The Guru Report: Steal Near Finish Eclipses Princeton Rally as Seton Hall Tops Tigers

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PRINCETON, N.J. — Soon after the Princeton women witnessed the hanging of another Ivy championship banner in their renovated Jadwin Gym here Wednesday night, the Tigers got plundered into an 18-point deficit from the Pirates of Seton Hall in their annual New Jersey D-1 battle.

Already reeling from injuries and other factors that have claimed four players, including reigning league player of the year Bella Alarie, the Tigers rallied, took the lead and then squandered the comeback at the close to drop their second straight, this time 70-66 after losing at George Washington Sunday.

Of course, if you’re Seton Hall of the Big East, the viewpoint is coach Tony Bozzella’s bunch arrived here off two wins in their own tourney to stay unbeaten at 3-0 and kept the momentum going to lead early in the third period 50-32 after a layup by Shadeen Samuels.

But veteran coach Courtney Banghart’s group owned the overall period 21-10 to pull close at 54-51.

  However Seton Hall doubled the differential to six at the outset of the final period before Princeton turned the surge back on with a 13-0 run for a 64-57 lead on Gabrielle Rush’s three-pointer with 4 minutes, 55 seconds left in regulation.

An exchange of baskets and it was still plus seven after Carlie Littlefield’s layup with 2:15 left. But that became the last stand by the home team.

Samuels nailed a 3-pointer to start a closing 11-0 run that saw the Pirates take advantage of two Tigers turnovers to tie the score 66-66 with 41 seconds left, take the lead on a layup from Nicole Jimenez with four seconds left and seal it when Kaela Hilaire stole the ball and scored as time expired.

Hearing from the winning side first, Bozzella said of the flow in the second half, “She made some good adjustments, going man, slacking off, we were hesitant and we missed eight straight free throws in the third quarter.

“Instead of being up 12 at the end of the third quarter, you’re only up three and that changes everything,” Bozzella said. “I give the kids a lot of credit. That was a great character win because when you get down seven with three minutes to go on the road after blowing an 18-point lead you’re going to lose.

“But they didn’t give up. And KK (Hilaire) made two great plays at the end and she was tremendous.”

Samuels finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds for Seton Hall while Jimenez scored 15, and Inja Butina scored 13 and Hilaire dealt seven assists.

Littlefield scored 22 for Princeton (1-2), which smoked Rider down the road in Lawrenceville on opening night last week, while Rush scored 18, and Sydney Jordan scored 13.

Seton Hall was just 1-for-9 from the line versus the Tigers shooting 12-for-13.

In one way, the early going has Princeton going through learning experiences as they did two seasons ago, though back then it was a roster replenished from key graduation losses while this time it’s the loss of players who would be go-to in a finish as the way this game went.

“We outscored them the whole second half, but obviously we were undermanned,” Banghart said. “These guys showed great fight.

“They could have thrown in the towel when we were down 18. With two minutes to go, the game is in our hands but we showed a lot of youthful mistakes. Like I said, we had a lot of people out of position so I give Carli a lot of credit. “

The Princeton guard played all but two minutes and dealt four assists while grabbing three steals.

“We were a lot better than we were on Sunday,” Banghart said of the last game in Washington.

Princeton next goes to Penn State Sunday while Seton Hall goes to UCLA the same day. The host Bruins upset No. 14 Georgia earlier Wednesday.

Penn State Rallies Over Fordham

Down 12 in the first half against the Rams in the Bronx (N.Y.), the Lady Lions forged at 34-11 second half to top the Atlantic 10 affiliate 72-55 in a non-conference game at Rose Hill Gym.

Preseason all-Big Ten Teniya Page shot 10-for-20 from the field and scored a game-high 25 points while Alisia Smith had a career-high 16 points and Siyeh Frazier had 15 points and four steals for Penn State, which bounced back off a tough loss at home Sunday to nationally-ranked California to improve to 2-1.

The Lady Lions turned 15 Fordham turnovers into 19 points.

Coquese Washington, the former Notre Dame star who had spent her entire head coaching career in Happy Valley, will be going for her 200th win when Penn State hosts Princeton Sunday in the Bryce Jordan Center at 2 p.m. with the game nationally televised on the Big Ten Network.

The Lady Lions are a perfect 6-0 in the series with Fordham (1-2).

“Fordham is really a tough place to play,” Washington said. “They’re a well coached team and they’re really tough to go up against. I thought we had a really good second half defensively.”

