Guru's College Report: Temple Rout and Bonnies' Narrow Win Top A-10

By Mel Greenberg

PHILADELPHIA – A Saint Bonaventure rally and a Temple knockout set up a clear pecking order at the top of the Atlantic 10 Saturday as the conference regular season race approaches its final two weeks.

   The 25^th-ranked Bonnies overcame a 15-foot deficit in the first half at Dayton and used Megan Van Tatenhove’s shot with 23 seconds left in the game to edge the Flyers 56-55 and stay unbeaten in the conference.

   Temple, meanwhile, put five players in double figures here in a 77-50 win over Massachusetts at the Owls’ Liacouras Center to take over sole possession of second place one game behind the Bonnies (24-2, 11-0 Atlantic 10) and one ahead of Dayton (16-6, 8-2).

    The Flyers and Owls (16-8, 9-1) were the preseason co-favorites of the conference coaches and the Bonnies were picked sixth but have now beaten all five teams picked ahead of them.

   La Salle for the second straight year clinched a spot in the A-10 tournament, which will be at St. Joseph’s next month, by edging Rhode Island 49-45 in Kingston, which will also be the site of an NCAA tournament Sweet 16 and Elite Eight regional final next month.

   The Explorers (12-13, 6-4) who moved into sixth a half-game ahead of St. Joseph’s (15-8, 5-4), had missed the conference tournament for several seasons prior to last year.

  The Hawks can move back into a tie with La Salle by beating Saint Louis (8-16, 2-7) in a home game Sunday and would own the tie breaker off of Wednesday night’s win at La Salle.

    The alumni will return to Hawk Hill to play in the annual reunion game prior to the 2 p.m. tipoff.

  In the contest at Dayton, Van Tatenhove had a game-high 17 points while CeCe Dixon added 13 points for St. Bonaventure, whose leading scorer Jessica Jenkins was held to three points.

Doris Ortega scored 12 points for the visitors, whose Alaina Walker grabbed 10 rebounds.

  The Bonnies’ all-time win streak is now up to 13 games and at 12-0 away from home they are one of just three teams unbeaten on the road in opponents’ arenas. 


They are likely to win their last one away from home at 14^th-place Rhode Island in the final game of the regular season.

  The two losses were to Villanova in the first round of Monmouth’s tournament and at home to No. 12 Delaware, which is likely to move up with a win Sunday against host Georgia State in the Colonial Athletic Association.

   Dayton’s Cassie Sant had 12 points while Justine Raterman had 11 points and 12 rebounds, and Patrice Lalor scored 10 points.

    After moving closer the last month, St. Bonaventure finally received a first-ever ranking on Monday in the Associated Press women’s poll.

      Temple, meanwhile, quickly built a double-digit lead in the first seven minutes against the Minutewomen (6-19, 1-9) and increased it to as many as 34 points late in the game.

     The Owls’ transition game forced Massachusetts into 23 turnovers to just 13 miscues of their own resulting in a 29-10 advantage in points as they won their ninth straight.

     Victoria Macaulay had 18 points for Temple, BJ Williams had 13 points, Kristen McCarthy had 13 points, Shey Peddy, the reigning A-10 and Big Five top player for the second straight week, had 12 points, as did Kristen McCarthy, and Brittany Lewis had 11 points and 11 rebounds.

    “I thought that was a really good win for us, I thought we played really good basketball today,” Temple coach Tonya Cardoza said afterwards. “To have five guys in double figures, that’s a major accomplishment for our guys.

    “Again, we’re not focusing on any particular team – we’re just worrying about how we’re playing and what type of basketball we’re playing. Right now we’re playing really good basketball and hopefully that will continue the rest of the way out.”

  Temple next hosts George Washington (11-13, 4-6) in the annual field trip noon game Wednesday in the Liacouras Center to attract the local schools in the community.

