The Guru Report: Penn Thumps Brown While Yale Upsets Princeton

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PHILADELPHIA —  The best laid plans of the Penn women pursuing an Ivy regular season title were in the cards Friday night, and beyond, even if they were designed by Quakers coach Mike McLaughlin and not Hoyle in terms of taking care of their own business and getting help at two other unlikely venues.

The start of Ivy weekend No. 2 here at home in The Palestra went toward the Quakers with an explosive 22-0 run in the second quarter on the way to an 83-43 victory over Brown, widest ever against the Bears (9-12, 1-4 Ivy) and depending on how things go here Saturday night against Yale, it’s possible Penn (14-3, 4-0) could bust the early phase open or else the Bulldogs (14-6, 4-1) could leave town holding a half-game lead.

Yale is in position to hype ticket sales back home in New Haven, Conn., where it will host the third annual Ivy men’s and women’s tourney after its first two here as a result of upsetting Princeton 96-86 in overtime in the Tigers’ Jadwin Gym Friday night to knock them two games off the pace from Penn, which has won its first four Ivy contests.

Ditto for Harvard, which got stung by Columbia’s 22-2 opening quarter at the Lions’ Levien Gym off Broadway on the Upper West Side of New York City and ultimately got hit with a 75-65 loss.

In the other Ivy contest that set up part of the lower pecking order in the league standings Dartmouth won at Cornell to send the Big Red (7-9, 1-4) to the bottom with Brown while the Big Green (2-3, 9-9) are tied for fifth with Columbia (6-12, 2-3).

The top four teams go to the tourney, won by Penn the first year before falling in the championship to Princeton last season.

As for the Quakers’ part of the night in winning their 15th straight over Brown in their series, McLaughlin was able to put more subs on display (34-14) than can be viewed at the nearby supersize Wawa that opened several blocks away last fall.

In fact, one of them, Katie Kinum, got the explosion thundering in the second quarter with a pair of Penn’s 11 three-pointers for the game.

She got three altogether and finished with nine points in just under nine minutes.

The starters got plenty of rest to deal with Yale but before retiring for the night, Ashley Russell and Princess Aghayere each scored 13 points, Eleah Parker scored 12 — she and Aghayere each grabbed seven rebounds, and Phoebe Sterba got all nine of her points off three three-balls.

Germantown Academy’s Kendall Grasela set career marks with eight assists and four steals.

Junior 6-4 center Emily Anderson off the bench also had a career evening shooting 5-for-6 to score 10 points while grabbing six rebounds in 12 minutes while Tori Crawford had five points and six rebounds.

On the other side, Brown arrived as the leading offensive scoring outfit (74.7) in the league and suffered a season-low in points with no one reaching double figures.

Erika Steeves, averaging 10.4 points, scored eight, and Shanya Mehta, averaging 17.9 points, scored seven. Leading Bears scorer Justine Gaziano (19.0) was held to five.

“I said to them we came out in the third quarter and really played well (21-10), good team effort, it’s going to be a long, long weekend, like it always is, but good ball movement, we made shots, I thought our guards did well defending them, we worked hard on it,” McLaughlin said.

“We’re growing a little bit,” he said in terms of added contributions from the reserves. “We’re a little down in terms of the numbers we have, but they responded well.

“Katie (Kinum) played well, made a couple of shots, that’s going to help her confidence, I thought Emily, who is going to be vital down the stretch, best D she’s played all year. Defensively, she was terrific.”

Saturday’s tip against Yale is at 6 but the annual alumni game will go first at 3 p.m.

Princeton Rally Dies in Overtime to Yale

A week after Princeton junior Bella Alarie had her landmark 45-point scoring night at Columbia, the reigning Ivy player was at it again back home in Jadwin Gym becoming the 25th member of the 1,000th point club in the program and scoring 38 points and grabbing 13 rebounds with a career-high six steals.

