1979 and today - is Philly's Big 5 still thriving?

The Penn men's basketball team is in the midst of its best Big 5 campaign since 1979. But has the Big 5 lost its luster? In six seasons of coaching at Penn, Chuck Daly led the Quakers to four Big 5 titles and an astounding 19-5 Big 5 record. "In those games there was such magic, it was the Palestra," he said. "Those games were as big as they got, in the regular season or beyond." One of Daly's greatest distinctions at Penn was recruiting the now-legendary Class of '79 -- the athletes who formed the framework of Penn's run to the Final Four 20 years ago. That Quakers squad -- the only Penn team to reach the Final Four -- is remarkable for its Big 5 season as well. The 1979 Penn team, led by first-team All-Big 5 honorees Tim Smith and Tony Price, the co-Big 5 Player of the Year, was the last bunch of Quakers to win three City Series games and claim at least a share of the Big 5 title. The last team, that is, until this season. Twenty years after Penn's mythical season, the 1998-99 Quakers stand at 3-0 in Big 5 play. But the similarities hardly end there. The last time Penn beat both St. Joseph's and Temple in the same season before this year? 1979. Penn's record after the first week of February in 1979? 13-3, with wins over the Owls, Hawks and La Salle and a Villanova matchup looming. The Quakers' record today? 12-3, with wins over the Owls, Hawks and Explorers and the Wildcats once again looming on the horizon. But there is one major difference between Philadelphia basketball in 1979 and today -- the state of the Big 5. "I believe [the Big 5] is a thing of the past," Smith said. "With the games being played at the different university gymnasiums, it's not going to be the same." On November 23, 1954, the presidents of St. Joe's, Temple, Villanova and La Salle joined Penn president Gaylord Harnwell at Houston Hall to announce the official formation of the Big 5. From 1955 until 1986, Penn's Palestra -- the site of more college basketball games and more NCAA Tournament games than any other facility in the country -- served as the exclusive home of Big 5 action. In 1986, however, the presidents signed a 10-year pact agreeing to uphold the traditional four-game round-robin play under the condition that the games be played at each school's respective gyms. In 1991, Villanova successfully petitioned to revise the agreement so that each school's Big 5 commitment would be reduced to a mandatory two City Series games per year, ending round-robin play. To hear the Quakers' stars of the Big '70s discuss the Big 5 today, one would think it had completely dissolved. "The fact that all the games were being played in the Palestra drew a lot of attention, both TV and other media-wise, to University of Pennsylvania basketball," Daly said. "There was such an electricity. That having gone by the boards, I don't think it helps Penn [today]." "One of the big games came against Temple, when there used to be a Big 5," said Price, who poured in 19 points in Penn's 79-74 defeat of undefeated and 15th-ranked Temple at the Palestra on January 10, 1979. Gone by the boards? Used to be a Big 5? With the loss of the Palestra's legendary doubleheaders and many of the schools playing just the two mandatory City Series games each year, the Big 5 has lost much of its luster. "I'm really sad that the whole thing was taken away when the schools started playing on their own campuses," said Smith, who became the 20th Quaker inducted into the Big 5 Hall of Fame at halftime of December 1's Villanova-St. Joe's contest. "I don't think it'll ever be like it was in the '60s and '70s because you play at different sites." But don't tell that to this year's Quakers. Despite the Big 5's changed position in Philadelphia basketball, the current Penn men's basketball team has an opportunity to go 4-0 in Big 5 play -- a feat last accomplished by the 1973-74 Quakers, who peaked at No. 11 in the Associated Press poll. "I think it's alive. If you came to the Temple game, you'd realize its alive. Of course they're going to say it was better back when they were playing and maybe I fight that it's better right now," Penn tri-captain Paul Romanczuk said. "It's all I know, it's tradition to me." Current Penn coach Fran Dunphy certainly has experienced the Big 5 then and now. As a La Salle junior in 1969, Dunphy played a key role on an Explorers squad that reached No. 2 in the polls and went 4-0 in the Big 5. "It's certainly changed," Dunphy said. "It was wonderful when all the games were being played at the Palestra, I thought that was great -- but things change, life goes on. It's not going to be that way anymore." The Big 5 has changed, and no one can argue that it grips Philadelphia today like it once did. But to Philly-raised ballplayers like Romanczuk, the Big 5 has always been important. "There was a different sort of tradition back 15 to 20 years ago, with the doubleheaders played at the Palestra," said Romanczuk, whose dad captained Drexel -- a Philadelphia school perennially knocking on the Big 5's door -- in 1976. "[But] it still means a lot to me to play against guys that I've played with in high school? guys from Temple, St. Joe's, La Salle, Villanova. Some of the guys on the other teams are friends, some are enemies." Listening to Romanczuk, and then to Smith, the differences between 1979 and 1999 seem to dissolve. "[The Big 5 games] meant a whole lot to me because I'm from the city," Smith said. "The guys I was playing against, I grew up with some of them. My high school coach was at the games, people who went to high school with me were at the games." While the Big 5 may have changed, it is certainly still alive and kicking. Anyone in search of proof need look no further than Penn's November 23 win over then No. 6 Temple. "I know in the films that I watched of the Temple game, fans at the Palestra reminded me of fans during the '79 Final Four season," said Bob Weinhauer, 1979 Penn coach and current general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks. "Throughout my whole tenure at Penn I thought we had the best fans in Philadelphia and the Big 5. And the student body, against Kansas [November 17] and against Temple, demonstrated that same type of enthusiasm." Daly said that his best memories at Penn came in Big 5 games. "Some of the victories we had against St. Joe's, Villanova? those victories were very special." Like Daly, Dunphy also has trouble pinpointing a favorite Penn Big 5 memory. "There's so many of them I couldn't [pick] one game," Dunphy said. "But when I leave the gym at night, and I'm walking out the door, I pinch myself, saying, 'I'm coaching here at the University of Pennsylvania and I'm coaching at the Palestra.' That is as much [of] a memory as I need." The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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