   The Colonials dropped a 63-51 game Saturday at home in Washington to Richmond (19-5, 7-3), which is in fifth-place a half-game behind Charlotte (15-10, 7-4), which was routed on the road 81-53 by Duquesne (17-8, 5-5) in Pittsburgh.

     Williams talked about playing the backcourt with Peddy and how they have developed in the last several weeks into a potent duo.

   “Shey and I have been working really hard and `coach’ puts us in really great situations in practice where we’ve been working on our chemistry,” Williams said.

“Toward the beginning of the season we struggled a lot, but it’s perfect timing now we’ve found it and we know where each other is going to be on the court.”

  Meanwhile, in La Salle’s game the Explorers used a 7-0 run at the finish to overcome a three-point deficit to Rhode Island (1-24, 0-10), which is still looking for its first conference win of the season and second overall.

  Ruvanna Campbell had three blocked shots and now has 38 rejections, two better than the previous La Salle freshman record of 36 set by Suzie McCaffrey in 1982-83. Campbell is fourth overall among all classes.

  Alexis Scott for the Explorers had 21 points, while Brittany Wilson scored 11, all in the second half.

 Corinne Colas had 13 points for Rhode Island.

  La Salle will host Dayton on Wednesday night at 7 p.m.

  In one other A-10 game played, two-time defending champion Xavier (6-17, 3-7) went into overtime on the road to gain a 68-57 win at Fordham (11-14, 2-8) in the Bronx, N.Y.

The Musketeers made 13 of 14 foul shots in the extra period to win and move into 10^th place, two ahead of the cut-off that knocks the 13^th and 14^th place finishers out of the A-10 tournament 12-team field.

If Massachusetts can find a way to win a couple of upcoming games it could get interesting because Xavier now must host Richmond, then travel to St. Bonaventure and Dayton and the Musketeers will be underdogs in all three games.

Thus the Xavier-UMass game in Cincinnati on the last day of the season could potentially determine who will stay home from the conference tournament.

 Of course Fordham and Saint Louis are also involved in the survival effort to avoid too low a finish.

  In the Xavier-Fordham game, the Musketeers’ Amber Gray had a career-high 17 points while Lakeisha Crouch had 13 points and 12 rebounds.

  Abigall Corning had 15 points for Fordham, whose Arielle Collins scored a layup with six seconds left in regulation to gain and 46-46 tie and force the overtime.

 Princeton and Penn Triumph in New England

Two-time defending Ivy champion Princeton left Harvard much happier than a year ago as the Tigers began to separate themselves from the rest of the conference with a lopsided 84-56 win over the Crimson in Cambridge, Mass., to take a two-game lead over Harvard (12-9, 5-2) and Yale (14-8, 6-2), which beat Columbia 73-59.

Penn, meanwhile, topped host Dartmouth 73-63 in overtime at the halfway point of the league race. The Quakers (9-12, 2-5) are now 3-1 in overtime games this season.

The Ivies are the only one of 31 conferences who don’t have a postseason tournament and use the final standings of the regular season to determine who advances with the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Princeton (17-4, 7-0 Ivy) in a three-season span is now 34-1 and the one occurred a year ago to Harvard to provide the only blot on the Tigers’ Ivy portion of the schedule.

Niveen Rasheed, who this week was made part of the 20-player midseason watch list for national player of the year by the United States Basketball Writers Association, matched her season high with 24 points and became the third Princeton player this season to surpass 1,000 career points. She also had nine rebounds.

Earlier, Devona Allgood, who had nine points against Harvard, and Lauren Edwards, who scored 13, reached the 1,000-point milestone.

“I told them that they just earned that (win) by the way they practice every single day,” Princeton coach Courtney Banghart beamed afterwards. “It was a great team win, top to bottom, I am proud of our seniors and upperclassmen for leading the way by example and it is always fun to start the league (play) this way and we are going to keep going.”

 Princeton, seeking to earn the highest seed ever for an Ivy champion in the NCAA tournament, next week begins the effort to complete season sweeps over the other seven teams when they visit Columbia (2-19, 0-7) and Cornell (9-12, 3-4) on Friday and Saturday nights.

