The Big 5 will not have a team in the NCAA tournament for the third straight season.
By AARON BRACY
March 16, 2025
The Amtrak train from 30th Street Station that left at 4:20 a.m. on Sunday, departing for Union Station in Washington, D.C., had one less occupant. After returning home early in the wee hours of Saturday morning following Saint Joseph’s Atlantic 10 tournament quarterfinal win over Dayton on Friday night, I planned to head back to the nation’s capital for the Atlantic 10 final on Sunday if the Hawks advanced.
The alarm clock got a break on Sunday, however, after No. 2-seeded George Mason handed the sixth-seeded Hawks a 74-64 defeat in the A-10 semifinals on Saturday afternoon. Saint Joseph’s fell into an 18-point, first-half hole. The Hawks got as close as within one point after the break but never could get over the hump.
Xzayvier Brown did all he could for the Hawks, scoring 26 points. Erik Reynolds II, the school’s all-time leading scorer playing in potentially his final college game who reportedly was playing through illness, scored four points while missing 11 of 12 shots. (Tom McCarthy, doing play-by-play on CBS Sports Network, reported that Reynolds has been battling the flu.)
Now, the Hawks will get some rest. Same as Drexel. Same as La Salle. Same as Penn. Same as Temple. Same as Villanova. When the NCAA Selection Committee announces the 68-team NCAA Tournament field on Sunday evening, there will not be a Big 5 team in the Big Dance for the third consecutive season.
Not after a Saturday that began with the news, broken by excellent young reporter Dylan Johnson of The Villanovan student newspaper, that Villanova had parted ways with head coach Kyle Neptune and ended with the Hawks’ loss.
Let’s start there with Neptune. It never was going to be easy to replace Jay Wright, for Neptune or for anyone. With just one year of head coaching experience, former Villanova assistant Neptune probably was a bit of a reach for the job but picked as a system hire to continue what Wright so expertly built. However, the nature of college basketball has changed greatly in the short time since Wright left, and creating a system built upon seasoned players dedicated to playing a team-first style is a thing of the past, sadly. Wright, seemingly, knew as much, likely partly why he surprised many college basketball observers with his retirement following the 2022 season.
There’s no argument here that a coaching change was warranted. But the failure of the program to reach the NCAA tournament in each of the previous three seasons falls on the shoulders of more than just the head coach. Moving forward, the Wildcats certainly should celebrate the past and all that Wright accomplished, but it is time for a fresh start, time for a move away from “Villanova Basketball,” a great model for how to play when players stayed for multiple years and were able to develop in a system that highly valued hustle, togetherness, teamwork, and effort, among other intangible variables to winning.
Villanova needs to embrace the change and come up with fresh ideas. What those ideas are will have to be determined by new athletic director Eric Roedl and his first, all-important hire. Clearly, change is needed. It is hard, maybe impossible even, to play that unselfish, togetherness style that led the Wildcats to a pair of national titles and four Final Fours under Wright at a time when rosters turn over every year. That style needs to be ingrained and developed over time, and development time isn’t on the side of Division I coaches in today’s era of the transfer portal and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL).
Is that sad? Yes. Is that reality? Yes.
Another sad reality? The Big 5 won’t be in the Big Dance again.
Saint Joseph’s was this great city tradition’s last hope. The Hawks had been playing very good basketball for a long stretch but, except for Brown and reserve Dasear Haskins (nine points, four rebounds and a team-best plus-11 in 22 minutes), didn’t match their recent strong play on Saturday. Coach Billy Lange had a tough decision on the sidelines, whether to stick with the apparently ailing and struggling Reynolds or go with a lineup featuring more of Haskins or Derek Simpson. It was that lineup which helped the Hawks get back in the game late in the first half that started with a nightmarish 18-2 deficit for St. Joe’s.
Reynolds chose the Hawks early in Lange’s tenure when they weren’t very good, to say the least, and then stuck around in each of the last two seasons rather than depart for an NIL payday. So, it’s understandable why Lange kept Reynolds on the court. Whether a different decision would have resulted in a different result is now an unknown.
What is known is this: The Big 5 and the NCAA Tournament are growing farther and farther apart. Sunday marks 1,065 days since a Big 5 team last heard its name called on Selection Sunday. In time, there will be more words spoken on this topic and more words written about this stark reality.
But not now, not after the disappointment of Saturday.
Now, sadly, is just a time for some rest.
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Aaron Bracy has been covering Philadelphia sports since 1996. Follow Bracy on X: @Aaron_Bracy and like his Facebook and Instagram pages. His book on the 2003-04 Saint Joseph’s men’s basketball team is expected to be published on March 1, 2025. Read a summary and preorder it by clicking HERE. Contact him at aaron@big5hoops.com.