The Guru Report: Temple Rallies; Drexel Milestones; Saint Joe Streaks to Four

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PHILADELPHIA — Sunday afternoon was a time for a signature moment (read that Drexel), continued growth (read that Temple, Saint Joseph’s, and Delaware), tough losses (read that Rider and La Salle), and just too much to handle (read that Penn State).

That’s the way it went for the seven Guru local D-1 teams in six games scheduled, though there were also, as always, some national scene events to spotlight, like Maryland upset by Iowa; Louisville upset by Miami, and Michigan State upset by Nebraska.

But as always with the structure on days the Guru also doesn’t do a separate breakout here, let’s start at the site of attendance on press row.

That would be in Temple’s McGonigle Hall where coach Tonya Cardoza has removed from storage and dusted off the postgame script opening remark used in seasons of greater success.

“This is a great win for us,” Cardoza said following the Owls’ 78-70 comeback triumph over Cincinnati to gain a split with the Bearcats in an American Athletic Conference game that also served as the annual “Pink Day” Play-4-Kay fundraiser to combat breast cancer in the name of the late Hall of Fame N.C. State coach Kay Yow.

Indeed it was.

The victory was the fifth out of the last six games, though the faithful could be excused for labelling it a fifth straight in dismissing the setback considering it came last weekend at the hands of No. 4 Connecticut in Storrs to give the Huskies a season sweep.

The Temple social media operation labelled Sunday’s result as part of the Owls’ “Revenge Tour” in terms of adding the Bearcats (16-9, 8-4 AAC) to Houston on the current run as payback victims for the abuses handed on the first go-round.

In Cincinnati’s case, Temple (9-15, 5-6) had been competitive in last month’s game in the Queen City until the Bearcats launched a crushing 17-0 run across the end of the third period and start of the fourth to move on to a lopsided 72-52 win.

The opposition arrived in town here on a 7 of 8 run — the lone setback to UConn earlier this month — as well as a three-game win streak in the series with the Owls.

On Sunday, number four began to loom after what had been a 15-point Temple lead in the first half had been whittled and dispatched on a 13-0 run in the third that put the Bearcats in front by as many as four points.

But in Temple’s late season growth the Owls have learned to answer back and moving from a 57-57 tie early in the fourth  they launched a 12-0 attack of their own with graduate star Aliya Butts getting six of those points and 11 overall in the fourth to finish with a game-high 23 points.

Mia Davis, playing all 40 minutes, rung up another double double with 17 points and 13 rebounds while junior center Shantay Taylor had 12 points and 11 rebounds while blocking three shots. 

Freshman standout Marissa Mackins, despite time-limiting foul trouble, still came away with 12 points entirely courtesy of firing down 4-of-8 attempts on triplets of which Temple got 10 in all from beyond the arc.

LLmar’l Thomas had 15 points and nine rebounds for Cincy, which is under first-year coach Michelle Clark-Heard, hired in the offseason from her successful time at Western Kentucky.

Antoinette Miller had a team-high 16 points, Angel Rizor scored 11, and Nikira Goings and Florence Sifa had 10 points each while Sifa grabbed nine rebounds.

“ We’ve been off a week after our UConn game and that’s a long time to have a break but I think that was something we needed, just to get our legs back and refocus ” Cardoza said. “And the fact that we lost when we were down there (at Cincy), it’s good just to turn things around.

“I think obviously we’re a much better team then the last time we played Cincinnati, and I thought we did things differently. The last time we turned the ball over a lot, committed a lot of unnecessary fouls, and Thomas really went to work on us down at their place,” Cardoza continued.

“I felt like today we did a better job, I thought Shantay did a good job trying to keep her off the block and the few times she got position, I felt we did a really good job of helping.

“It was a total team effort. It’s growth when we’re up, we lost the lead, but we didn’t let it snowball out of control, we got a hold of it and started chipping back away to the point we got the lead back and we held on to it.”

Temple heads to SMU in Dallas on Wednesday (8 p.m.), continues to Florida playing UCF on Saturday (2 p.m.) and returns here a week from Wednesday to host Tulsa on  Feb. 27 at 7 p.m.

Saint Joseph’s Nips La Salle on Jekot Foul Shots 

March Madness is on the horizon and Saint Joseph’s is making another run breaking loose from earlier struggles to have things going in the Hawks’ direction.

