The Guru Report: ‘Nova Uses 4th Quarter Wipeout to Top St. Joe; Rookie Leads No. 2 UConn Upset of No. 1 Notre Dame

Guru’s note: The report beyond the Villanova/Saint Joseph’s game is drawn on email, website and wire service reports.

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PHILADELPHIA — After last year’s lopsided 79-44 win by Villanova over a veteran Saint Joseph’s squad up the Main Line, there was a return to normalcy here on Hawk Hill Sunday afternoon with a narrowly-fought Big Five contest at Hagan Arena.

But in terms of recent times, normalcy in this long running series means the Wildcats finding a way to win and so they did pulling away in the fourth quarter from a 35-35 tie scoring the last 12 points across the last 6 minutes, 30 seconds for a 47-35 triumph.

The Hawks (3-5, 0-3 Big Five) reverted to their season scoring woes and could manage only six points in the final period.

It was the fourth straight triumph by Villanova (5-2, 2-0 Big Five) setting up its next local showdown on this coming Sunday when Temple visits the Wildcats’ Finneran Pavilion.

La Salle visits Penn at The Palestra Wednesday night at 7 and if the host Quakers prevail then after next Sunday only they and the winner of the Villanova/Temple game will be left with a chance to go 4-0 and take the Big Five outright.

Back here the story on Villanova’s side was Adrianna Hahn’s scoring, especially with a hot start, to go on to a 17-point performance as the sole Wildcat in double figures, shooting 7-for-12 from the field.

In the closing 12-0 run with the outcome still in doubt and a minute left Hahn made a key dish to Jannah Tucker, who knocked down a three-ball to put Villanova in command by seven points.

The Wildcats’ Mary Gedaka had nine points, blocked three shots, grabbed a pair of steals while dishing three assists.

“The game went exactly as I thought,” said Villanova coach Harry Perretta. “I thought if we won, we would win like 54-50 and if they won, they would win like 48-46.

“The difference was we played good defense, they played good defense, too, but the difference was we had a couple of experienced players who made shots when we needed them,” he continued.

“Jannah Tucker’s three basically won the game, but Adrianna’s drive drawing the defense and kicking it to her — that’s what we were trying to do on the pick-and-rolls. We were trying to get Adrianna free enough to drive the balls, so (Saint Joseph’s) would help, so we kicked it for three, or if they doubled back on Adrianna, Adrianna kick to Mary, and Mary drive and kick it for three.

“We finally got it on the last couple of possessions for three. We have to to make shots. (The Hawks’) Monaghan made big shots early, but she didn’t score very much in the second half.”

Monaghan was the only Hawks player in double figures with 16 points, 11 in the first half, but was stymied in the next two quarters as Perretta used a tall post player to foil her ability to be prolific from beyond the arc.

Katie Mayock had nine points while Katie Jekot grabbed eight rebounds, playing for the first time ever against her sister Kelly, whose was held to five points.

“Adrianna made some big threes,” said Perretta. “She made some great inside baskets, too, but we just don’t have any help from our bench and our bench players get relatively easy shots but they have to make those shots.

“Our bench players missed four layups and two foul shots. They have to make those shots for us to be a better offensive team,” he added.

As for words from the star of the game: “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting it to be this close, because of what happened last year and our team is on a pretty good run so far,” Hahn said. “It’s their house. Two years ago, it was a very close game here and we played really well (Sunday).

“I think we took advantage of the high-ball screens, the pick-and-roll at the top of the key. We missed a lot of layups. They played a really, tough, hard grit game, I bet (Saint Josep’s coach) Cindy (Griffin) was all in them and they played their all.”

Talking about the dish to Tucker as well as one to Grace Stant, Hahn said, “Those shots broke away the game. Instead of a two-point lead, four-point lead, we had a seven-point lead, nine-point lead. 

“When I drive, I know who to look for on the perimeter. I believe in them. I have faith in them and they knocked it down.”

Hahn now has 1,210 points in her career, crossing the 1,200 milestone during the game.

Perretta compared the two recent wins against the Hawks.

“It was a typical St. Joe/Villanova game. Last year was an illusion. Last year, they had their better team and we killed them. This year they don’t have their better team and it was ( a struggle),” he said.

“We lost one player and six of our players are not scoring as much as that one player did (Alex Louin). If we could get them to score what she did, we’d be fine.”

