Villanova carrying flag for Philly as it chases a national title

HOUSTON – The culture of the city of Philadelphia is full of endless internal squabbles and heightened micro-neighborhood loyalties – North Philly and South, Main Line and Fishtown, heck, you can stand on the same corner and argue whether the area is called Fairmount or Art Museum.

In Philly, they love to argue, mostly about everything and mostly with each other – on street corners and talk radio and city hall. It’s not even the clichéd debates, either. Geno’s or Pat’s? Hell, everyone knows someplace better.

But for all the rollicking noise that comes from its fractured self, there is that moment when someone from the outside takes a swing at the place and everyone rallies together. That is Philly, standing proud despite being forever trapped in the middle of the power corridor of Washington and New York.

So maybe college basketball was the perfect sport for Philly, which isn’t to say it rivals the popularity of the Eagles or anything like that. Nothing does.

No, Philly hoops is unique because it's splintered in all directions, everyone battling for the same limited resources of fans and recruits and column inches in the Daily News. No one is too small. And no one is too big. Or if they think they are, such as back in the 1990s when Villanova tried to downplay the Big Five, well, you’ll get dragged back down to size.

Villanova plays Oklahoma on Saturday in the Final Four, representing not just its own school or casual fans, but in many ways even the people that root against them across the winter.

This isn’t about back home anymore … this is about Philadelphia vs. The World.

“There's buildings in Philadelphia that have the lights going across the top, ‘Nova Final Four,' ” coach Jay Wright said. “It's pretty cool…

“Philly is a unique city,” Wright said. “There's six Division I basketball schools. It's not like being in a state where you have two state schools. We're all on top of each other. There's a lot of mixed breeding. It's an intense college basketball town. It's hard for everybody to get behind one of the schools.”

The population of Philadelphia proper is about 1.4 million – roughly equal to New Hampshire. Yet it boasts not jut Villanova, but Temple, St. Joseph’s, La Salle, the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel. The first five play an annual round robin, The Big Five, that is a de facto city championship and wholly unique to the sport.

All six have had some measure of success through the years. Temple ranks sixth all-time in victories and under local coaches Harry Litwack and John Chaney put together stretches of national prominence.

La Salle won the 1954 NCAA title behind future Hall of Famer Tom Gola and boasts two of the top-25 scorers of all-time in Michael Brooks and Lionel Simmons. All three of those players are Philly guys.

St. Joseph’s has made 26 NCAA tournament appearances, including a run to the Elite Eight in 2004 that capped a perfect regular season. Penn has spent decades as an Ivy League power and its campus is home to the Palestra, as classic and beloved of a basketball gym as there is.

There really isn’t a single other city that can boast that kind of sustained success across that many schools tucked into that small of a geographic area. Much of that is because Philly recruits, more often than elsewhere, choose to stay home and play. And by home, they mean home.

Penn State is the wealthy Big Ten athletic powerhouse located a few hours west of the city. Yet despite Philadelphia churning out endless talent – 99 guys from the city itself have played in the NBA per basketball-reference.com – the Nittany Lions have been to just four NCAA tournaments in the last 50-plus years.

Basically, it’s always been, why go all the way to State College when you can play on Broad Street?

And yet for all the victories and all the excitement and all the memories, Philadelphia schools have rarely been able to win it all in the NCAA.

There's that long-ago La Salle title and Villanova’s underdog run in 1985, where it played a near-perfect game to defeat mighty Georgetown for the championship. Wright was a lowly assistant at a Division III school then, but describes watching it on television as “probably the most inspirational moment of my coaching career.”

Still, other than those championships, it’s often a provincial thing, doomed to fall apart, often in tragic fashion at the very end.

Chaney, for instance, was a legendary coach and leader at Temple, a massive figure across the city and a Hall of Fame inductee. He took the Owls to five Elite Eights, but could never break through to the Final Four.

It kind of goes with the city’s athletic fortunes; the Eagles have never won a Super Bowl. The Flyers haven’t taken a Stanley Cup since 1975. The Phillies' 2008 World Series win ended an ugly, nearly three-decade run of historic chokes and poor play. The 76ers are in the midst of a multiseason tanking crusade that’s made them the laughingstock of the NBA. They also haven’t won a title since 1983.

Even Rocky lost in the original movie.

So now along comes this Villanova team, led by Wright, who grew up out in suburban Bucks County and was later an assistant at both Drexel and Villanova, where he worked for Rollie Massimino. Yes, during the winter the rival fans tease him for his polished GQ style and ride him like Philly guys ride all Philly guys, but now maybe it’s a little different.

He’s been around. He’s imminently likable. He’s forever promoting the city. The program is a great representation of Philly and its basketball culture. Five players on the roster, including star Ryan Arcidiacono, hail from the metro area. And while Jalen Brunson may have grown up in Illinois, his father Rick was a legend himself at Temple.

In an era of college sports where football, and the cash that comes with it, becomes bigger and bigger, where oversized conference realignment makes basketball-only leagues seem quaint, here’s Philly, still a basketball-first college sports town, with Villanova carrying the local torch.

“It's a pro town,” said Wright acknowledging the reality of all major cities. “[Yet] because of the recent last couple years [with the 76ers], they've been saying it all year, everybody's been putting pressure on us saying, ‘Hey, you guys are Philly's hope. Do you feel the pressure?’

“We really never felt the pressure,” Wright continued. “We can definitely feel it now. We would love to do it. We would love to do it for Philly. We'd love to bring a championship home to Philly.”

There will be no arguments then.

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