They’ll likely have to win the Atlantic 10 to get to any tourney, which would be the NCAA holding the conference automatic bid, but for now at least they’re getting a jump start on what next season can be when a talented group of recruits arrive to supplement those who return.

At the middle of it all right now is senior Alyssa Monaghan who is providing the heavy lifting while redshirt freshman Katie Jekot has become quite the closer.

On Wednesday it was Jekot’s shot-clock beating three pointer in the closing seconds at home in Hagan Arena that spoiled Massachusetts comeback from an 18-point deficit to keep the Saint Joseph’s budding win streak alive.

On Sunday, It was her two foul shots with 10.3 seconds left that provided the winning points in a 64-63 uplifting victory that was at the same time an excruciating loss for La Salle at the Explorers’ Tom Gola Arena in an Atlantic 10 game that moved Saint Joseph’s closer to earning a home game in the first round of the conference tournament next week before the survivors join the two bye teams for the rest of the playoffs the following weekend at Duquesne in Pittsburgh.

The win gave the Hawks a sweep of the season series with the Explorers after winning the earlier meeting that also was a Big 5 game on Hawk Hill.

Ironically, while Jekot has been the savior in nail-bitters, her older sister Kelly 24 hours earlier was part of the Villanova offensive thunder at home that brought down Georgetown in a Big East game.

Sunday’s game at La Salle was the often suspense-encounter that comes about when locals meet each other. In this one that extended Saint Joseph’s win streak to four there were 16 ties and 15 lead changes.

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“In the second half, they were just making shots at key moments,” said Hawks coach Cindy Griffin. “Our kids just never wavered. Alyssa put us on her back and made plays, Jekot put us on her back and made plays. We got defensive stops at the other end. I can’t be more proud of them.”

Monaghan had a career-high 27 points for Saint Joseph’s (10-15, 6-6 A-10), which got to .500 in the conference and seventh place with a chance to land a little higher.

But as the finish neared, it appeared the postgame talk was going to be about La Salle (4-23, 1-12) getting its second conference win and first against a city team in the opening year rebuild under first-year coach Mountain MacGillivray.

Shayla Sweeney, who had a La Salle high 13 points, hit a triplet with 1:50 left in regulation to put the home team up 62-59.

Here’s how our colleague Glenn Papazian reported what came next in his phillycollegesport.com website.

Monaghan countered as she drove towards the basket, putting up a quasi-hook shot that went in. She was fouled and converted to tie the game with 23 seconds remaining.

“That wasn’t the idea,” Monaghan said about the play. “I was at the top and I didn’t figure I would drive and get the foul. I didn’t want to go in too deep because Shalina (Miller) can block shots. I put up a little floater at the foul line and it worked.”

La Salle got the ball back, and a free throw by Shalina Miller gave the Explorers a one-point margin, but Saint Joe’s had another chance.

On the inbounds play Jekot was fouled. She converted both for the final points, but 10.3 seconds still remained. 

The Explorers had two chances to get a winning shot but Hawks guard Mary Sheehan deflected a pass, then Lula Roig blocked the last shot.

“It was just heads up,” Griffin said about the final sequence. “It was our refuse to lose attitude. We have it. We’re getting better this time of year.”

Monaghan made 7 of 11 from the field and a perfect 11 of 11 on foul shot attempts, while Jekot added 18 points. Sheehan set a collegiate-best taking down 9 rebounds. Saint Joe’s was perfect at the line making 18 of 18 attempts.

In the early part of the season, La Salle was just trying to compete. Now some significant achievements of growth are getting washed out as the losses become narrower.

On Sunday, for example, for the first tine in nine seasons, the Explorers had five players score in double figures. 

Joining Sweeney, Miller had 12 points, 9 rebounds, and tied her career-best with 5 blocked shots. Miller has 99 career blocked shots, third best in program history. Jeryn Reese, Michelle Nichols, and Janay Sanders all contributed 10 points.

“We kept fighting and fighting, playing good defense, and drawing fouls,” Monaghan said about their effort. “Our team has a lot of character and we are not willing to lose.”

Saint Joseph’s gets a chance to tie preseason favorite Duquesne on Wednesday and move up another notch when the Dukes visit Hagan at 7 while the Explorers are off until Sunday’s visit to Richmond at 2 p.m. in Virginia.

