The Guru Report: More Small Conference Titles Claimed

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PHILADELPHIA – D-III Haverford College and D-III Rowan joined D-II USciences as regular season conference champions Wednesday among the small college group after clinching top seeds respectively for the Centennial and New Jersey Athletic Conference tourneys.

And of the four of 11 of the Guru’s local D-1 group who played a midweek game, it was a split outcome with Temple winning a second straight while Saint Joseph’s on the road snapped a six-game losing streak.

La Salle made it close to three straight games in victory  lane but ultimately fell while Rutgers took its lumps on the road in the Big Ten.

Profs Finish No. 1 in the NJAC

After reclaiming first from Montclair State University several weeks ago, Rowan successfully made it to the finish line in first place in the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) by beating Kean 73-52 at home in Glassboro, N.J., on the final night of the regular season.

The Profs (22-3, 16-2 NJAC) finished up on Kean (17-8) with a 13-0 run as Nicole Mallard had 18 points, eight rebounds, and matched her personal best with eight steals. 

Kennedy Brown had 16 points, six rebounds and four thefts, while Grace Marshall and Alex Kriley each scored 13 points, Additionally, Marshall grabbed eight rebounds and Eliana Santana had seven.

The NJAC first round gets under way Saturday and Rowan has a bye waiting to host a semifinal game Tuesday night (Feb. 25) at 7 pm. in Esby Gymnasium in Glassboro against the winner between No. 4 The College of New Jersey (15-10), one of two teams to beat the Profs in conference play, and No. 5 William Paterson (11-14). They will meet at 1 p.m. in the Lions’ Packer Hall in Ewing, N.J., outside of Trenton.

The other first round game this Saturday has No. 3 Kean (17-8) meeting No. 6 New Jersey City (12-13) at home in Harwood Arena at 6 p.m. in Union, N.J., and the winner advances to visit No. 2 Montclair State (20-5), which also has a bye, also on Tuesday, and is the other team to beat Rowan this season.

Tuesday’s winners advance to Friday’s championship to play for an automatic bid to the NCA Division III tournament. That game will tip at 7 p.m. at the home of the highest remaining seed.

Rowan last won it all in 1998-99, completing a four-season run, the first two in 97 and 96 as Rowan College and the last two as Rowan University.

Meanwhile on this side of the Delaware River, Haverford on Wednesday beat Swarthmore 55-46 at home in the Fords’ Gooding’84 Arena, completing a sweep of the Garnet for the fifth straight season and claiming the top seed in the Centennial Conference tournament.

Haverford (21-3, 18-1 Centennial) had a one-game lead on Gettysburg with Saturday’s game at 1 p.m. in Baltimore against Johns Hopkins remaining but Gettysburg was ambushed by Dickinson and fell Wednesday to cause everyone to stop calculating the fate of their respective squad.

Gettysburg fell two games back with the loss allowing the Fords to become the top seed no matter the outcome win or lose and they will have a bye on Tuesday and then host the semifinals Friday at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. and the championship Saturday. 

The Guru will run the complete field here on the overnight report Saturday into Sunday.

It’s the third time overall and second in the last four years, Haverford has hosted, having gained the top seed in 2016-17.

Meanwhile, Wednesday, though Swarthmore (12-12, 9-10 CC) had a slight edge at the half, Haverford came out and held the Garnet to just nine points the rest of the way.

Anna-Sophia Capizzi had a game-high 17 points for the Fords, while Julianna Clark scored 16, and Megan Furch scored 12 for the Fords. 

Small College Rankings

In the latest WBCA Coaches poll for Division II, USciences, which won the CACC South on Tuesday, beating Holy Family, is ranked 19^th while Lincoln, which finishes Saturday in the Central Intercollegiate Athletics Association (CIAA) visiting Bowie State in Bowie, Md., is the fifth highest also-ran receiving votes.

Lincoln is sixth in the latest NCAA Division II Atlantic Region poll, while Rowan is 23^rd and Haverford is tied for 25^th in the latest WBCA coaches Division III poll.

Rowan is second in the NCAA Division III Atlantic Region poll, while Cabrini is third, Haverford is tied for 25^th, and Widener is third in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Temple Becomes WNIT Eligible

Like football bowls, requiring a certain record to be reached to earn an invite, so does the Women’s NIT, requiring teams at the end of the season to be at .500 or better to earn at-large bids to the field.

In thar regard, in earning its second straight win beating Memphis 78-64 in a matinee American Athletic Conference game before a very loud crowd of over 3,600 area school children for the annual School Day promotion, Temple (15-10, 7-5 AAC) clinched an overall .500 record on the season.

Mia Davis had a game-high 23 points and eight rebounds, while transfer Ashley Davis had 21 points and nine assists.

