Guru Report: On Deck - Penn at Saint Joes/AP WBB Poll Notes

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

There was a time in the 10-game Philadelphia Big Five round-robin that the Penn-Saint Joseph’s matchup did not offer much ahead of the tipoff in terms of the projected outcome.

The Hawks were one of the teams that owned the Quakers more than anyone except for Villanova.

In recent years that has no longer been true as Penn under Mike McLaughlin has become a contender. 

While the Hawks lead the overall series 40-4, the Quakers are on a two-game win streak and have won three of the last five.

Prior to McLaughlin’s arrival from Holy Family in Northeast Philadelphia, which he made into a Division II powerhouse, Penn had won just 14 Big Five games in what had been 30 years of women’s competition. 

In his 11 seasons at the helm prior to this one, he single-handedly passed the total with 15 local victories and has guided the Quakers to a share of their only two titles.

Thus, from ho-hum to compelling is the way to describe Wednesday night’s second City Series tilt on the local schedule when the Quakers drop by Saint Joseph’s Hagan Arena for the tipoff at 7 p.m.

 It’s both an overall test for each team in their early season action and likely also a must to fulfill aspirations of a City Series title.

The Hawks (2-1, 1-0 Big Five) already have one local game in the bag, having topped Temple in a tightly fought contest at Hagan a week ago Monday.

But the other two contests have produced mixed results with Saint Joseph’s taking its season opener on the road with a strong second-half at an improved Columbia squad on New York’s Upper West Side.

However, back up in Gotham on Sunday in the Bronx, Seton Hall was able to subdue Saint Joseph’s offense, a neutral game played as part of a doubleheader in Fordham’s Rose Hill Gym.

Meanwhile, Penn has roared to a first-ever 3-0 start beating each opponent by more than 30 points, besting Siena and Iona at home in The Palestra while routing NJIT on the road up in Newark.

However, that trio of foes was more about fine tuning the machine than anything else, so the game against the Hawks will be the Quakers’ first true test.

Each team, like virtually everyone else in the Big Five portion of the Guru’s local 11, has newcomers making impacts early in their collegiate careers.

For Saint Joseph’s, which snapped a four-game series losing streak against Temple, that would be Ireland’s Claire Melia, who had 23 points at Columbia and 17 against the Owls, and Gabby Smalls, who grabbed 12 rebounds in Sunday’s loss to the Pirates.

Melia already has one Atlantic 10 rookie of the week honor previously off her play against the Lions.

Penn, meanwhile, which beat the Hawks 65-45 a year ago at The Palestra, has been getting production from Kayla Padilla, who had 25 at NJIT, the first newcomer to reach that total in her first two games since the fabled Diana Caramanico scored 26 in her debut for the 1997-98 season.

Padilla picked up the latest Ivy rookie of the week honor, an award the Quakers have reaped many times in the McLaughlin era. 

Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist has also gotten some early citations this week being honored with the Big East rookie award and the national rookie award from the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA).

And La Salle’s Australian twin sister combo of Amy and Claire Jacobs were named the players of the week by the Phillycollegesports.com local website after keying the two Explorers comeback wins over Harvard and at Penn State from huge deficits.

Not a freshman but a local roster newcomer nonetheless, Temple’s Ashley Jones, a transfer from West Virginia and graduate of Neumann-Goretti here in town, has also been drawing attention.

Meanwhile, the Quakers defense, keyed by junior Eleah Parker, has yielded just 137 points, the lowest to start the first three games since 1974-75 before the women’s part of the Big Five ever began.

 They were among the nation’s leaders in defensive denials last season.

The game will air on the ESPN+ app but there are no other Division I teams in town Wednesday.

 In the Guru’s local mix, Temple will be at Bucknell of the Patriot League where the Owls will be  trying to get back on track after the loss to UConn Sunday, and Princeton at 4-0 will be visiting Iowa.

Looking Ahead: On Thursday, Villanova with the only D-1 game in the area will try to build on the Fordham win by hosting Manhattan, which is coached by Heather Vulin, a former Wildcats assistant who was in charge of recruiting.

Penn State will be hosting Clemson at 7 trying to recover from its loss at home to La Salle.

On Friday, there’s nothing in the area. 

