The Guru Report: Rider Holds Off Fairfield to Set Record Win Streak; Ivies Reveal New Format

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. – It may have been primarily a mostly ugly 40-minute adventure of basketball Tuesday night here in Alumni Gymnasium but the result continued to be a thing of beauty for the Rider women in topping Fairfield 60-52 in a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) game to keep the Broncs (15-2, 8-0 MAAC) alone in first and unbeaten at the start of a three-game home stand.

 

The Stags (9-8, 6-2) were able to keep the tempo to their slower pace though Rider was still able to obtain enough of a burst to build a 13-point lead late in the third period that became good to have when a Fairfield rally had the visitors threatening to go ahead in the closing minutes.

 

The game was the only of the 11 Guru local D-1 teams in action Tuesday and like at most places in the last several days in contests prior to the opening tip a 24.8 seconds of silence occurred to honor the memories of retired NBA great Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gigi and the other victims of Sunday’s helicopter crash on the way to his daughter’s basketball game.

 

“Since he retired he’s been one of the faces of women’s basketball as far as being one of the supporters of our sport,” said Rider veteran coach Lynn Milligan. “I envisioned him to be a WNBA owner, to be honest with you.

 

“His love for basketball transcended gender. The relationships he had with a lot of women’s players was huge. He was an iconic figure particularly for this generation. I mean I grew up with Dr. J (Julius Erving) and Michael (Jordan). These guys grew up with Kobe,” Milligan said.

 

“It was definitely something that hit home in the basketball community and it hit our family. We talk about impacting young girls all the time. 

“And to think of those three young girls that don’t get to try to realize their dream of playing in the WNBA is really heartbreaking so it was something little (pre-game) we could do to pay our respects and continue to play in that form that Kobe had for everybody that greatness is a choice and work hard and be disciplined.”

 

In the contest, two Broncs got double-doubles with MAAC preseason player of the year and once more player of the week Stella Johnson gaining 15 points and 11 rebounds while Amari Johnson had 16 points and 10 rebounds with pairs of blocks and steals.

 

Amanda Mobley had nine points while also dishing five assists. Lea Favre scored 11 points and was the sole Bronc effective from the field shooting 5-for-9 but Rider was able to cash in from the charity stripe shooting 18-of-21 free throw attempts of which Stella Johnson was 9-for-10.

 

Fairfield’s Katie Armstrong scored 14 points, Sam Kramer scored 13, and Lou Lopez-Senechal scored 12.

 

   “We stick together, play tough defense, shot great from the free throw line, shot great from the three (6-for-15), we really made some great talking movements in that second half and in the end of the game when they made a little run on defense,” Milligan said of the keys to the win.

 

“That’s what veteran teams do when we have an off night on offense when we’re not clicking as we normally are, we have to find other ways to win and that’s what good teams and veteran players trust each other and I think we did that tonight.

 

“We got the win against a good Fairfield team that was sitting at 6-1. So for us to do that says a lot about the character of our team.”

 

Rider’s only losses to date are the season-opener at powerful Princeton just up the road near here and a setback against North Florida in November at the MAAC/ASUN Challenge at Disney’s Wide World of Sports near Orlando.

 

Since then, the Broncs are now on what became Tuesday night a program record 12-0 win streak, topping an 11-game run in 191-82 as a Division I team and it’s the first Rider has ever opened the MAAC at 8-0.

 

“We need to be first in a few things, that other season kept being first in anything,” Milligan quipped.

 

That was in 2016-17 when the Broncs became a winning machine falling just short of Quinnipiac in the regular season standings and advanced to the title game against the Bobcats and landed in the postseason for the first time in the WNIT, which Rider returned as MAAC runners up in the standings last year.

 

Amari Johnson now has 11 double-doubles, the most since 12 by Julia Duggan that historic season.

 

The Broncs will be looking to extend their perfect home record to 8-0 Thursday night at 7 here when they host Manhattan. At the moment they hold a one-game lead over preseason favorite Marist, whom they beat earlier this month in overtime up in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

 

Ivy Schedule Change

 

Primarily off the forthcoming switch in Princeton’s finals schedule from a three-week January period over to the December portion of the seasonal calendar, the Ivy League announced Tuesday off future planning committees a new league slate for the next two seasons beginning a year from now on Jan. 2 to an expanded 10-week period in which the a large portion of the traditional Friday-Saturday back-to-back competitions for men and women will be dispensed.