  “We have talented kids who are really invested in what we are doing. I’m like a mother, I’m just so proud of them,” Banghart said of her squad.

    Meanwhile, in the Quakers’ win, freshman Katy Allen again set a career mark, this time with 17 points while freshman Kara Bonenberger also scored 17 points while grabbing nine rebounds.

     Penn sophomore Alyssa Baron had 14 points and Renee Busch, another freshman, had 11 points.

     Jess Knapp, who recently returned to play the rest of her senior season despite suffering a torn ACL in late December, reached her 500^th career point and had a game-high 11 rebounds.

   Faziah Steen had 22 points for Dartmouth (3-18, 12-6) and Sasha Dosenko had 14 points.

    Penn stays on the road this weekend traveling to Cornell and Columbia on Friday and Saturday nights.

        Villanova Burned At South Florida

   The Wildcats may have gotten some sun but certainly only little fun on a weekend trip to Tampa where South Florida gained a 54-39 win in a Big East game.

        Andrea Smith had 22 points while Tiffany Conner grabbed 10 rebounds for the host Bulls (13-13, 5-7 Big East).

        Lauren Burford had 11 points and was the only player to score in double figures for Villanova (15-10, 5-7), which next hosts No. 14 Georgetown at the Pavilion on Tuesday night at 7 p.m.

        The Hoyas will come in reeling from an 80-38 loss to No. 3 Connecticut (23-2, 11-1 Big East) Saturday afternoon at Gampel Pavilion on the Huskies’ campus in Storrs after several narrow previous encounters in losses to UConn.

         Freshman Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis had 23 points for the Huskies while Bria Hartley scored 18 as UConn extended its NCAA-record home win streak to 99 straight triumphs.

     

  Rubylee Wright and Sugar Rodgers, who has been on several national player of the year watch lists, each scored 10 points for Georgetown (19-6, 8-4).

     In another Big East game involving a ranked team, No. 20 Louisville beat visiting Syracuse 89-62 as the Cardinals (18-7, 7-5) set a school record with 18 3-pointers.

      Becky Burke had eight from beyond the arc and finished with a career-high 28 points while Shoni Schimmel had six treys, 20 points and dealt 10 assists.

      Kayla Alexander had 20 points and 12 rebounds for Syracuse (15-11, 4-8).

     In two other Big East games, host Cincinnati topped Pittsburgh 62-57 while host Providence topped Seton Hall 62-47 to leave the two visiting teams still winless in conference competition.

      Baylor’s Revenge

    Top-ranked Baylor (25-0, 12-0 Big 12) is still the last unbeaten team in Division I and now the Bears finally have gained their taste of revenge paying back No. 15 Texas A&M 71-48 for the NCAA regional title upset loss that sent coach Kim Mulkey’s group home and the Aggies (17-6, 8-4) on to the Final Four where they upset Stanford and Notre Dame to win a first-ever national title.

    The game was also a Big 12 contest and the last one for Texas A&M on Baylor’s home court in Waco, Texas, since the Aggies are heading for competition in the Southeastern Conference next season.

     Mulkey, who learned country singer Trace Adkins had a crush  her back in his days playing football at Louisiana Tech when she was a Lady Techsters star, has said she will not continue the longtime rivalry once the Aggies are no longer in the conference.

Adkins was at the game Saturday.

     In Saturday’s win, national player of the year candidate Brittney Griner blocked six shots to go with 21 points and 10 rebounds for Baylor while Odyssey Sims had 19 points and Brooklyn Pope scored 10 points and grabbed nine rebounds in front of a record-tying sellout crowd of 10,627 persons.

     Tyra White had 18 points for Texas A&M.

     The Guru is signing off now but the plan is to be at Rutgers for the St. John’s game where tweeting @womhoopsguru will continue and another blog post will appear here at the next sunrise.

    -- Mel