Remember the game? Jan. 24, 2007. Fran Dunphy returns to the Palestra, for the first time wearing Temple cherry. Tipoff. Penn looks good. So do the Owls. Quakers go down 19, then fight back to even. Mark Zoller at the line. First is good. Second is good! Penn wins! Penn wins!
It was the greatest game I've seen in my four years watching Penn play, and probably the greatest for many fans who have been watching ten times that long. It was vintage Big 5, storybook quality, all of it.
That game was the reason I wanted to go to Penn-Temple last night. I suspect the same was true for most of the meager number of Penn fans that showed up. But by the time Cameron Lewis' open-court dunk rolled pathetically back to the floor, the memory of Zoller knocking down the biggest free throws of his life and sending the arena into a well-deserved frenzy had never seemed farther away.
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The 78-53 result showed more than the different directions the teams have moved in since that night. It showed just how easily the magic of the Big 5 can slip away when a game is so utterly boring.
Nothing was as it should have been. The score wasn't close. There was no physicality (nine first-half fouls combined). There were no chants. There was no fun and nothing was even really on the line, not with Villanova having already wrapped up a 4-0 Big 5 campaign.
Even Dunphy had changed. Two years ago he was still adjusting to his new commute and still very much the steward of Penn basketball. He walked into the Palestra in his first game with Temple as a hero - there was an ovation and praise galore in every paper in town.
This time, nothing. He was just another coach doing his best to beat the pants off of Penn and not having a tough time doing it. There was nothing familial about this game. It was one more edition of Big School vs. Little School, scholarship vs. need-based - nothing fancy, predictable result.
"Time marches on," Dunphy said. "It's not novel anymore."
That's not the half of it. All of a sudden Dunphy has become a screamer; one bad traveling call late in the game had him screaming a choice phrase (acronymed "WTF") loud enough to warrant a misdemeanor in a different profession. He smacked the padding next to him in frustration and it rang out like a gunshot, because the place was empty, because no one was interested, because there's only so much that can be interesting in a 25-point embarrassment. Which raises the question: How upset could Dunphy be over a mistake when Temple was up by 30? Is this the same Dunphy known throughout the 215 for having "profound respect" for all things natural or man-made, a guy who wouldn't say a cross word about anyone? Is this the same Big 5 we all knew and loved?
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We're told again and again that the Big 5 is in fine shape, that all the coaches are committed to keeping it together despite the pressures from conference obligations and asymmetries among the city teams.
But what happens if Jay Wright gets snapped up by the NBA and someone not as attuned to the significance of the intercity rivalries takes his place? What happens if the scheduling complexities one season can't be ironed out? What happens if more ass-kickings like this one mean that playing these games every year starts to make less and less sense for the big fish on the food chain?
"It seemed like we were overmatched from the outset," Penn coach Glen Miller said.
Is this all we can expect from the Big 5 now? If so, I might not miss it as much as I thought if one day we turn around and it's gone.
Andrew Scurria is a senior International Relations major from Wilmington, Del., and is former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is scurria@dailypennsylvanian.com.
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