Perretta remained tied with Notre Dame’s Muffet McGraw for most wins over UConn coach Geno Auriemma at 12 after his second-ranked Huskies upset her top-ranked Irish, the defending NCAA champion, 89–71, Sunday afternoon on the road in South Bend, Ind., at Purcell Pavilion.

Details will be in the national section below after the rest of the local results.

Meanwhile Griffin had mixed reactions to her team’s performance against Villanova.

“I was proud of our team,” she said. “This is a grinder/grit type of team we have this year. Our kids did a nice job defensively. I thought a couple plays down the stretch could have gone a different way.

“We need to figure out a way to score more points and we only scored six points in the fourth quarter and you’re not going to score many points doing that, but I was very proud of our defense.”

The Wildcats are now 117-39 (.750) in Big Five competition, tops in the City Series and ahead of Saint Joseph’s, which is at 110 in terms of victories in the round-robin. They are 26-5 in their last 31 games against the locals.

Villanova travels to George Washington Thursday before hosting Temple Sunday, while on Thursday Saint Joseph’s will host Auburn.

Princeton and Penn State Halt Losing Streaks

The defending Ivy champion Princeton women, who have been riddled by injuries, including a broken shoulder to Ivy player of the year Bella Alarie, halted their seven-game skid celebrating their return to home at Jadwin Gym by rallying 65-57 over Davidson with a 16-6 run.

The Tigers (2-7) had not won since beating nearby Rider in the season-opener at the Broncs’ Alumni Gymnasium in Lawrenceville, N.J.

Carlie Littlefield matched her career best with 22 points and eight rebounds with Gabrielle Rush got her second double double with 12 points and 10 rebounds. Sydney Jordan also tied a career mark with 14 points, while Sydney Boyer had a career-high with eight rebounds.

Princeton trailed 40-32 in the third period when the Tigers launched a 10-0 run and finished the quarter down just a point. In the fourth and final quarter Littlefield’s two foul shots snapped the deadlock in her team’s direction and Boyer’s three-ball extended the differential.

Katie Turner’s 19 points was best for Davidson (4-4) while Sarah Donovan grabbed 13 rebounds.

Princeton is off the rest of the week before hosting Quinnipiac, the defending Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champions, Saturday night at 7.

Meanwhile, Penn State snapped a smaller streak, ending a two-game slide that included an upset by Stony Brook, as the Lady Lions crushed Jacksonville 80-61 in a non-conference game at home in the Bryce Jordan Center in State College.

It was a holiday block party as coach Coquese Washington’s squad (5-3) set a program record with 15 rejections of shots by Jacksonville (3-5).

Teniya Page led four PSU players scoring in double figures with 27 points, while Kamaria McDaniel had 17 points, Siyah Frazier scored 14, and Alisia Smith had 11 points and 14 rebounds. 

Frazier had four of the blocks with teammates Karismia Ortiz and Lauren Ebo each collecting three.

Jasmyn Brown had 20 points for Jacksonville and Trudy Walker had 14 points and 11 rebounds.

“I thought the things we’ve been working on and emphasizing in practice are starting to come out, particularly our defensive intensity,” Washington said. “We’ve got to fix up that third quarter, but I thought in the fourth quarter we kind of locked in again. I’m really pleased to see the carryover from practice.”

Penn State next hosts Duquesne from Pittsburgh Wednesday night at 7.

Rider and Delaware Suffer Setbacks

The only other two locals in the Guru’s D-1 group who played Sunday both suffered losses with Rider falling at home to Navy 66-60 while Delaware on the road dropping a non-conference game at Boston University 72-61.

In the Rider game, the Broncs’ demise came about in the third quarter, enabling the Midshipmen to get to .500 on the season at 3-3 while Rider’s two-game home win streak ended with a drop to an overall 3-5.

It was a two-point game in the third before Navy exploded with a 9-0 run shooting 4-for-4 from the field and forcing Rider into three turnovers.

The visitors built on that for a 14-point lead in the fourth before Rider rallied to get within five.

On the positive side, four Rider players scored in double figures for the first time this season as Stella Johnson and Lea Favre each got 14 points, Lexi Posset returned from a four-game absence due to injury and scored 13, and Amari Johnson scored 10.

Jennifer Coleman had 23 points and 14 rebounds for Navy while Sophie Gatzounas also had a double double with 12 points and 13 rebounds. Bianca Roach added 10 points.

