The Guru Report: Drexel, Villanova, Rutgers Win While Top Five Teams Take Rare Same Week Upsets

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PHILADELPHIA – Drexel made it a sweep for the weekend in the Colonial Athletic Association with a solid 74-54 win over Hofstra at home here Sunday afternoon in the Daskalakis Athletic Center while elsewhere among the Guru’s 11 Division teams that saw action, Villanova shook off Friday’s loss to Butler and beat Xavier 66-54 in the Big East at home in Finneran Pavilion and up north Rutgers edged Nebraska 69-65 in a Big Ten game at home in the Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway, N.J.

But Penn State, while being competitive, fell to Ohio State 80-70 on the road in Columbus, and Delaware lost a CAA game at home to Northeastern 72-62 in the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark.

Last weekend’s opening conference loss at Charleston by Drexel suddenly became less disruptive Sunday courtesy of  Towson’s last seconds layup from Kionna Jeter in suburban Baltimore that beat preseason favorite James Madison 76-75 and just like that no one is unbeaten in the league that has the Dragons (10-6, 3-1 CAA) tied at the top with Elon (8-7, 3-1), while a half-game behind sits JMU (11-3, 2-1) and Northeastern (6-8, 2-1), followed by William & Mary (11-4, 2-2), Charleston (9-6, 2-2), and UNCW (2-2).

Nationally, chaos erupted at the top of the polls with unranked Arizona State finishing off No. 3 Oregon State 55-47 just 48 hours after upending No. 2 Oregon both at home in Tempe.

With a rare week and the Sun Devils (13-4, 3-2 PAC-12) pulling off their own rarity, if not a first, the No. 6 Baylor win at No. 1 Connecticut on Thursday in Hartford means the top three teams have gone down the same week, leaving the ruler at the top open to question until the Associated Press women’s poll voting board figures it out in time for the new rankings release on Monday morning.

In the first week of January 1991 No. 4 Penn State beat No. 1 Virginia, while No. 2 North Carolina State, and No. 3 Purdue lost enabling Penn State to jump to its first-ever No. 1 ranking. 

In truth Arizona State, which was in the poll early in the season, could be called a faux unranked team in terms of the Sun Devils’ talent as opposed to unranked teams not even on  the media voting panel’s radar in balloting for the weekly Top 25 teams.

“Thank you,” said Arizona State veteran coach Charli Turner Thorne. “We had injuries early, and the thing is this team is so young, a lot of them don’t even know the playbook yet. We have the potential to be really great ahead.”

The loss by the Beavers (15-1, 3-1) in the wild PAC-12 leaves UCLA (16-0, 5-0) as the last unbeaten team in Division I after the No. 8 Bruins barely avoided an upset themselves, recovering from a slow start to beating Colorado 65-62 on the road in Boulder.

Ja’Tavia Tapley had 14 points for Arizona State, while Robbi Ryan and Reili Richardson each scored 10 points.

Poised to be the new number one at the start of the day, Oregon State was hurt also by a 32 percent shooting performance from the field, including 2 of 20 from beyond the arc in 3-point land.

Mikayla Pivec and Destiny Slocum each scored 13 points for the Beavers while Taylor Jones had 11 points and 13 rebounds.

It would have been Oregon State’s first ever No. 1 ranking oddly the same season rival Oregon attained No. 1 the first time with the preseason poll.

Oregon recovered from its second loss to win at No.18 Arizona 71-64 in Tucson as Sabrina Ionescu, considered the national front runner for player of the year, scored 17 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and dealt 10 assists to extend her NCAA career-record triple double compilation to 22 that already was better than any male or female collegiate basketball player in history.

Ruthy Hebard had 19 points and 14 rebounds for the Ducks (14-2, 3-1), who began the season as No. 1, then yielded to conference rival Stanford, which after an upset loss to Texas, allowed Connecticut to ascend to its long-held place in poll history for three weeks until Baylor contributed to the instability.

Aari McDonald had 25 points for the Wildcats (12-3, 2-3), which lost both games at home to the Oregon duo over the weekend.

Most of the rest of the Top 25 escaped damage Sunday, though several also were involved in narrow outcomes besides a bunch of unranked squads beating other ranked teams earlier in the week.

Joining those victims Sunday out of the Big Ten, No. 12 Indiana lost at unranked Iowa 91-85 in overtime.

Previously since the last vote a week ago, on Thursday, Ohio State beat No. 24 Michigan 78-69 at home in Columbus, Georgia Tech beat No. 11 Florida State, 67-52, on the road in Tallahassee, North Carolina beat No. 9 N.C. State 66-60 at home in Chapel Hill, Iowa, likely now to get ranked, beat No. 17 Maryland 66-61 at home in Iowa City, and LSU beat No. 10 Texas A&M 57-64 in College Station.

South Carolina would seem to have the best chance to reach the top that the Gamecocks ascended to several times in recent seasons.

