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College Basketball: Amari Williams’ well-timed block seals Drexel upset of Villanova – The Delaware County Daily Times
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PHILADELPHIA — Amari Williams scored 12 points and blocked No. 18 Villanova’s tying attempt with three seconds left to help Drexel upset the Wildcats 57-55 on Saturday in the inaugural Big 5 Classic at the Wells Fargo Center.
The Wildcats (6-3) fell to 0-3 in a series of Big 5 games that was designed to crown a city basketball champion.
Welcome to the Big 5, Drexel.
The Dragons (5-3) were 11½-point underdogs, per FanDuel SportsBook, headed into the fifth-place game. Drexel crashed the Big 5 this season as one of college basketball’s revered traditions underwent a serious retool in an attempt to stay relevant on the Philly sports scene.
Penn, La Salle, Temple, Saint Joseph’s and Villanova were joined by Drexel this season in the Big 5. The city schools dumped the traditional round-robin play and decided against holding the Classic at the famed Palestra, dubbed the Cathedral of College Basketball, though there was never any real consideration toward changing the Big 5 name.
Penn played La Salle later in the day in the third-place game and the city series championship game was set for Temple vs. Saint Joseph’s on Saturday night.
The Big 5 was dying on the vine in Philly, so after years of traditionalists squawking — and attendance and interest waned and teams except for Villanova saw their programs sink into oblivion — the time was ripe for a change.
The Dragons did what fellow underdogs Penn and Saint Joseph’s did ahead of them — knock off the Wildcats.
Luke House scored 11 points for the Dragons, who beat a Top 25 team for the first time since 2010. Eric Dixon led the Wildcats with 21 points.
Williams powered down his defender late in the game for a bucket and 56-53 lead. He made 1 of 2 free throws for a two-point lead, then swatted Justin Moore’s tying layup attempt that sent Drexel fans into a frenzy.
The Wildcats missed 13 of 17 3-pointers in the first half and missed 20 of 28 shots overall to give the Dragons all the opportunity they needed to pull off the upset. House hit consecutive 3s that sent the Dragons into halftime with a 26-25 lead.
Teams were split into three-team pods with games played at on-campus arenas, with the teams then seeded for the tripleheader that crowned a Big 5 champion. Much like the NBA’s In-Season Tournament juiced the significant of otherwise lackluster games, the Classic matchups provided some instant, well, classics. At least on the city scene.
The highlight: Temple’s 106-99 triple-overtime win this week against La Salle that ushered the Owls into the title game.
Under Hall of Fame coach Jay Wright, the Wildcats won a series-record 25 straight games from 2012 to 2018, and most of them weren’t close. Villanova was expected to goose attendance numbers — the program usually hovers around the 19,000 mark in attendance at the NBA arena — with a spot in the championship game. Instead? The Wildcats went 0-2 in their pod, losing both as double-digit favorites, to Penn at the Palestra and a home loss Wednesday against Saint Joseph’s.
Hours ahead of the Saint Joe’s game, the Wildcats dedicated a street to Wright — and Hawks students gleefully trolled the retired coach by celebrating and posing for pictures on Wright’s brick wall after the win.
The Classic is at least a one-year experiment with schools hopeful everything from ticket sales to decent viewing numbers on Peacock, NBCUniversal’s premium streaming service, will earn the teams a return date next season.
The Big 5 — the name was coined by Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer Herb Good — was officially formed in 1954, and the schools started round-robin play for “City Series” bragging rights in 1955. The first game was 68 years ago when Saint Joseph’s beat Villanova 83-70 on Dec. 14, 1955, in front of 2,636 fans at the Palestra.
Drexel plays Tuesday at Princeton.
Villanova plays Tuesday at Kansas State. The only other meeting in the series was a 51-34 Villanova win in 1940.
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