“Today was not one of our better efforts this season,” said Rider coach Lynn Milligan. “We started pretty solid defensively, but our shots weren’t falling. We were just a little bit out of sync offensively. The ball just wasn’t dropping today and that affected us, defensively.”

Rider shot 11-for-14 from the line in the game in which the Broncs were extended to 0-5 in the series between the two teams.

The team is off until Saturday when it travels to Binghamton, which won last year’s meeting in Lawrenceville.

Delaware, meanwhile,  saw an early lead wiped out by a Boston University shooting barrage to lead to a 72-61 victory.

Makeda Nicholas helped the Blue Hens’ cause with 18 points, four rebounds, and three blocked shots, while Abby Gonzales had 16 points, and Justina Mascaro scored nine.

But the Terriers (4-2) held Delaware (3-4) to a 33.8 percent effort from the field while connecting at a 48.1 percent clip.

“As a team, we need more consistency and confidence in order to get the results we want,” said Blue Hens second-year coach Natasha Adair.

Delaware next travels to George Mason, Thursday at 7, meeting a squad in Fairfax, Va., which used to be an in-conference rival in the Colonial Athletic Association before moving several years ago to the Atlantic 10.

Nationally Speaking: Freshman Leads No. 2 UConn to Upset at No. 1 Notre Dame

The top-ranked and defending NCAA champion Notre Dame women had a healthy lineup with the four players back that were not on hand last spring  when the Irish shocked Connecticut at the buzzer in overtime in the national semifinals on the shot by Arike Ogunbowale.

But when the Huskies took the floor on the road at Purcell Pavilion in South Bend, Ind., they also had someone not around for that fateful game last season — freshman Christyn Williams, considered the top recruit in the nation this season.

“She is one of the rare individuals that comes along that know who they are,” said UConn coach Geno Auriemma. “She knows who she is.”

It wasn’t that long ago that Auriemma had someone else who fit that description in Breanna Stewart, who after powering the Huskies to an NCAA title as a rookie, predicted three more to come in her career and walked the walk.

Williams, a 5-foot-11 guard from Little Rock, Ark., became the difference maker Sunday, scoring 16 of her season-high 28 points in the first quarter to propel UConn to an 89-71 stunner that will flip the two teams, maybe even knock the Irish (7-1) back further, when the next Associated Press women’s poll is released Monday.

And once on top, as UConn adds yet another No. 1 ranking to a dominating collection of them in the AP women’s poll 43-year history, the only seemingly major threats the rest of the way are Baylor on the road and Louisville at home to stop another unbeaten run by the Huskies (7-0) through the regular season.

Asked what was different this time from their last meeting, Auriemma quipped, “We threw the ball to Christyn Williams but she was in high school last year. I would have thrown it to her last year but she wasn’t around. I would have gotten a recruiting violation.”

Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw also acknowledged Williams’ contribution.                                           

“I thought Christyn Williams was phenomenal,” McGraw said. “She was the real difference in the game.”

McGraw labeled a bunch of aspects of her team’s offensive and defensive attack “poor” afterwards, adding, “… and then we lost our poise and that was unexpected.

“This time, the team we played was good enough to take advantage of it. We’re a better team than we showed.”

The Huskies had a narrow 44-41 lead at the half in which Katie Lou Samuelson, one of their three standouts on everyone’s watch lists, had yet to score and was 0-for-7 from the field.

“To be up whatever we were at halftime without Lou getting a basket, that was a good sign for us,” Auriemma observed.

Samuelson finished with 15, while teammate Napheesa Collier scored 16 and had 15 rebounds and three blocked shots, Crystal Dangerfield scored 13, and Megan Walker, who held Williams’ status a season ago but was used sparingly as she struggled, scored 12.

Jackie Young had 18 for the Irish, Ogunbowale scored 17, of which 12 came in the first half, and also collected 10 rebounds, Jessica Shepard scored 13, Marina Mabrey scored 11, and Brianna Turner had 10 but blocked four shots.

If anything in defeat, McGraw can take comfort in that her team lost this game a year ago in Connecticut and ended up the national champs on Ogunbowale’s shot in the semifinals and repeat buzzer-beater two nights later against Mississippi State.

