PHILADELPHIA: Amari Williams scored 12 factors and blocked No. 18 Villanova’s tying-attempt with 3 seconds left to assist Drexel upset the Wildcats 57-55 on Saturday within the inaugural Big 5 Classic on the Wells Fargo Center.
The Wildcats (6-3) fell to 0-3 in a collection of Big 5 video games that was designed to crown a metropolis basketball champion.
Welcome to the Big 5, Drexel.
The Dragons (5-3) have been 11½-point underdogs, per FanDuel SportsBook, headed into the fifth-place sport. Drexel crashed the Big 5 this season as one in all school basketball’s revered traditions underwent a severe retool in an try to remain related on the Philly sports activities scene.
Penn, La Salle, Temple, Saint Joseph’s and Villanova have been joined by Drexel this season within the Big 5. The metropolis colleges dumped the normal round-robin play and determined in opposition to holding the Classic on the famed Palestra, dubbed the Cathedral of College Basketball, although there was by no means any actual consideration towards altering the Big 5 identify.
Penn performed La Salle later within the day within the third-place sport and the town collection championship sport was set for Temple vs. Saint Joseph’s on Saturday night time.
The Big 5 was dying on the vine in Philly, so after years of traditionalists squawking — and attendance and curiosity waned and groups aside from Villanova noticed their applications sink into oblivion — the time was ripe for a change.
The Dragons did what fellow underdogs Penn and Saint Joseph’s did forward of them — knock off the Wildcats.
Luke House scored 11 factors for the Dragons, who beat a Top 25 workforce for the primary time since 2010. Eric Dixon led the Wildcats with 21 factors.
Williams powered down his defender late within the sport for a bucket and 56-53 lead. He made 1 of two free throws for a two-point lead, then swatted Justin Moore’s tying layup try that despatched Drexel followers right into a frenzy.
The Wildcats missed 13 of 17 3-pointers within the first half and missed 20 of 28 pictures general to offer the Dragons all the chance they wanted to tug off the upset. House hit consecutive 3s that despatched the Dragons into halftime with a 26-25 lead.
Teams have been cut up into three-team pods with video games performed at on-campus arenas, with the groups then seeded for the tripleheader that topped a Big 5 champion. Much just like the NBA’s In-Season Tournament juiced the numerous of in any other case lackluster video games, the Classic matchups supplied some instantaneous, effectively, classics. At least on the town scene.
The spotlight: Temple’s 106-99 triple-overtime win this week in opposition to La Salle that ushered the Owls into the title sport.
Under Hall of Fame coach Jay Wright, the Wildcats received a series-record 25 straight video games from 2012 to 2018, and most of them weren’t shut. Villanova was anticipated to goose attendance numbers — this system normally hovers across the 19,000 mark in attendance on the NBA enviornment — with a spot within the championship sport. Instead? The Wildcats went 0-2 of their pod, dropping each as double-digit favorites, to Penn on the Palestra and a house loss Wednesday in opposition to Saint Joseph’s.
Hours forward of the Saint Joe’s sport, the Wildcats devoted a avenue to Wright — and Hawks college students gleefully trolled the retired coach by celebrating and posing for footage on Wright’s brick wall after the win.
(*18*)The Classic is at the very least a one-year experiment with colleges hopeful the whole lot from ticket gross sales to first rate viewing numbers on Peacock, NBCUniversal’s premium streaming service, will earn the groups a return date subsequent season.
HISTORY LESS
The Big 5 — the identify was coined by Philadelphia Inquirer sports activities author Herb Good — was formally shaped in 1954, and the faculties began round-robin play for “City Series” bragging rights in 1955. The first sport was 68 years in the past when Saint Joseph’s beat Villanova 83-70 on Dec. 14, 1955, in entrance of two,636 followers on the Palestra.
UP NEXT
Drexel performs Tuesday at Princeton.
Villanova performs Tuesday at Kansas State. The solely different assembly within the collection was a 51-34 Villanova win in 1940.
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AP school basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball
(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is printed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)
