5 features

College basketball’s greatest tradition, personified.

Columns of the Cathedral

UPenn’s famed Palestra is often dubbed the “Cathedral of College Basketball.” Find all of 5 Features columns and feature pieces here.

  • Twas the Night Before the Holy War

    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…

  • The Holy Transfer: How One of St. Joe’s Best Ever Once Donned a Villanova Jersey

    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…

  • College Hoops Has a Stats Problem: Rankings Through a Big 5 Lens.

    College basketball has a KenPom problem. Not the man — I don’t know him personally — but the geeky, digital almanac of metrics and rating statistics he engineered and so humbly named after himself. Not even the KenPom website itself, as there are probably hundreds of these sites that all do essentially the same thing (ranking college…

  • The Columns of the Cathedral: Celebrating Three Decades of Big 5 Coverage from Mike Jensen

    According to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mike Jensen, there will likely never be another Mike Jensen. No, Jensen is not an egomaniac nor is he saying he’s God’s gift to sports journalism. And from my experience chatting with him, he doesn’t often refer to himself in the third person, either. What Jensen is implying has nothing to do…

  • A Warm November Holy War Primer

    The date is Thursday, November 7th and it is peculiarly warm for the start of college basketball season in the Northeast. The scorching sun shines much harder than usual this year as we weave our way through the traditionally cool and frigid non-con season. The cause? Unknown to scientists and laymen alike. Some say global…

  • jjj

    njjj

Subscribe

Enter your email below to receive updates.