If so, this would only be the third time in the 44-year-old history of the AP women’s poll that four different teams would be ranked No. 1 the same season. The last time that occurred was in the 2004-05 season and then once immediately before in 2003-04.

Besides four different teams, there have been a few seasons either when it was a coaches’ poll or media poll that the number of changes at the top were more than four times, but those alterations included teams that had already held a No. 1 spot the same season.

In 2003-04, the order went Connecticut, Duke, Tennessee, Texas, Connecticut, Tennessee, and Duke in the final poll while in 2004-05 it went Tennessee, LSU, Duke, LSU, Stanford. 

As far as how high Arizona State may jump back into the rankings from unranked, in recent times, anticipated big leaps have not occurred but out of the Guru’s database, he can back a claim on the internet that in the 2001-02 season, Kansas State, which had been last ranked in the final poll of the 1983-84 season, came back at No. 14 on  January 7, 2002.

In the 2004-05 season Rutgers was in the poll but after the Dec. 27, 2004 release in which the Scarlet Knights were 24^th they engineered several high-ranking upsets (will update when find media guide) and jumped in two weeks from 24^th to 14^th to 4^th on January 10, 2005.

Drexel Win Streak at Three

Meanwhile, back here, locally, after Drexel’s low-scoring win over Northeastern Friday night, the Dragons pumped up the offense in a multi-diversified attack Sunday and kept the pedal on the defense forcing 25 turnovers enabling Drexel to outscore the Pride 28-9 in transition and 20-6 on fast break points.

Depth also showed itself with a lopsided 34-12 advantage in bench points as reserves Kate Connolly (11) and Keishana Washington (14) combined for 25 of the points, while Washington had four of the team’s 14 steals.

Trailing early by a basket, the Dragons’ leader Bailey Greenberg nailed a three-pointer to launch an 8-0 run and by the end of the quarter the home team was in solid control 23-11.

The outcome was never in doubt the rest of the way with the differential growing to as much as 25 points near the end of the game.

Greenberg and Mariah Leonard, who has become a new scoring option in recent games, each collected 12 points for the Dragons, while Hannah Nilhill dealt 10 points and had five assists.

Jaylen Hines had 17 points for Hofstra (3-11, 0-3), still seeking its first CAA win, while Marianne Kalin scored 12, and Ana Hernandez Gil scored 11.

“You want to celebrate a great win, you want to have everybody an opportunity to get out there on the floor to contribute and get real game time,” said Drexel coach Denise Dillon. “There’s nothing better than setting that tone from the beginning, and using a full rotation, throughout.”

Nilhill was especially pleased to add the options and the overall play.

“It’s especially huge, particularly after the Northeastern game being the first Bailey didn’t score in double figures,” the Dragons point guard said. “During the game I was thinking, ‘this is the Drexel defense I know and love and we’re really back on our game.’”

Throughout the non-conference part of the schedule the Dragons were like a roller coaster, looking like Sunday’s performance in one game and then struggling and getting unexpected losses the next.

But Dillon think’s last week’s wild comeback in overtime on Sunday at UNCW coming after the opening loss at Charleston, may have been a turning point.

Drexel is off until next Sunday when the Dragons hosts their longtime local CAA rival Delaware at 2 p.m. as the main feature of homecoming here.

The Blue Hens on Sunday did not fare as well as the Dragons, falling to a split weekend when Northeastern recovered from its inept scoring here Friday to down Delaware.

The third quarter was key for the visiting Huskies, outscoring the Blue Hens 21-12 in the 72-62 triumph.

Northeastern’s Shannon Todd scored 20 points, Stella Clark scored 13, and Alexis Hill had 10 points and 11 rebounds. Reserve Mide Oriyomi added 11 points for the Huskies (6-8, 2-1 CAA).

Delaware (5-10, 1-3) got 17 points and 10 rebounds from Jasmine Dickey along with three steals and two assists.

Samone DeFreese scored 13 points and Nicole Enabosi had 11

“The fight, that was incredible to watch, that’s who we are,” said Delaware coach Natasha Adair of the game affected by an injury to Kayla Shaw.

“When you have opportunities, you have to knock down free throws, you have to make layups, we cut it to a two-possession game and then you have to be able to get that stop you created. 

“But any night in this league, it’s a dog fight and you knew before the game we talked about our grit and our toughness but Stella Clark for them, really managed the game.”

In the Towson upset of James Madison, creating as much disruption early in the race as is occurring in the national level, Kionna Jeter got the ball on an inbound play with 6.1 seconds left in regulation and drove for a layup to the give the defending conference tournament champions the 76-75 win in the final over James Madison (11-3, 2-1).

Jeter had a game-high 27 points for the Tigers (6-8, 1-2), while Nukiya Mayo had 23 points and 12 rebounds, and Q. Murray dealt seven assists.

Kamiah Smalls, the CAA preseason player of the year out of Philadelphia’s Neumann-Goretti High, had 26 points for the Dukes, while Lexi Barrier scored 16 points.