But despite yielding to a seven-point rally in the last three minutes that forced overtime when Gabrielle Rush tied it for the Tigers, Yale jumped to a 7-0 lead in the bonus period and went on to claim sole possession of second place heading into an attempt to climb one more Saturday night at Penn.

There were 10 ties in the game with Rush scoring 18 for Princeton to add to Alarie’s work while Carlie Littlefield had 11 points and five assists.

Yale had its own force, however, in Roxy Barahman, who had 33 points and six treys while Alexandra Maund had 18 points and 11 rebounds.

The last Tiger to reach 1,000 points was Bucks County’s Alex Wheatley in 2016.

The game against Brown Saturday as Princeton tries to bounce back will tip at 5 with halftime honoring the season unbeaten 2015 Ivy champs and other alumni while between the third and fourth quarter the Tigers will salute Blake Dietrick, the 2015 grad who recently re-signed with the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA.

Meanwhile, in what became the other key Ivy game, Columbia unloaded in the first quarter and then held on to beat Harvard and stay in contention for a spot in the four-team playoffs.

Riley Casey had a game-high 23 points for the Lions.

The Crimson hit the first basket and then went 0-for-20 from the field as Columbia took off on a 22-0 run.

All that almost wasn’t enough that by the fourth quarter a Harvard 12-0 run moved the Crimson within six.

But Janiya Clemons, who had 21 points and 12 rebounds for career highs, broke the run and in the final 90 seconds Columbia was 12-for-12 from the line.

Siena Durr had 22 points and 10 rebounds in the Lions’ attack.

“We had a great first quarter, one of the best first quarters we obviously ever had,” Columbia  coach Megan Griffith said afterwards.

“We were locked in defensively and we were playing free and fast,” she added. “For us, the one thing we need to get better at and improve upon is making sure we weather the storm a little bit better. 

“We need to stay as aggressive as we were at the start of the game. I’m really proud of our young team for pulling this out and making some huge free throws down the stretch.”

Nani Redford had a team high 13 points for Harvard, which tied an ivy record held by Columbia in 1990, taking 90 shots and also set one attempting 45 threes.

The Crimson moves on to Cornell while Columbia will host Dartmouth at 5 p.m. seeking the Lions’ first weekend sweep since 2011. It’s only the fourth win over Harvard.

Villanova Routed at DePaul

Baring some dramatic closing run to the regular season, or a shocker triggered in the Big East tournament, the Wildcats’ likely return to the NCAAs died at the hands of DePaul, who completed a season sweep in beating the Wildcats 93-70 in McGrath-Phillips Arena in Chicago.

Villanova (15-8, 6-6 Big East) hit its first five three-pointers and then the rest of the night belonged to the Blue Demons (16-7, 7-4), particularly Mart’e Grays who had a career-high 31 points that began with her connecting on her first eight shots. She also set a high with 12 field goals, which took just 13 attempts to reach.

The second quarter was the killer for the Wildcats, who were outscored 29-10.

Chante Stonewall had 12 points for DePaul, as did Sonya Morris off the bench, while Ashton Millender and Maya Stovall each had 10 points. Kelly Campbell grabbed 12 rebounds.

Villanova’s Adriana Hahn, who is now the career three-point leader, had 17 points for the Wildcats, while Kelly Jekot had 13 points, Mary Gedaka scored 12, and Jannah Tucker scored 11.

The Wildcats next head for Big East leader Marquette Sunday at 3 in Milwaukee. The Golden Eagles hold a four-game lead over DePaul and Butler but the largest finish was five games in the conference by the 1992 Miami squad and the 1995 NCAA champion Connecticut squad, which held that margin over Villanova.

Looking Ahead: Just two other games Saturday besides the local Ivy games in D-1 with Temple taking a four-game win streak to Storrs, Conn., to face No. 5 Connecticut in Gampel Pavilion for their second encounter in the American Athletic Conference while Rider will host Marist st 2 p.m. at Alumni Gymnasium in Lawrenceville, N.J., looking to complete a sweep of the Red Foxes and take a two-game lead in second place over Marist in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

And that’s the report.