 

The regular season will end prior to the Ivy Tournament with games against the travel partners. 

 

That’s interesting because while Penn and Princeton used to end the regular season in the old days, when the tournament was launched the schools moved away from that in that the Tigers and Quakers have owned the league the last decade and didn’t want to play back-to-back weekends due to the likely chance they’d meet for the title and NCAA automatic bid.

 

The Penn men have already announced all their Big Five games will conclude in December.

 It is not known what the women desire — in recent seasons the Quakers have filled the three-week gap playing  Villanova and Temple with the title at stake with Penn in play in those contests.

 

That gap that existed for Princeton factored in Penn winning the first of the Ivy crowns under Mike McLaughlin.

In the pre-Ivy tourney days that year when final standings determined the NCAA berth held for the league, Princeton romped over Penn in the league opener.

 

Three weeks later, however, a very good Harvard team was scheduled this way to begin the rest of the Ivy season and they caught the powerful Tigers with a bit of rust and pulled an upset but the next night in the Palestra the Penn women set series records beating the Crimson and it became a three-way race.

 

Ultimately Harvard got dispatched and the last day came down to the winner of the Princeton/Penn game up at Jadwin claiming the title. The Quakers prevailed in one of the all-time wins in the history of the program.

 

In the new schedule, one of the games will be played on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, by all the teams.

 

Here’s the structure of the season off the Ivy site.

 

Ivy Schedule Format for 2020-21 and 2021-22

 

Week 1 – one game

Week 2 – two games (back-to-back)

Week 3 – two games (Saturday and MLK Day)

Week 4 – one game 

Week 5 – one game

Week 6 – two games (back-to-back)

Week 7 – one game

Week 8 – two games (back-to-back)

Week 9 – one game

Week 10 – one game (vs. travel partner) 

 

Looking Ahead

 

Locally, just three games Wednesday night in the Guru group with Temple hosting UCF at 7 in McGonigle Hall in an American Athletic Conference game as the Owls try to recover from Sunday’s loss at Cincinnati.

 

The other two are Atlantic 10 contests. La Salle, off its Big Five Sunday win over Saint Joseph’s will try to extend the triumph, which also counted in the league, hosting George Mason at 5 in Tom Gola Arena prior to a men’s nightcap.

 

Saint Joseph’s, trying to bounce back from the loss to the Explorers, will host George Washington at 7 in Hagan Arena.

 

On Thursday, as mentioned, Rider here hosts Manhattan College at 7, while in the Big Ten up the road Rutgers will be hosting Illinois at 7 trying to bounce back from Sunday’s loss to Michigan. 

Meanwhile, Penn State at home against Iowa at 7 in the Bryce Jordan Center in State College will be trying to recover from Sunday’s loss at Purdue.

 

Taking you to Friday, in the CAA, Drexel hosts Towson at 7 in the Daskalakis Athletic Center in the first meeting between the two since Towson rallied in the closing minutes last March to beat the Dragons in the conference tournament title game at Delaware.

 

Speaking of the Blue Hens, at 7 p.m., they will be hosting James Madison, the preseason favorite but currently tied for first with Drexel, which hosts the Dukes on Sunday. Delaware plays in the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark just below Wilmington.

 

Villanova returning home  from last weekend’s road losses at Big East frontrunner DePaul and Marquette will host St. John’s at 7 in Finneran Pavilion.

 In their previous meeting several weeks ago up in Queens, the Wildcats edged the Red Storm in overtime to complete a weekend road sweep that began at Seton Hall, which will be at Finneran Sunday.

 

The current Ivy season of back-to-back weekend games after several traveling partners have already played once, begins with Penn at Harvard, site of this year’s Ivy tourney, at 7 in Lavietes Pavilion in Boston, and then on to Dartmouth on Saturday while opposite, Princeton is at Dartmouth at 7 on Friday and then at Harvard on Saturday.

 

Penn is on a three-game losing streak having fallen to Princeton earlier this month at The Palestra in the league opener, and then suffering Big Five setbacks at Villanova and then squandering a fourth-quarter lead last Thursday at Temple that enabled the Owls to tie the Wildcats for the Big Five crown at 3-1 each.

 

And that’s your report.