Fordham got 14 points from Bre Cavanaugh and 11 each from Kaitlyn Downey and Mary Goulding while Downey also grabbed 11 rebounds for a double double.

The Rams are coached by Stephanie Gaitley, who has Saint Joseph’s as one of her previous stop and also starred at Villanova.

Temple Rally Falls Short

The Owls suffered their first loss of the season after a pair of wins, losing at Mississippi 62-55 in Oxford in a non-conference game with the Southeastern Conference representative.

Trailing by 13, Temple used a 13-0 run to get a 38-38 tie with the Rebels (2-1), who then shot ahead by nine but had to hold off the Owls, who sliced that differential down to three.

Sophomore Mia Davis had a career high 22 for Temple and grabbed six rebounds. Freshman Marissa Mackins had 15 points.

Crystal Allen had 16 points for Ole Miss while La’Karis Salter had 14, and Cecilia Muhate scored 10.

Temple next continues its road trip that began at Saint Joseph’s with a win Friday by visiting Marist, a contender in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC), Sunday at 1 p.m. in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The game will be televised on ESPN+

From there the Owls will head to Miami to play the host and nationally-ranked Hurricanes in one game and will later travel to nationally-ranked DePaul in Chicago.

La Salle Still Winless

Harvard picked up its first win of the season 88-43 at the expense of the Explorers, who are now 0-3 under new coach Mountain MacGillivray.

The non-conference game with the Ivy contender was played in Cambridge, Mass.

La Salle fell into a deep deficit early 28-6 after the first quarter though the Explorers competed better in the second half.

Rayshel Brown with 10 points was the only Explorer to score in double figures in the game at Lavietes Pavilion.

Sydney Skinner scored 24 points getting a game high for Harvard, while Katie Benzen scored 16 points and Jadyn Bush had a double double of 11 points and 11 rebounds.

The Explorers stay on the road to travel to Towson of the Colonial Athletic Association at 7 p.m. on Saturday night on the outskirts of Baltimore.

Only four of the Guru’s local D-1 group played Wednesday.

Nationally Speaking: UCLA upsets No. 14 Georgia

The Bruins lost their ranking at the outset of the new season after graduating key people but they may be back in the Associated Press women’s poll in the wake of their 80-69 upset of the Dawgs at home in Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles.

Michaela Onyenwere had 11 of her 25 points in the fourth quarter for UCLA (2-1), which itself was upset last week by nearby Loyola Marymount.

Kennedy Burke had 21 points as the Bruins came back from an existing 12-point deficit early in the third quarter. They scored 31 in the final period helped by going 13-of-17 on the line.

Taja Cole had 22 points, 10 rebounds, and eight assists for Georgia (2-1), which dropped its first game of the season. The Bulldogs will be visiting Villanova in a few weeks.

Elsewhere Lindsay Whelan, the recently retired WNBA star, made it 2-0 as a head coach at her alma mater as Minnesota won at Xavier 78-53 in Cincinnati.

In a game played on neutral territory in terms of the Westchester County Center in White Plains, N.Y., the home of the New York Liberty, No. 18 Syracuse topped No. 20 Texas A&M 75-65 as Tiana Mangakahia scored 26 points for the Orange (2-1) against the Aggies (2-1).

Syracuse was coming off a near-upset of Oregon out West in Eugene on the Ducks’ campus.

Texas A&M features Chennedy Carter, who was the national freshman of the year last season.

The Orange got her in foul trouble in the second half but she still scored 18 points in a game played on her birthday.

Looking Ahead: West Philly Showdowns

Only two games are on the Guru’s local slate Thursday night at 7 and they will be played four blocks apart as Drexel hosts Bucknell at the Dragons’ Daskalakis Athletic Center while there will be another Big Five showdown, this one at The Palestra as Penn hosts Saint Joseph’s, also at 7 p.m.

Drexel is coming off Sunday’s home win over Saint Joseph’s in which they defensed the Hawks to go to 1-1.

Saint Joseph’s, which is still looking for its first win, is 0-2, having also lost to Temple in a narrow deficit, while Penn won at Siena before losing at top-ranked Notre Dame, the defending national champions, in a decent stand Monday night in Purcell Pavilion.

On Friday Villanova travels to Lehigh and Rutgers in the wake of coach C. Vivian Stringer’s 1,000th career-win travels to Charlotte. Delaware will be in Texas in a pair of consolation games in the Preseason WNIT.

On Saturday, Penn hosts NJIT, La Salle travels to Towson, as mentioned, and Rider hosts Mount Sgt. Mary’s.

And that’s the report.