the young season with a victory over then-No. 21 Villanova, 76-72, at the Palestra in a classic Big 5 upset. Perkins had 22 points and six rebounds, a promising performance for the freshman. What else went right? Not much else, really.
What went wrong: The list here is long. The problems for the Quakers started well before the season, beginning last spring when Jordan Dingle transferred to St. John’s. Dingle led the Quakers with 23.4 points per contest last season and would have returned for his senior season as the leading candidate for a second straight Ivy League Player of the Year honor. Then, in August, Max Martz announced he would not return to the Quakers for his senior season due to medical retirement. Martz was Penn’s third-leading scorer (10.8 points) last season. So, coach Steve Donahue lost two players who combined for 34.2 points and 7.8 rebounds per game in 2022-23. That’s a lot of production to replace unexpectedly.
Then, the season started. Penn followed up that massive upset of Villanova with a whimper, losing their next game 83-80 in overtime at Maryland-Eastern Shore, Maryland-Eastern Shore would finish the season with five victories and ranked 349 of 362 in NCAA NET. Slajchert matched his career high with 33 points in a tremendous performance against La Salle on Dec. 2, but the Quakers were on the wrong end of a 93-92 overtime defeat after Khalil Brantley’s buzzer-beating heave from just over halfcourt that will go down as one of the greatest game-winning shots in Big 5 history.
Things went from bad to worse for Penn when Slajchert went down with an ankle injury in an 81-42 defeat at Houston on Dec. 30. He would miss the next seven contests, including the first six in Ivy League play. Penn didn’t have enough firepower or experience to withstand the absence of their leading scorer. After opening with a league victory over Dartmouth on Jan. 6, the Quakers lost five consecutive Ivy games with Slajchert sidelined. He returned on Feb. 10, but Penn lost that game to Princeton and two more to extend the losing streak to eight straight contests. At that point, it would’ve taken a miracle for Penn just to qualify for Ivy Madness, which pits the eight-team league’s top four teams in a postseason mini-tournament, with the winner earning the Ivy’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
Things continued going south after the season when Perkins announced he had entered the transfer portal. (Slajchert, out of eligibility in the Ivy League, also entered the portal.)
My thoughts: Once a dominant force in the Ivy League, the Quakers have fallen to just another team in the Ancient Eight. Seemingly forever, the Ivy League went through either Princeton or Penn. The Quakers have won or shared 26 league titles. Only Princeton, with 30, has more. Next-closest after that is Yale, with nine. But Penn last won a league title in 2018 when they last played in the NCAA tournament. In fact, the Quakers’ 2018 trip to the Big Dance is their only one since 2007 when they finished a run of seven NCAA trips in nine years.
Penn has gone from Ivy elite to Ivy average. Donahue is 123-111 (.526) overall and 59-53 (.527) in conference in eight seasons.
So, what has happened to Penn? Here is where I have more questions than answers. On paper, this looked like the season the Quakers were going to get back to their accustomed level before Dingle’s transfer and Martz’s medical retirement. That seems like bad luck for Donahue. Even without the pair, the Quakers showed they could play by beating Villanova, only to see Slajchert go down in late December. More bad luck.
So, yeah, this season really is hard to evaluate fairly based on the circumstances. Donahue and the Quakers got some unfortunate breaks.
In the bigger picture, though, what is going on? Under Fran Dunphy, Penn made nine NCAA tournaments in 17 years and, incredibly, went 14-0 in the Ivy in five of those seasons. Dunphy is an amazing coach, so he has to get a ton of credit for that success. But there’s an oft-cited cliché that says good players make good coaches. Dunphy got good players, year after year after year. Not just good players, but the best players in the Ivy – or at least right there with Princeton. Now, it’s clear that Penn isn’t getting the best players in the league anymore. Princeton still is, and now it seems like Yale is getting some of the top talent that used to wear Red & Blue. Others, like Cornell and Brown, also seem to be working their way into the mix as top-tier Ivy.
I honestly don’t know why Penn isn’t getting the top-level talent as before. I have read how the school’s acceptance rate has gone down (Source: “How did Penn get here?”, Philadelphia Magazine, 1/27/24). If it’s harder for the general high school population to get accepted, then it would make sense that it would be harder for those interested in playing Division I basketball for the Quakers to get that opportunity.
Have there been talented recruits denied admission to Penn that would have been accepted before? Again, more questions than answers here from me.
What I do know is this: To be successful in college basketball, or any sport, for that matter, you need good players. If Penn wants to get back to being a dominant force in the Ivy League, it needs to once again put the best Ivy players on the court.
With that in mind, here are some questions that need answering:
-Is Penn not getting the best Ivy players because Donahue and staff are not recruiting well enough?
-Is Penn not getting the best Ivy players because admissions requirements are more stringent than ever?
-Is Penn not getting the best Ivy players because there has been a de-emphasis on winning from the athletic administration or school administration?
-Is Penn not getting the best Ivy players because of some combination of the first three questions? Or because of something else entirely?
The bottom line is this: For Penn to get back to the NCAA tournament, someone in the know has many questions to answer.
—
Aaron Bracy has been covering Philadelphia sports since 1996. His byline regularly appears on Associated Press stories. Big5Hoops.com is his second website dedicated to Philadelphia college basketball. Follow Bracy on X: @Aaron_Bracy and like his Facebook and Instagram pages.