Lena Niang scored 14 against the Tigers (13-13, 4-9).

The win put Temple in a fourth-place tie with South Florida whom the Owls have split with this season.

“This is a good win for us,” Temple coach Tonya Cardoza said afterwards. “We’re only a few games left in the regular season and you want to take advantage of opportunities you have at home.

“It was a great crowd. (Memphis) is down, they’ve been down. But we couldn’t focus on that. We have to focus more on ourselves and make sure we’re going to do things to help us.

“I thought we did a really good job of limiting their best player and make other guys shoot the basketball and defensively, I thought we did a better job of knowing what we were trying to get accomplished.”

As for being eligible for the postseason, Cardoza said, “Yes we are. But we still have games to play. It’s one game at a time. This was a good win. We control own destiny. If we do what we’re supposed to do, we can move up in conference play and put ourselves in position to go postseason.”

Temple next goes to East Carolina Saturday at 1 p.m.

Elsewhere in the conference, in its first game since dropping out of the Top 5 for the first time in 13 years, Connecticut slammed Tulane 74-31 in the Huskies’ Hartford home to open a four-game lead and clinch a share of the conference title.

UConn (22-3, 12-0 AAC) has never lost any of its 114 regular season conference games nor any of the six conference tournaments, though the Huskies are now in the sayonara tour in that they are headed back to the Big East next season.

Hawks Stop Slide

Saint Joseph’s brought a halt to its losing streak, which had reach six, with a road win 63-54 in an Atlantic 10 game at Davidson in North Carolina.

Katie Jekot scored 12 of her 17 points in the second half, while Lula Roig scored 11 of her 15 in the first two quarters for the Hawks (9-16, 3-10).

It’s the first win for Saint Joseph’s since Jan. 22 in downing Davidson (14-12, 7-6). 

The Hawks next host George Mason in an A-10 game Saturday at 2 p.m.in Hagan Arena.

La Salle Falls Short of Near Upset of VCU

The Explorers took their two-game win streak against one of the upper echelon teams in the Atlantic 10 in VCU and battled the Rams with several comebacks at home in Tom Gola Arena until the visitors closed out with eight of the game’s final 10 points to take a 67-61 victory.

La Salle (11-15, 5-8 A-10) is currently 10^th, a spot behind three teams tied for seventh, any of which would be good enough in the final standings to gain a host position in the conference tourney’s first round next month.

The rest of the event a few days later will occur at Dayton’s UD Arena in Ohio.

 VCU (15-11, 10-3) is in second, but three games behind the Flyers, who are hosting.

Claire Jacobs, the reigning A-10 rookie of the week out of Australia, had 19 points for the home team, while Kayla Spruill scored 17 with 12 rebounds, and Shalina Miller blocked six shots to give her 68 on the season, breaking her own Explorers season record of 12 months ago by four.

Tera Reed had 23 for VCU, helped by 9-of-10 from the line, while Madison Hattix-Covington had 18 helped by 11-of-12. In all, the Rams shot 33-of-41 free throws vs. 12-of-17 by the Explorers, who were also 3-for-22 shooting from beyond the arc.

“If you told me coming into this game, the game would come down to the waning minutes,” said second-year coach Mountain MacGillivray, “and we would have made 3 of our 22 threes, I would have said, `You’re crazy.’

“Our formula for beating a team like VCU is make shots from the perimeter, and we did not and we were right there. 

“So that’s a little bit of an evolution for us and we were pleased the way we competed on the glass, so we did a good job getting two-point shots which haven’t been a strength of ours and that team doesn’t give them up.

“We’re coming. Obvious, it wasn’t perfect, but it’s starting to come together.”

La Salle next goes to Rhode Island, one of the teams just ahead in the standings, playing the Rams at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Rutgers Blunted by Northwestern

Once again, an upper tier team in the Big Ten had its way with the Scarlet Knights as No. 18 Northwestern struck the visitors 82-65, despite a 28-point fourth quarter from the opposition.

The victory at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, Ill., kept the Wildcats (23-3, 13-2 Big Ten) right on the heels of first-place Maryland.

Northwestern is coached by Father Judge grad Joe McKeown.

Arella Guirantes had 19 points, while Jordan Wallace had 16, and Tekia Mack scored 12.

Northwestern’s Lindsay Pulliam had 27 points, Veronica Burton scored 23, and Abbie Wolf scored 14.

Rutgers finishes out a three-game home stand, beginning Saturday, hosting Ohio State at 2 p.m.

Looking Ahead

Just one game on the local slate and its big with Rider visiting Quinnipiac at 6 Thursday night in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference looking to stay tied with Marist for first.

And that’s the report.