Rider will be playing in Orlando, Fla., as part of the MAAC/ASUN challenge, meeting Liscomb Friday and then on Saturday playing North Florida while on Friday La Salle heads to Norfolk State in Virginia.

Believe it or not there are no local site games in D-1 in the area Saturday so the Guru might show at one of the D2 games. 

On Sunday, Richmond visits Drexel at 2 p.m. while Princeton hosts Monmouth at 1.

 On the road, Villanova is at Georgia, Saint Joseph’s is at Auburn, Rutgers is at LSU, Delaware is at UCF, and Penn State hosts George Mason.

Nationally, Sunday, Connecticut is at Ohio State and Oregon is at Syracuse.

National Scene: AP WBB Poll Triva

With Notre Dame’s first exit in 12 seasons and Tennessee’s return after its longest absence at 11 weeks, here are some things to know about the Lady Vols’ history.

Having come on the scene almost a decade and a half before Connecticut became nationally relevant, Tennessee has been the Grandmama of all stats of the rankings, which began in November 1976, and now are in their 44^th season with the latest in history to be under week number 771.

The Lady Vols have had the most appearances at 728.

 Texas, which just dropped out, is second at 559, but Stanford, which is third at 551, could catch the Longhorns over the next eight weeks if the Texans don’t work their way back into the favor of the national media panel.

Until her retirement because of her battle with Alzheimer’s, the late Pat Summitt guided her squad into 618 appearances in the poll, missing 14, the first-ever, which was the only preseason miss for the Vols until last month. 

There was a four-week gap and then a nine-week gap followed by the record 565 week run over 32 seasons that began on Feb. 17, 1985, and later continued under associate head coach Holly Warlick after her promotion until Feb. 15, 2016.

Warlick teams have 109 appearances and 27 misses, including nine of the 11 weeks through her ouster after last season, and new coach and former player Kellie Harper has this week’s appearance after the two misses to start the season.

By the way, the Guru had put a typo in his own file, so the South Carolina current streak total is 134, not 131, which is fourth behind Connecticut (492), Baylor (302), and Maryland (177).

Notre Dame was about to make some headway moving up poll lists before the Irish’s ouster.

With 373 appearances, the Irish are two behind North Carolina State at 13^th but the Wolfpack are just one behind Rutgers, which is not ranked, but could return if the Scarlet Knights continue their winning ways.

On the overall coaching category, ND’s Muffet McGraw with all the program’s 373 rankings is 10^th behind Texas A&M’s Gary Blair at 377 collected also at Stephen F. Austin and Arkansas.

That’s just three behind retired Jim Foster, the only coach to take four programs into the rankings, and former North Carolina coach Sylvia Hatchell at 384.

Kim Mulkey, at 13^th at 327 at Baylor, just broke a tie with the late Kay Yow at North Carolina State and is two behind retired Virginia coach Debbie Ryan at 329.

 Ahead of her is the late former Penn State coach Rene Portland, who also has some appearances at Saint Joseph’s for 336 behind McGraw.

At the top behind Summitt, Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer is second with 559 that also includes a stint at Ohio State, UConn’s Geno Auriemma, who broke a tie with retired coach Andy Landers at the start of the season, is now third at 525, and Rutgers‘ C. Vivian Stringer is behind Landers with a total of 435 compiled at Cheyney, Iowa, and with the Scarlet Knights.

On the active list, South Carolina’s Dawn Staley is 13^th at 165 from Temple and the Gamecocks, which is two behind Iowa State’s Bill Fennelly, who is 10 behind Louisville’s Jeff Walz.

Tennessee’s Harper, incidentally, becomes the 40^th individual to coach and play on an AP ranked women’s team (yep, males would be hard to make this group).

 She is also the 13^th to do it at the same school.

Furthermore, since Holly Warlick is also among the 13, Tennessee becomes the second school with multi-representatives, joining Southern Cal, which has Cheryl Miller and Cyntha Cooper-Dyke.

The other nine, since you are wondering, are Amanda Butler, achieved at Florida; Pokey Chatman, achieved at LSU; Michelle Clark-Heard, achieved at Western Kentucky; Carolyn Kieger, achieved at Marquette; Linda Lappe, achieved at Colorado; Wendy Larry, achieved at Old Dominion; Carol Ross, achieved at Mississippi; Bev Smith achieved at Oregon; and Lindsay Whelan, achieved at Minnesota.

And that’s the report.