City treasure that is the Big 5 at the Palestra comes alive again
MY FIRST TIME was on a late winter Saturday evening. The details remain hazy. Two of my high school friends from Baltimore were at Villanova and had been telling me I needed to get up to Philadelphia to see a Big 5 doubleheader at the Palestra. I got on a bus from College Park, Md., one Friday afternoon and somehow ended up on a train out to the Main Line.
MY FIRST TIME was on a late winter Saturday evening. The details remain hazy.
Two of my high school friends from Baltimore were at Villanova and had been telling me I needed to get up to Philadelphia to see a Big 5 doubleheader at the Palestra. I got on a bus from College Park, Md., one Friday afternoon and somehow ended up on a train out to the Main Line.
The next night, the first game, a k a the prelim, was already on when we got to the Palestra. Villanova was in the second game. We did not have enough ticket stubs to get past the usher and into the desired section. So after one ticket was shown, it would get passed behind the back to the next in line until we were all in.
I still remember the sound and the smell and the feeling. I had no idea what was happening, or why, only that I wanted to come back again and see more. So, in 1985, I did. And never left.
In the old days, the Big 5 doubleheaders were a Big 5 team against somebody outside the city (often Penn in an Ivy game on Saturdays), followed by a Big 5 game. Wednesday night, it was a true Big 5 doubleheader at the Palestra, and I knew the way in.
It was a great idea in the perfect setting to celebrate the 60th anniversary of a city treasure that should live forever. So many of the players who made the old building come alive on so many of those Wednesday and Saturday nights were there, some arriving before the first game between La Salle and Temple, spending some time reliving the memories on Penn's practice court just beyond one of the Palestra concourses.
The all-time leading scorers from Temple (Mark Macon), La Salle (Lionel Simmons) and Penn (Ernie Beck) were there. So were Penn's Dave Wohl, Steve Bilsky and Corky Calhoun from the greatest Quakers team of all. La Salle's Doug Overton, who still holds the school records for assists and steals 25 years after his last game, was there, as was Temple's John Baum, whose final Palestra memory was a bad one, which, in turn, led to his greatest basketball memory. The building was and is like that.
The practice court is where the pool used to be.
"It was dark and dingy and you had to pass a swimming test," Wohl remembered.
He also remembered those doubleheaders, how the fans of the teams from the first game would make a rooting decision in the second game depending on the Big 5 standings at the moment.
"It was such a great place to play," Wohl said.
It still is.
"Every game was exciting," Baum said. "The very last time, we played St. Joe's and lost by one point on a last-second shot."
It seemed like the end of the world. No NCAA Tournament, the end of the season probably. Temple was the last team selected for the 1969 NIT, went to Madison Square Garden and won it behind the inspired play of one John Baum.
Even though he lost that last game at the Palestra, Baum loved the building and remembers details as if they happened last week.
"You could hear the noise in the locker room before you came out," Baum said. "And it was so hot in the locker room. The radiators were up, the windows open. Our clothes hung on hooks on the wall."
Temple coach Harry Litwack would be giving last-minute instructions and the players, Baum said, "could not hear a word he said," only the "Let's go Temple" or let's go whoever they were playing.
"It was who was going to drown out the other school," Baum said.
Overton remembers the "bands competing as much as the players."
"When I was a little kid, I wanted to play here," Overton said.
When he was that kid, his Big 5 guy was St. Joe's Mo Martin.
In the early 1990s, Overton was some little kid's Big 5 guy.
It has been that way for 60 years, the decades melting away, the Big 5 heroes going from the floor to plaques on the walls inside the front entrance to what the great John McAdams always called "college basketball's most historic gym" before his classic introductions.
Starting in the second half of the first game, players from each of the Big 5 schools from each of the decades were introduced. Undoubtedly, there were more than a few fans in stands who saw most of them and maybe even all of them.
The bottom half of Wednesday's first-game box had the rare five 20s at halftime, because five players had played all the minutes for La Salle. Unfortunately, only three of them scored, and Temple was shooting nearly 54 percent.
I saw some of the game, but mostly I was listening to those sounds again and looking around the building from courtside, peering into the dark corners that Fran Dunphy, the only man to coach at two Big 5 schools, told me years ago were his favorite places to watch a game. I was looking to see whether they were filling up. They were.
Now, I just needed to wait for what has always been my favorite Palestra doubleheader moment, first game over, the players from Penn and Saint Joseph's cruising through layup lines for the second, the noise echoing off the walls and the ceiling, the crowd still reliving what they just saw, imagining what they were are about to see, one more game to play.
On Twitter: @DickJerardi