Drexel’s Dillon Gets Milestone Win and Delaware Also Gains in CAA

“Every game ought to be like that. That would be tremendous,” Drexel coach Denise Dillon quipped Sunday afternoon after her Dragons cruised to a 76-45 triumph and a season sweep of Northeastern in a Colonial Athletic Association game at home in the Daskalakis Athletic Center that saw her become the fourth coach at a conference member school reach 300 career victories.

Recovering from the opening weekend last month in CAA play when Drexel (18-5, 10-2 CAA) dropped its first two at home with an upset loss to Towson followed by a setback to preseason favorite James Madison, the Dragons have won 10 straight, third longest in the program behind a pair of 16-game runs in 1990 and the CAA title season of 2009.

Their work on the Huskies (15-9, 9-8) was well below the mark that currently has them leading the nation in defensive scoring average as Drexel maintains second place a game behind JMU (20-4, 12-1), but two in front of Towson (15-9, 9-4).

The Dragons are getting close to clinching at least the regular season runner up spot that guarantees an automatic bid to the WNIT, which they won several years ago, if they don’t get to the NCAA.

The CAA tourney for the automatic bid is next month at Delaware’s Bob Carpenter in Newark following Drexel hosting last season but dropping the title game to Elon.

Continuing with the numbers for Dillon, a former Villanova star,  joins the three other members of the CAA 300 club — former Old Dominion coach Wendy Larry (493), former JMU coach Kenny Brooks (337), and former Delaware coach Tina Martin (330).

Dillon has only been a head coach at Drexel, where she is the winningest coach in the program’s history and has already clinched her 11th winning season in the last 12 years. She is also just three conference wins away from joining the aforementioned trio with 200 in the CAA.

As for Sunday’s game results, Bailey Greenberg has made it 20 times in 23 games this season as the leading Drexel scorer, which against Northeastern she collected 17 points, shooting 8-for-13 from the field with six rebounds and four assists.

Keishana Washington had a career-high 16 points shooting 7-for-11 while Niki Metzel had 14 points, also shooting 7-for-11, and Hannah Nilhill shot 4-of-8 on the way to 13 points supplemented with five assists and three steals. Aubree Brown dealt eight assists besides getting eight points and five rebounds.

The Drexel defense reached a season high forcing Northeastern into 24 turnovers.

 The Dragons also shot 57.9 percent front the field, another season best, and held the Huskies 25 points below their season average.

 Northeastern’s Shannon Todd had 14 points but leading scorer Jess Genco was 0-for-3 from the field  scoring just two points on foul shots.

Next Friday, the win streak and nation-leading true road win streak of 12 gets tested when the Dragons at 7 visits UNCW (15-9, 8-5), which earlier hit JMU at home with its only loss and Sunday on the road lost narrowly 58-51 in Harrisonburg, Va.

The Seahawks in year two under former Old Dominion coach Karen Barefoot has made major strides, even drawing mid-major polling notice recently. In fact, they are likely to start drawing interest for at-large consideration by the WNIT folks as might Towson if the Tigers don’t finish second.

Drexel won the first encounter and will now have to break up UNCW’s perfect home record of 12-0 to date. The Dragons have won 14 straight against the Seahawks and last lost in Wilmington eight seasons ago in 2011.  

Meanwhile, Delaware has made it back to .500 overall after beating Hofstra 57-47 at home in Newark to run the Blue Hens mark to 12-12 and 7-5 in the league. 

That’s good enough for fifth,  a half.game in the win column behind UNCW, which fell to fourth a game behind Towson. 

The Blue Hens are also two games in front of William & Mary.

In beating the last-place Pride (7-18, 1-12), Delaware broke a 19-year-old program rebounding record in the Bob by one out-crashing the opposition 60-37.

Samone DeFreese had 11 points and 10 rebounds for the home team while Lizzie O’Leary grabbed 11 rebounds and Rebecca Lawrence grabbed 10. Alison Lewis had 10 points.

Hofstra’s Mikiyah Croskey had 13 points and seven rebounds while Ana Hernandez Gil had 11 points and Marianne Kalin grabbed nine boards.

Delaware next heads to Charleston at 6:30 Friday in South Carolina before visiting UNCW Sunday going for a season-sweep after beating the Seahawks recently in Newark.

Drexel will be at Charleston Sunday.

Rider Upset by Manhattan

The road to at least a second place finish in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference and a second WNIT berth in three seasons got imperiled a bit Sunday when the Broncs got upset narrowly 60-57 by Manhattan at home in Alumni Gymnasium in Lawrenceville, N.J., reducing Rider’s runner up  spot over Marist by a game.

