The Guru Catch-Up Report: Temple Rallies Past Penn for Big 5 Title Share While Rider Still Rolling

(Guru note: Since traveling, etc., prevented a report of the locals on Thursday night and to give the Big Five game its own headline, first a little catchup)

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

The Guru had to be on the national circuit Thursday night.

Still, thanks to a huge fourth-quarter rally over Penn in front of their own folks in McGonigle Hall, Temple gets to share this season’s 2020 Women’s Big Five title with Villanova.

Owls fans after the narrow 76-72 victory might wonder, why not just us since we beat Villanova, and the answer is that’s not the way it works for both men’s and women’s programs involved in the 10-game City Series round-robin.

For Temple (12-7, 3-1 Big Five), the comeback, featuring a 17-3 run in the final period, is a bit redeeming after last weekend’s loss at the finish at Wichita State in the American Athletic Conference, which becomes the major focus the rest of the way as the Owls try to make themselves at least WNIT worthy for the postseason if a berth in the NCAA tournament does not occur.

For Penn (10-4, 2-2), which next weekend turns its attention to the Ivy League race, it’s a tough loss, on several parameters, in a season that not long ago seemed like the Quakers might have their best shot to win the Big Five outright after taking a 2-0 lead back when the calendar was still on the 2019 part of the schedule.

Secondly, holding a 13-point lead going into the fourth quarter, Penn seemed at least poised to be headed for its third 3-1 share, all accomplished in the current long-running Mike McLaughlin era.

And third, the Quakers are now on a stretched-out three-game losing streak, the longest since a similar trio back in 2013-14 to Princeton, Villanova, and Saint Joseph’s, with the loss to the Wildcats by a point.

The current string includes Princeton earlier this month and at Villanova.

Though most of Temple’s roster is not locally bred, same for Penn, the Owls were in a celebratory mood after being able to put their claim as a champion.

“When the game was over, I was watching them because they haven’t experienced this kind of success,” said Temple coach Tonya Cardoza, who had a long stint as a UConn assistant, and has several previous Big Five titles to her credit.

“Outside of the senior class, who were cheerleaders for that NCAA season, these guys haven’t experienced a Big Five championship. To see how happy they were, but more importantly to dig and claw and stay together,” she said.

“When things weren’t going well, they could have thrown in the towel, but they didn’t. They continued to fight and good things happened for them.”

Temple transfer Ashley Jones, a Neumann-Goretti grad previously at West Virginia, keyed the rally and scored 10 of 12 points.

“I was really happy and excited, not only for me, for my teammates, too,” Jones said. “Especially the seniors that are here. Before the game I felt I wanted to get it for them as well. It was really exciting.”

In getting their first title since an outright win in 2017, Temple’s sole loss was narrowly at Saint Joseph’s early in the season. They now have 11 to their collection, four under Cardoza.

Mia Davis, who has been a force, picked up her 13^th double-double for Temple with 20 points and a game-high 14 rebounds as her career total reached 30. 

Jones finished with 17 points, 13 in the second half, besides dishing six assists. Marissa Mackins had 14 points in the first half, and Alexa Williamson had her first double-double with 12 points and a career-matching 12 rebounds.

For Penn, center Eleah Parker finally looked like the inside presence of the past two seasons, scoring 17 points with a season-high 13 rebounds. Kendall Grasela had a career-high 15 points and dealt seven assists. 

Tori Crawford scored 11, but rookie sensation Kayla Padilla, who had been suffering with the flu, was held to eight points, though that doesn’t take anything away from the Owls defense.

The Quakers get a week to put the defeat behind them before resuming the Ivy schedule from the Princeton loss to open the weekend back-to-back Friday-Saturday pace with a challenging visit to Harvard, home of this year’s Ivy tournament, next Friday, and then to Dartmouth.

Having combined with Princeton to claim all the Ivy regular season and three tourney titles in the past decade, the spacing should be enough to refocus to move forward.

“I know that,” McLaughlin said a day later, “but it still hurts right now.”

Temple, which has, with a few exceptions, been playing much better since its challenging loss to now No. 1 South Carolina, gets back to AAC action Sunday at Cincinnati at 2 p.m. on ESPNU.

With the Connecticut game dispatched and a recent win over South Florida, besides the Big Five comeback, there’s enough for Temple to build momentum and finish as high as possible prior to the conference tournament at the Mohegan Sun in early March.

With UConn leaving for the Big East, this will likely be the last time the event is in Uncasville, which likely will acquire the Big East, which is again in Chicago. The current contracts for both sites expire after this season.

Rider Pulls Another Out of the Hat

A game in the balance most of the night finally turned Rider’s way Thursday at Canisius in the Koessler Athletic Center in Buffo, N.Y., and the Broncs emerged with a 70-57 triumph to stay tied with Fairfield, both unbeaten atop the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

The answer to your immediate question is when do the Stags and Broncs first clash? 

That would be Tuesday night at 7 at Rider, but first the Broncs have a stop at Niagara at 1 p.m. Saturday against a team that earlier in the season back in Alumni Gym had the home team on the ropes with nine three-pointers before Rider rallied for a 79-75 victory in the opener on Jan. 2 in the MAAC phase of the schedule.

Fairfield is at Quinnipiac, the long-running MAAC champ that already has two conference losses, the most recent Thursday night at preseason-favorite Marist, which fell to Rider at home earlier this month.

