The Big 5 could be getting a men’s basketball tournament. What about the women?

This could get interesting.

Big 5 administrators are talking seriously about new formats for a men’s City Series that has gone stale. A Big 5 tournament that includes Drexel is on the table.

What about the women’s side? These administrators are talking about this too. But let’s state this upfront: The women’s side isn’t broken. The round-robin isn’t just working, but improving and getting more competitive.

Right now, there is no need to cut down the number of local games being played. While the Big East upped its 2022-23 conference schedule to 20 games, that’s going back to 18 next season, so Villanova appears fine with the women’s status quo, which is a full round-robin.

Where things get a bit sticky is with Drexel. If the Dragons are included in a men’s tournament, can you leave them out of a partnership on the women’s side?

» READ MORE: Is the Big 5 getting closer to a men's tournament?

“I think for the women’s side, getting Drexel involved should have been done a while ago, because we don’t have that history going back 70 years,” said La Salle women’s coach Mountain MacGillivray, in his fifth season in charge at 20th and Olney.

What MacGillivray refers to is the idea that the men’s City Series was established on the backs of nationally prominent Big 5 programs at a time Drexel wasn’t trying to compete at that level.

On the women’s side, Drexel has been strong in recent years, racking up NCAA Tournament appearances, although this year, the Dragons lost to St. Joseph’s and La Salle. (A sign of improved play at 20th and Olney and on Hawk Hill adding to the local competitiveness.)

One issue with the women’s side is this … if a tournament actually would produce fewer local games for each school, what’s the point? And if every school isn’t fully on board with adding Drexel for a six-team City Series round-robin every year — where’s the sweet spot?

St. Joe’s coach Cindy Griffin may have found it.

“I would like a designated Saturday the week before finals for a tripleheader at the Palestra,” Griffin said.

The games don’t even have to rotate each year, Griffin pointed out, since Villanova coach Denise Dillon probably isn’t dying to play her former school, and it doesn’t make sense for St. Joe’s to play La Salle with those schools locked into playing in the Atlantic 10.

To Griffin, the tripleheader can be St. Joe’s facing Temple, Villanova taking on La Salle, Penn playing Drexel. Or maybe it’s Villanova-Penn and La Salle-Drexel in addition to Owls-Hawks.

A day to celebrate women’s hoops in the city. Not bad.

Penn coach Mike McLaughlin said he actually would like to “come on board with what the men are doing. I would like to try a new concept. Not interested at all in playing all five Philadelphia schools.”

McLaughlin’s reasoning is that more local games takes away opportunities to play nationally, which Penn’s coach believes factors into recruiting. The Quakers playing a game at USC this season wasn’t random. Penn’s leading scorer, Kayla Padilla, is from Southern California. Second-leading scorer Jordan Obi is from Northern California. His third-leading scorer is from the Chicago suburbs.

McLaughlin has local players — his fourth-leading scorer, Mandy McGurk, played high school ball at Notre Dame. McLaughlin himself is as local as it gets, from Northeast Philly, a Holy Family graduate. But he’s thinking institutionally, that other schools that recruit as much as they can locally naturally would want more local games.

“If it’s a tournament, we can’t schedule all the other Big 5 teams because we don’t want to play them twice and we don’t know who we’re playing in the tournament,” MacGillivray said.

» READ MORE: Why are Penn basketball players, men and women, hitting the transfer portal?

Let’s say the tournament is a no-go, and including Drexel in a full round-robin would not have unanimous support … my own belief, include Drexel. It wouldn’t kill Penn to drop the Stony Brook or St. Francis or Bucknell game. There’s room on ‘Nova’s schedule. Which would fans rather see, a Drexel game or playing American?

But I don’t get a vote. Compromises will need to be made somewhere.

“I think it would be really beneficial to somehow lock in the dates of the games — whether at home sites or at the Palestra,” MacGillivray said.

By the way, one women’s coach said the men’s teams having flagging attendance for City Series games has little to do with anything except their win-loss records, that a tournament might not fix that issue.

Can’t completely argue with that, or really any of the thoughts expressed for local women’s play. There’s no perfect plan for all. The status quo kind of works. And getting behind Griffin’s thought for a day of local women’s college hoops, which would include Drexel, seems like an open layup waiting to be taken.