The visitors also upset Marist on the road this season.

The Jaspers (8-17, 6-8) rallied from nine down on a 12-3 run over the final 4 minutes, 30 seconds by forcing eight turnovers in the final 10 minutes and then holding on to the lead to even the season series.

After Manhattan took the lead, Stella Johnson got Rider (15-10, 11-3) to within a point at 58-57 with 25 seconds left. 

The Broncs were able to get the ball back but missed the potential lead-changing score and were forced to foul with the visitors making both free throws for the final score.

It was the second conference home loss along with the upset by Canisius at home and snapped a six-game win streak against the Jaspers.

Johnson had 22 points, six rebounds, five assists, and two steals, getting closer to the program best in career thefts of which she is now 17 short.

Tracey Goodman off the bench had a career-high 10 points for the home team.

Lizahya Morgan had 12 points for the Jaspers as did Kania Pollock while Lynette Taitt scored 11

"Credit to Manhattan they came in here and played really well,” said Rider coach Lynn Milligan after the MAAC record to this date now matches the program and Milligan-era best 11-3 start of two seasons ago in the Broncs’ record-setting conference performance for the program.

 “That fourth quarter they really took it to us and we didn't react as well as we could have. Those turnovers really caught us when we had the lead,” she said.

 It's a tough MAAC game in February. We weren't quite ready today to do what we needed to for the full 40 minutes."

As for the Broncs’ future, things are about to likely get worse before getting better but Rider is still in control of its destiny.

Quinnipiac, which is now in the 40s when last losing a conference game, visits Thursday at 7 to complete the season series.

 Though a loss would drop Rider into a tie with Marist, the Red Foxes still have one left to play with the Bobcats.

So if the scenario holds in the close of the regular season, Rider will complete its last three games one ahead of Marist and holding a one-game margin of error because of the season sweep.

The Broncs’ last three are at Niagara, hosting Siena, and at Fairfield, all of which Rider beat in their first meetings.

Penn State Whipped by Minnesota

Having four players score in double figures was not nearly enough to overcome host Minnesota in Minneapolis at Williams Arena as the Gophers under first-year coach Lindsay Whalen, the former WNBA star, trounced the Lady Lions 97-77 to keep them mired in a 12th place tie in the 14-team Big Ten with Wisconsin.

Senior Teniya led the way for PSU with 14 points while Jaida Travascio-Green scored 11, and  Siyeh Frazier and Kamaria McDaniel each scored  10.

Though Penn State (10-15, 3-11 Big Ten) took an early lead, Minnesota (19-7, 8-7), which has won six straight, gave a thundering response with a 23-4 run and finished the first quarter up by 11. By halftime it was worse at 59-34.

All five Gophers starters scored 14 or more points, topped by Destiny Pitts’ 22, as Minnesota has beaten the Lady Lions four straight and five in a row in Minneapolis.

 

Penn State is back home Thursday evening when Penn State hosts Purdue at 7 p.m. inside the Bryce Jordan Center in Happy Valley.

Rutgers was idle Sunday, visiting Indiana Monday night for its Big Ten game and now a game behind the leaders in third after No. 14 Iowa forced a first-place tie Sunday upsetting No. 7 Maryland at home in Iowa City.

Small Colleges: Arcadia Hosts A MAC-Commonwealth Opener

The Arcadia women have made the MAC-Commonwealth playoffs for the second time and first since 2015 and after beating Hood 68-63 Saturday, led by Taylor Dunn scoring 19 points, the Knights (12-13, 9-7, seed fourth) will host fifth-seed Lebanon Valley (13-12, 9-7)  at 7 Monday night in Alumni Gym in Glenside.

The teams beat each other during the regular season on the road with the Dutchwomen winning in Glenside 70-68 and then the Knights winning 52-46 in Annville.

The winner Wednesday advances to top-seeded Messiah, which was 24-1 and 16-0 in the conference.

In the NJAC, on Saturday fifth-seeded Rutgers-Camden fell at fourth-seeded Rutgers-Newark 65-47 to end their season at 15-11.

The winner advances to Wednesday’s semifinal at 7 at the top-seeded College of New Jersey in Ewing, near Trenton.

No. 6 Kean upset No. 3 Montclair State and heads to No. 2 Rowan in Wednesday’s other semifinal, which will be played in Glassboro.

And that’s the report.