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Villanova men’s basketball lost to No. 10 Virginia, 93-71, in a preseason exhibition Thursday, Oct. 22, but there was something else after the 22-point drubbing that had the Wildcats’ coach upset.
During his postgame news conference, second-year Villanova coach Kevin Willard teed off on what he saw as inaccurate reporting from the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier that day over the Wildcats’ role in the disintegration of the famed Big 5, noting the development “wasn’t a Villanova decision.”
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“You’re talking to the school that wanted to keep it alive. The other five schools broke it off,” Willard said. “I know the only way he could get clicks is to put Villanova in it because if he didn’t put Villanova, nobody would click on his article. Talk to the other schools. This is not a Villanova issue. The other schools opted out. They didn’t want to play us. Talk to them.”
While Willard lambasted the Inquirer, much of what he detailed in a nearly five-minute stretch of his news conference largely lined up with what the outlet had reported about the Big 5 taking place without Villanova for the indefinite future, beginning with the 2027-28 season.
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Willard said the Wildcats weren’t interested in continuing with the current format of the six-team event between Philadelphia-area schools, in which the teams were split into two pods and played games in a round-robin setup to determine seeding for the Big 5 Classic tripleheader at Xfinity Mobile Arena, the home arena of the Philadelphia 76ers. Willard described the format as “stupid.”
He pointed specifically to low attendance at some of the Wildcats’ road games at smaller schools, including a 70-55 win last season at La Salle.
“We played La Salle and there was 500 people,” Willard said. “Penn played St. Joe’s and there were 2,000 people. My whole thing is I just wanted to make it the…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/kevin-willard-scorches-big-5-152910110.html
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Publish date : 2026-10-23 15:29:00
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