Here’s our picks for the Top 10 Big 5 moments in women’s NCAA Tournament history

From Kim Foley to Maddy Siegrist. From Harry Perretta to Dawn Staley. There have been some fascinating games and plenty of shining moments among Big 5 teams in the NCAA Tournament.

Here are some of them.

Temple, 2011 first round

Temple has won five NCAA Tournament games, but none more decisively than a surprising 63-45 trouncing of No. 7-seeded Arizona State.

Center Victoria Macaulay, who averaged 4.6 points that season, led the way for the Owls with 12 points as the Sun Devils were determined not to let Temple guards Shey Peddy and Qwedia Wallace beat them.

“Their posts hadn’t been scoring, and we kind of let them get the ball,” said ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne. “We were like, ‘OK, that’s the lesser of two evils.’ "

La Salle, 1989 first round

Connecticut won its first-ever Big East tournament championship in 1989 and was making its first NCAA Tournament appearance. The Huskies even led by 16 in the first half, before La Salle made a furious comeback and walked away with a surprising 72-63 win.

Jennifer Snyder scored 17 points and Sheila Wall had 16. Snyder’s three-pointer gave the Explorers the lead for good with seven minutes left. Kelly Greenberg also hit a clutch jumper during a decisive 15-2 run. It’s the only tournament win in La Salle history.

Three days later, the Explorers lost at eventual champion Tennessee by 30. They’ve not been back to the tournament since.

But if the question ever comes up about the first team to beat Geno Auriemma in an NCAA Tournament game, the answer is La Salle and coach John Miller.

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Drexel, 2013 WNIT

Drexel’s been to the NCAA Tournament three times and lost by double digits each time. But in 2013, the Dragons won the WNIT, becoming the only City Six Big 5 women’s team to win a postseason tournament.

They won six games during the run, the last three against power conference teams Auburn (SEC), Florida (SEC), and Utah (PAC 12).

Star forward Hollie Mershon had a rough championship game (5-for-20 shooting), but was clutch down the stretch in the 46-43 win over Utah.

“There’s definitely nothing better than playing on your home court and winning a championship game and cutting down the net you were playing on for the whole season,” Mershon said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end my career here.”

Penn, 2017 first round

The No. 12-seeded Quakers came agonizingly close to pulling off the biggest upset in school history, but couldn’t finish in a 63-61 loss to fifth-seeded Texas A&M at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion.

Penn had a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter, but missed its final 10 shots and wilted under A&M’s full-court pressure in the largest comeback in NCAA Tournament history. Texas A&M closed on a 26-3 run. Whew.

“We needed one basket,” Penn coach Mike McLaughlin said. “They sped us up and we lost our organization. We didn’t handle it very well. It’s my responsibility to keep our kids composed and find a way to get one basket.”

Sydney Stipanovich led the Quakers with 20 points (10-for-17 shooting) and Ivy League Player of the Year Michelle Nwokedi added 15. Penn qualified for the NCAAs by winning the inaugural Ivy League women’s conference tournament.

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Temple, 2005 first round

Fifth-seeded Temple had the nation’s longest winning streak at 24 games but slept-walked through the first half against No. 11 Louisiana Tech. So senior co-captain Ari Moore let them hear about it at halftime.

“She has always been our emotional leader,” coach Dawn Staley said. “We’re standing outside the locker room listening to what she is saying. Some of it you can hear, some needs to be censored. But that’s why as coaches we don’t have to rant and rave because she’s already hit them with that.”

The Owls, down 12 at the half, responded. Star Candace Dupree scored 16 of her team-high 20 points in the second half to give Staley her first NCAA Tournament win as a coach.

Villanova vs. La Salle, 1986 first round

Villanova slipped past La Salle in the only women’s NCAA Tournament meeting between City 6 rivals.

The game, at the Palestra, was tied 12 times and wasn’t decided until the final minute when Lynn Tighe hit the clinching free throws for the 60-55 win.

Shelly Pennefather led Villanova with 20 points and 13 rebounds. Linda Hester had 20 points and 11 boards for La Salle. This also was the final game Speedy Morris coached La Salle’s women’s team. The following season, he became the head coach for the Explorers’ men’s team.

