If you go to a festival in Vegas, you can’t be frightened by the freakshow.  Yesterday, as the second rendition of the Player’s Era Festival showcased some of the sports biggest brands in a semi-vacant Vegas arena, the college basketball internet world reached somewhat of an inflection point.  The event served as a microcosm of…

Legendary St. Joe’s frontman Phil Martelli sat, stood, and sometimes frantically danced on the sidelines of college basketball courts for nearly four decades.  Today, he watches from the crowd – his clipboard perhaps used as coloring fodder for his grandkids and his whistle hopefully hung in the halls of the Palestra. His son, Phil Martelli…

The Saint Joe’s rollercoaster experience is one that would bring plenty of crying kids and possibly even a collection of lawsuits to Dorney Park or Universal Studios.   You start at a relatively high perch, a familiar vantage point that brings excitement for what’s to come. The ride then dips, understandably as gravity and mechanical…

As we rev up for year two of the Wells Fargo Center’s Big 5 Classic event, here’s what we know now about the highly-anticipated sequel.  A Big 5 event without Villanova as the marquee headliner can seem to many fans, most notably the many Villanova fans, as not much of an event at all. It’s…

The sentiment often gets thrown around the Big 5 that the four teams that annually match up against Villanova treat it like “their Super Bowl.” We’ve seen Villanova lose to metrically inferior opponents in back-to-back years now — last season at the Liacouras and this season at the Palestra — both resulted in a dramatic…

Marvin O’Connor is many things to many people. For some Point Breeze diners, he’s a purveyor of classic Philly cheesesteaks via his ‘Fresh Works’ hoagie location. For some Philadelphia-area AAU girls, he’s a coach, a trainer, a mentor. To most, however, Marvin O’Connor is known as the city legend that scored an astonishing 18 points…