Villanova’s teams are going to the NCAA Tournament. Will they have any company from the Big 5?

The three-year drought with no men’s team from the Big 5 in the NCAA Tournament will end, finally, with Villanova seemingly locked into the field of 68 for the first time since 2022.

Kevin Willard’s Wildcats (23-7, 14-5 Big East) finish their regular season Saturday at home vs. Xavier before embarking on their postseason run beginning next week at the conference tournament in New York.

Villanova’s women, too, appear on their way to the dance after a two-year drought. The Wildcats (23-6, 16-4) were projected as a No. 9 seed in ESPN’s latest women’s bracketology, and it’s hard to imagine an opening-round loss in the Big East tournament would slide Denise Dillon’s team back to the bubble.

» READ MORE: Stifling defense and new-look rotations highlight Villanova’s blowout win at DePaul

It is not surprising that the only two Big 5 teams in a power conference more likely of drawing an at-large bid are on their way to doing so at a school that prioritizes basketball success, but what about the other 10 teams?

Will Villanova have any local company?

St. Joseph’s men: The Hawks may not have the best mathematical chance among the rest of the pack (more on that soon), but it’s worth starting here because they pulled off a pretty impressive road win Wednesday night at Davidson and secured their first double-bye and top-4 seed in the Atlantic 10 tournament since 2018.

It’s been a pretty remarkable season on Hawk Hill considering all of the context. Former coach Billy Lange bolted for the NBA in the fall. Steve Donahue, who Lange hired as an assistant after Penn fired him, was given the keys. The Hawks stumbled a bit at the start of the season, and then starting guard Deuce Jones was off the team by the holidays. But a team meeting in January helped turn the tide, and Derek Simpson, Jaiden Glover-Toscano and Co. have been on a roll. Will they cut the nets down in Pittsburgh? It’s still pretty hard to imagine given the talent of Saint Louis and Virginia Commonwealth at the top of the conference.

» READ MORE: Point guard Derek Simpson is assisting in St. Joseph’s turnaround: ‘We can be unstoppable’

But the double-bye means the Hawks will start the tournament in the quarterfinals needing just three wins in three days to reach the dance. Bart Torvik’s NCAA hoops analytics site gives the Hawks a 7.8% chance based on thousands of simulations. It’s not nothing.

Penn men: While we’re on the subject of math, it’s the Ivy League tournament that makes any of its participants more likely than those in other conferences to run the table simply because it’s a four-team tournament that only requires two wins to win it all.

The Quakers, under Fran McCaffery, are back in Ivy Madness for the first time since 2023. They have plenty of talent with Ethan Roberts and TJ Power leading the way. Penn is the No. 3 seed and plays Harvard in the semifinals, a team the Quakers just beat at home this past weekend. A win would likely mean a date with Yale, the top team in the Ivy. But the Bulldogs just lost to fourth-seeded Cornell, which is the host site for the tournament. Penn beat Cornell twice this season.

Torvik has the Quakers at 14.7% to win it all.

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Drexel women: The Dragons have two regular season games remaining and are currently tied for second in the Coastal Athletic Association with a 12-4 conference record. That’s certainly good enough to be labeled a contender, especially considering Amy Mallon led a 10-8 CAA team to a conference tournament championship just two seasons ago.

This year’s squad has won 10 of 11 entering its Thursday night road game at Hofstra and has two local products leading the way. O’Hara’s Amaris Baker, a senior, was second in the CAA in scoring entering Thursday (19.3 ppg) and her backcourt mate, West Chester Rustin’s Laine McGurk, was at 13.1 points and 4.1 rebounds per game.

Drexel men: The CAA tournament is usually wide open. Twelfth-seeded Delaware reached the final game last season, a year after seventh-seeded Stony Brook took top-seeded Charleston to overtime in the final. Two years before that, Delaware took a 10-8 conference record and the fifth seed and went all the way to the NCAA Tournament.

That’s where Drexel stood as of Thursday, 10-8 and the No. 5 seed. The Dragons started 0-3 in conference and are 10-5 since. And while they haven’t beaten any of the four seed ahead of them, weird things tend to happen at the CAA tournament. Torvik says this weird occurrence has a 4.5% chance of happening. So, not all that different from the Hawks running the table in the A-10.

La Salle women: Mountain MacGillivray should be getting some coach of the year love both in his conference and locally in the Big 5. The Explorers won three A-10 games last season and five the year before. They went 10-8 this year. And while they advanced to the quarterfinals in the conference tournament as the No. 6 seed with a win Thursday night over Saint Louis, getting through the rest of the field will be tough. A win over top-seeded Rhode Island a few weeks ago, however, means it’s at least possible.

St. Joe’s women: Like La Salle, the Hawks went 10-8 in the conference and owned the tiebreaker to get the fifth seed. They advanced Thursday with a 66-45 win over 12th-seeded Duquesne, but getting to the end of the road may be too much to overcome considering they haven’t looked ready to beat the conference’s best teams this season.

La Salle men: Darris Nichols’ first season in Olney was marred by injuries, and while the Explorers have been a tough out at times, it’s bordering on impossible for them to get through the gauntlet that would be five wins in five days. (Torvik chances: 0.1%)

Temple men: The Owls went from vying for the No. 2 seed and a bye to the semifinals in their conference tournament to needing a win Thursday just to qualify for it. They got that, but the prospect of running the table and winning five games in five days seems too daunting for a team that has seemingly been running out of gas. (Torvik chances: 1%)

» READ MORE: Temple men’s conference tourney hopes in jeopardy after sixth straight loss

Temple women: Temple is 7-10 entering its final regular season game Saturday vs. Florida Atlantic. The Owls are minus-97 in point differential in seven games vs. the top four teams in the conference.

Penn women: The Quakers are 6-7 in the Ivy and have one game remaining, but they have already been eliminated from qualifying for the four-team tournament.