It also was the first NCAA Tournament win for Harry Perretta, who coached the Wildcats from 1978-2020 and guided Villanova to the Final Four of the 1982 AIWA Tournament, the predecessor to the NCAA Tournament.

Saint Joseph’s, 1989 first round

Kim Foley set a St. Joe’s NCAA Tournament record by scoring 35 points in a surprise win over No. 7-seeded Vanderbilt.

Foley hit 13-of-19 shots from the field in her final home game. She left Hawk Hill as the second-highest scorer in program history behind Teresa Carmichael. (They are third and fifth, respectively.)

“I didn’t want this to be the last [game] for myself or for the rest of the team,” she told The Inquirer’s Mel Greenberg that night.

Foley’s career ended in a loss at Long Beach State. Dale Hodges, a sophomore who is second all-time in points at St. Joe’s, tied Foley’s record with 35 points of her own that night.

St. Joseph’s, 2000 first round

Before their game in 2000, University of Texas forward Tracy Cook was asked for a scouting report.

She may not have intended to insult the Hawks, but Cook ruffled feathers when she described St. Joe’s as a “finesse team” that was “kind of pretty.”

Susan Moran had 24 points, and Angela Zampella had 12 as the No. 10-seeded Hawks “pretty” much beat up the No. 7-seeded Longhorns, 69-48.

“That bugged me,” St. Joe’s coach Stephanie Gaitley said of Cook’s pregame assessment. “Basically, that’s saying that you’re a soft team, and when I showed that to my kids, they took it to heart.”

Sure did. Texas came in averaging 75.2 points. The Longhorns were held to 18 points in the second half and didn’t even reach 50 for the game.

“They just outworked us,” said Cook, who had six points. “They wanted it more than us. They played hard and it showed. They are a very good team.”

Villanova, 2003 Sweet 16

Colorado coach Ceal Barry summed up perfectly what it was like to play the Wildcats that season.

“It’s a test of wills when you play Villanova,” she said, “not a test of athleticism.”

Villanova already had made a splash that season by ending Connecticut’s 70-game winning streak just a few weeks prior in the Big East championship game. Now, they had made it through to the Sweet 16 for the first time in school history after beating St. Francis (Pa.) and George Washington. Colorado was up next.

The Wildcats dug themselves out of an 11-point second-half deficit and gutted out a 53-51 win over the Buffaloes. Katie Davis hit a three-pointer to give Villanova its first lead with 4:17 to play. The Wildcats scored just three points the rest of the way and still won.

“I don’t know how we do it,” said Villanova coach Harry Perretta.

Davis led Villanova with 16 points and Courtney Mix added 15. Wildcats star Trish Juhline was held to six points, but hit a pair of clutch free throws in the waning moments to give the Wildcats some breathing room.

“Look at the stat sheet,” Perretta continued. “We get out-field-goaled. They take more [shots] than we do and make more. They shoot more free throws. But yet we win because basically we made eight threes and they made one.”

Villanova, 2023 second round

Maddy Siegrist scored 31 points in the final home game of her stellar career to lift Villanova into the Sweet 16 for the first time in 20 years with a 76-57 win over Florida Gulf Coast.

Finneran Pavilion was a madhouse as Siegrist, the nation’s leading scorer, poured in 17 points in the second quarter alone.

“I haven’t seen many players hit so many shots that she was able to hit,” FGCU coach Karl Smesko said.

Unfortunately, Villanova couldn’t sustain the momentum. Four days later, the fourth-seeded Wildcats were upset by No. 9 Miami and just like that Siegrist was headed for the WNBA.

Her 32.3 points in Villanova’s three games is the third-highest average in a single tournament. That’s more than Caitlin Clark ever averaged. More than Cheryl Miller, Lynette Woodard or Breanna Stewart, too.

Siegrist had 2,896 points in her career, most of any City Six Big 5 women’s player by a large margin. Drexel’s Gabriela Marginean, who played from 2006-10, is second with 2,581.

“I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to have played here,” an emotional Siegrist said after the Miami game. “So many good people, and it’s really all about the people. Take the basketball part out of it — like the memories and the people are something I’m going to cherish forever.”