JMU erased all of a 21-point deficit only to have Smalls just miss as regulation time expired.

Villanova Gains a Weekend Split Beating Xavier

Recovering from Friday’s struggle, the Wildcats shot 50 percent from the field to keep things humming with five wins in their last seven games after sputtering to an overall 0-3 won-loss start back in mid-November.

Villanova (9-7, 4-2 Big East) blasted its way to a 16-2 lead in the first quarter against the Musketeers (2-14, 1-4), who are under new coach Melanie Moore, who had been on the staffs at Michigan and at Princeton.

The Wildcats led most of the afternoon.

Freshman Maddie Siegrist from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., had her fourth straight double-double with 23 points and a career-high 16 rebounds, while Mary Gedaka had 20 points, and Bridget Herlihy had had eight points, six assists, and three rebounds, and blocked a shot.

Cameron Onken grabbed eight rebounds.

A’Riana Gray had 20 points and 10 rebounds for Xavier.

“We were a completely different team than we were Friday,” said Villanova veteran coach Harry Perretta, who is retirement bound this spring after his 42^nd season, all on the Main Line, concludes. “We came out aggressive, where Friday we were not.

“We established we were going to play defense from the first tip and we won the game the way we have to, we have to win low scoring games, we can’t win high scoring games.”

“I’ve said it before, I have no idea what this team is going to do day-to-day, I really don’t,” Perretta observed. “If they come out and play like this, they have a chance (to beat Penn), I don’t know, we were so different from last week (winning at Seton Hall and St. John’s) on Friday, and we were so different today.”

Villanova is 13-1 against Xavier while Siegrist is leading the Big East with seven double doubles. 

Perretta’s group temporarily leaves the Big East, hosting Penn Wednesday at 7 p.m. in a Big Five game in which the Wildcats clinch a tie for the title with a win but Penn with a win clinches a tie and is the only team left that can take the City Series outright by then beating Temple away from home.”

The game also matches Siegrist, who has eight games of 20 or more points, and Penn newcomer Kayla Padilla who both are candidates right now for the Big Five’s top freshman as well as player of the year.

Nobody is scheduled Monday or Tuesday in the Guru group but Wednesday besides the Big Five game, in the Atlantic 10, Saint Joseph’s is hosting Rhode Island at 5 p.m. in Hagan Arena before the men while La Salle is at UMass in Amherst.

Rutgers Moves to The Top of a Big Ten Logjam While Penn State Is Mired at the Bottom

 The Scarlet Knights off a winning and hard fought 69-65 showdown with Nebraska at the Rutgers Athletic Center enabled @8 (14-2, 4-1 Big Ten) to move into a four-way tie in first but the No. 2 slot in the conference, having identical records with Northwestern, which is listed No. 1, while Penn State’s loss at Ohio State plunged the Lady Lions to the very bottom of a lower four-way deadlock.

No. 12 Indiana, which fell to Iowa, is at 4-1 and 14-3 overall while the Hawkeyes at 4-1 and 13-3 overall are listed fourth.

The Cornhusters (13-3, 3-2) with the loss fell to a gridlock of teams taking the fifth spot, just above No. 17 Maryland (12-4, 3-2) while Ohio State makes it a three-way jam at 10-6 and 3-2 in the conference.

The bottom tied for 11^th all at 1-4 are Minnesota (11-5), Illinois (10-6), then 9-7 and 1-4 for Wisconsin, and Penn State (7-9, 1-4).

In the Rutgers win, coach C. Vivian Stringer’s squad committed a season low six turnovers, while leading by as many as 15 points in the middle of the fourth period.

Khadaizha Sanders had a game-high 17 points to match her career best for Rutgers, while Arella Guirantes scored 16, Tekia Mack had 15 points and nine rebounds besides having three blocked shots and three steals, and Jordan Wallace hd 10 points and six rebounds.

The first half was close throughout but just before the second quarter was nearing its end as Nebraska was hurrying up the court to take the final shot, Mack stole the ball and completed a fast break with a score to give Rutgers a 35-32 lead and provide the momentum for a 18-10 third quarter that led to another important victory.

With just six turnovers it’s the first time in two seasons the Scarlet Knights stayed under 10 since making nine in a victory over Fairleigh Dickinson on Dec. 20, 2017.

Rutgers is now 8-1 in the RAC this season and 34-6 over the last three.

The Scarlet Knights next hit the road for a Thursday visit to Penn State, which was unable to piggyback Sunday on its previous first conference win of the season and first under new coach Carolyn Kieger.

In the 80-70 loss at Ohio State, the duo effort of Siyeh Frazier and Kamaria McDaniel with 22 points each kept the Lady Lions in contention but weren’t enough to top the Buckeyes (10-6, 3-2) in Columbus.

The key for the home team to victory was getting 26 points off 22 turnovers for Ohio State’s 10^th straight victory in the series with Penn State.

The Buckeyes’ Dorka Juhasz had a game-high 23 points and 12 rebounds.

And that’s the report.