“This is going to to allow us to look at things a little more objectively and to move forward,” she said. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

Auriemma’s team will be challenged less in the American Athletic Conference than McGraw’s team will be challenged in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“I think we’re a really good team and we will be a really good team, but tonight we weren’t,” McGraw said.

Stanford Gets Zagged

In a sense, a bigger upset among the top teams Sunday was unranked Gonzaga at home slipping past No. 8 Stanford 79-73 at home in Spokane, Wash., to hand the Cardinal (6-1) their first loss while the Zags extended their record to 8-1 and became a candidate to join the AP Poll this week.

Chandler Smith scored 10 of her 20 points late in the non-conference game while Katie Smith and Jill Townsend each scored 15 points.

“We knew they were going to make a run,” Smith said. “They have such a great coach. Luckily it worked out today.”

Stanford’s Kiana Williams scored 18 points while Dijonai Carrington and and Alanna Smith each scored 13.

Gonzaga dominated rebounding in the matchup 38-24.

“We were just not aggressive,” said Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer. “They really got on the glass.”

Baylor Socks South Carolina

The Gamecocks graduated the No. 1 player and their recruiting class containing the cavalry for next season is also ranked No. 1.

But between the past and the future, coach Dawn Staley is dealing with a rare role in recent seasons as an underdog with teams like UConn still ahead in the non-conference slate as well as some heavy hitters in the Southeastern Conference as Mississippi State and Tennessee9, to name two.

No. 4 Baylor took advantage of the situation Sunday on the road, blasting the No. 18 Gamecocks 94-69 in Columbia where only UConn has gotten away with margins like that in recent seasons in Colonial Life Arena.

South Carolina (4-4) recently ended a long run in the Top 10.

The more athletic Bears (7-0) featured Kalani Brown, who scored 22 points and grabbed nine rebounds, while Chloe Jackson had 19 points, and Juicy Landrum scored 15.

Te’a Cooper had 16 for the Gamecocks, while LeLe Grissett scored 11 and grabbed 10 rebounds.

In the first ever meeting between the two teams Staley and Baylor’s Kim Mulkey are the only two women to play and coach in NCAA Women’s Final Fours with both winning titles as coaches and Mulkey helping to hoist NCAA hardware as a player at Louisiana Tech.

This is the first time South Carolina has been at .500 in the Staley era since her third season in 2010, the last time they failed to land in the NCAA tournament.

Mississippi State Rides Herd Over Texas

The No. 6 Bulldogs also had little difficulty as the higher ranked team playing on the road against another team in the poll, beating the No. 10 Longhorns 67-49 in Austin as part of the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, as was the Baylor/South Carolina game.

Jazzmun Holmes had 17 points, Chloe Bibby scored 14, and Teaira McCowan scored 10 and set as school record riding 12 rebounds to a career mark of 1,109, one more than former star LaToya Thomas.

“I think my whole team had a presence today,” said Mississippi State coach Vic Schaefer. “From tip to finish we were dominant. We played our game.”

His unbeaten team (8-0) dominated the paint 48-28 and forced Texas into 22 turnovers.

Sug Sutton had 16 points for the Longhorns (7-1), who suffered the first loss.

Temple Visits DePaul

Looking ahead is not necessary since we mentioned all the games through Thursday above on the local front except one, so since we are in the national section, Monday, Temple visits No. 16 DePaul in a 12 p.m. (EST) game in Chicago before the Owls come off their six-game road trip to host Iona, 7 p.m. Thursday night in McGonigle Hall.

Elsewhere in the rankings, everyone had an easy or relatively easy time of it as those at home featured No. 20 Minnesota topping Air Force 67-50 to keep new coach Lindsay Whelan unbeaten after the big upset of Syracuse earlier in the week; No. 3 Oregon beat Long Beach State 1120-48; 

No. 15 California beat Cal State-Northridge 67-42; No. 22 Marquette beat Michigan 85-74; No. 19 Arizona State beat Tulsa 70-52; No. 23 Iowa State topped Arkansas 91-82; 

No. 14 Iowa cruised over Robert Morris 92-63 while No. 12 Syracuse did likewise over Towson 98-55; No. 13 North Carolina State over Old Dominion 85-56; No. 5 Louisville over Tennessee State 107-52; No. 7 Maryland over UMBC 92-61; and No. 21 Miami (Fla.) over Colorado 73-58.

On the road, not mentioned earlier, No. 11 Tennessee beat Oklahoma State 76-63.

And that’s the report.