As for the win at Canisius, the main attraction was the same person who has held that claim most of the season in preseason player of the year Stella Johnson, the nation’s scoring leader with a 27.2 average through Friday morning. 

Central Michigan’s Micaela Kelly is second at 24.2.

In this one, with Rider reaching a program high ninth in the latest CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major Top 25 poll, Johnson led the Broncs (13-2, 6-0 MAAC) to their 10^th straight victory, scoring 33 points, grabbing 10 rebounds, grabbing seven steals and dealing five assists against the Golden Griffins (2-14, 1-6), who suffered their fifth straight loss.

In the fourth quarter, the Rider defense held Canisius to 1-of-11 from the field.

Amari Johnson added to her MAAC-leading collection of double doubles with her ninth featuring 12 points and 10 rebounds, while Lea Favre scored 10 points.

“Amari is really important for our team,” said veteran Rider coach Lynn Milligan. “She’s a sophomore point guard playing with a bunch of seniors. They trust her and want her on the floor with them. She’s a big key to the pace we want to play.”

As for Stella Johnson, the Rider coach observed, “It’s fantastic to be coaching Stella and be around her every day. She works so hard. Her sole focus is that this team just wins. I think you saw a lot of her great leadership qualities tonight. She has a great sense for the game.”

Johnson now has a program all-time career total of 1,830 points, becoming the 19^th MAAC player to reach 1,800 in Thursday’s game.

Rider’s win streak is one short of the program-record 11 attained in during the 1981-82 season when the Broncs competed in NJAIAW Division II. 

It’s the first time the record is 13-2 as a Division I team, dating to 1982-83.

La Salle Edged by Richmond

The Explorers’ first win of the Atlantic 10 season last weekend was short-lived down in Richmond at the Robins Center, where the Spiders cut off a rally from a 14-point deficit Thursday morning to gain a 63-62 victory.

The loss tempered Shalina Miller becoming La Salle’s all-time blocks leader after her first rejection of the game snapped a tie with Amy Griffin (151), who set the previous mark two seasons ago. She had two in the game to bring her career mark to 153.

The Explorers (7-12, 1-5 A-10) squandered a 10-point lead they held in the Atlantic 10 game, first succumbing to a second quarter eruption by the Spiders (8-11, 2-4), who took the period 25-11 to go into the half ahead 36-32.

La Salle came back to life with a 16-7 advantage in the fourth quarter, falling short of a tie with a wide shot as time expired. 

The Explorers held the Spiders to 2-of-13 from the field in the quarter.

La Salle’s Kayla Spruill had a game-high 18 points and nine rebounds, and the Explorers were 16-of-18 on the line.

The Explorers host Saint Joseph’s Sunday at 2 p.m. at Tom Gola Arena in what counts as both an Atlantic 10 contest and the final overall Big Five game of the season in which the visiting Hawks tie Penn for third at 2-2 behind the Temple/Villanova (3-1) co-champs with a win and La Salle finishes 0-4, or with a La Salle win, Penn stands alone in third and Saint Joseph’s and La Salle tie for fourth at 1-3.

The annual alumni game will be played at 11 a.m. and on Saturday at halftime of the men’s game against VCU, which begins at noon, among the Hall of Athletes new inductees will be the famed 1988-89 women’s team which went to the NCAA tournament as an at-large contingent and knocked UConn out in the first round on the Huskies campus.

Kelly Greenberg played on that team and former Explorers star Cheryl Reeve, now four-time WNBA champion coach with the Minnesota Lynx, was an assistant to Johnny Miller.

Penn State Falls in Second Half to Indiana

The Lady Lions Thursday night stayed in contention for a half with No. 17 Indiana in a Big Ten contest at home in the Bryce Jordan Center at State College before the Hoosiers eventually took control for a 76-60 victory.

Kamaria McDaniel had a game-high 24 points for Penn State (7-12, 1-7) and Siyeh Frazier scored 14.

The Hoosiers (15-5, 5-3) were a force on the boards with a 41-23 advantage in rebounds while dominating inside the paint 41-26.

Ali Patberg for Indiana had 18 points and nine assists.

“We have to get better,” said first-year coach Carolyn Kieger, formerly with Marquette. “We played selfish basketball in the second half. We only had eight assists in the game and that’s not going to get it done.

“We can talk all day we’re young or we don’t understand the offense. What that is is an excuse. We don’t make excuses around here. We have to get better and we can’t tolerate the same mistakes over and over anymore.”

The Lady Lions head to Purdue Sunday at 2 p.m. and then a return visit to Rutgers next Thursday.

Nationally Noted: Besides No. 4 Connecticut Beating No. 23 Tennessee 60-45

We’ll talk about the big series revival later on the weekend, but while that was going on, these scores elsewhere were worth nothing here: North Carolina winning 67-60 in overtime at Georgia Tech in the ACC and Duke, which has been up and down, winning 88-58 at Syracuse in the conference; in the SEC, No. 15 Texas A&M coming back to edge host Alabama, 79-74, while Georgia took down No. 21 Arkansas 64-55 on the road; and Old Dominion, now 15-3 overall, continues to get better under Nikki McCray, the latest 66-39 at Florida International in C-USA.

And that’ the catchup with Thursday’s report.