The Guru Report: Princeton Roars Through Penn

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PRINCETON, N.J. – Might this Princeton women’s basketball squad under first-year coach Carla Berube be even better than the regular season unbeaten Tigers 30-0 edition of 2014-15 who were finally stopped in the NCAA tournament second round by powerful Maryland?

Considering what the front-running Ivy leaders did here at the expense of second-place Penn at home in Jadwin Gym, Tuesday night, it’s a discussion that will soon become more vocal heading into the final stage of the league race determining the other three qualifiers for next month’s fourth annual men’s and women’s tournament to be held at Harvard’s Lavietes Pavilion in Boston.

There’s no truth once word of the 80-44 wipeout reached Beantown that officially put No. 23 Princeton (22-1, 10-0 Ivy) into the field for the fourth straight year, one of Paul Revere’s descendants went motoring through town screaming “The Tigers are coming! The Tigers are coming!”

Problematical for the other seven members of the Ancient Eight are what’s left after they’ve departed on what is now an overall win streak of 18 games that is third in the nation behind top-ranked South Carolina and No. 2 Baylor.

“Let’s start with, Princeton’s a really good basketball team,” Penn veteran coach Mike McLaughlin said. “They’re one of the better Ivy League teams I’ve seen since I’ve been here, so I don’t want to discount that at all and want that be a total understanding.

“With that, I don’t think we played well. I don’t think we played well on both ends of the floor,” he said.

 “They defended us very well. They’re a tremendous defensive team. To play the whole first half, we didn’t shoot the ball very well, and again they took a lot of our actions and we didn’t respond well, but we just talked a little bit in there about the sport and what it does to you, the grit and grind needs to be back in the morning and you have to respect the game and tonight was not our night and we just couldn’t get anything go and the outcome was what it was.”

Meanwhile, consider that going in Tuesday night for the second of the two seasonal games between these longtime near-geographically Ivy rivals, no one in Jadwin considered the Penn-Princeton matchup the equivalent as many view the lopsided UConn vs. the others that will soon end in the American Athletic Conference when the Huskies head off to torment the current group in the Big East.

“And Penn is a good team,” could be heard throughout arena from the locals here shaking their heads in awe the way Princeton trotted out its oldies/newbies act that has turned the Tigers into the No. 1 defensive unit in the NCAA stats.

To put names on it, the veteran was potential WNBA lottery pick Bella Alarie, who earlier in the day picked up another national player of the week accolade from the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA).

Then the two-time reigning Ivy player of the year made good on the pick scoring 21 points, grabbing seven rebounds, dealing two assists and blocking a pair of Quakers shots.

As for fresh blood, that would be newcomer Ellie Mitchell, who scored 11 points, grabbed eight rebounds, and had six steals, good enough for tying for second all-time in a single game thefts collection by a Princeton freshman.

Abby Meyers scored 11 as the third Tiger in double figures against Penn (17-6, 7-3).

“I think it’s just day in and day out what we want to do,” Alarie said of the way the Tigers played and have continued throughout with the one loss being at Iowa by two points in overtime last December.

“We scout teams very well. We play as a team on defense, and it helps a lot to get stops because it helps make offense a lot less stressful and gives us momentum going on the other end.”

Somewhere in Chapel Hill, N.C., likely, Berube’s predecessor Courtney Banghart, now in charge of UNC, was smiling when checking the scoreboard. 

Berube can smile too, knowing Tufts, the Division III powerhouse out of Massachusetts the former Connecticut star left to come here, is currently unbeaten and No. 1 in the nation.

“Yeah, it’s great,” she said of her current team’s performance. “They do a great job executing the game plan. And in games things happen.

“ Them playing together and communicating together and just playing really, really hard from minute one, through minute forty, I think it just lends to games like this, and defensive output like this, and we’ve got great players on the court and some come off the bench and make huge contributions like Ellie did and Abby and Maggie (Connolly), yeah, I love watching them defend like that.

“It pleases me since we spend so much time on it.”

Would a more competitive game help the big picture.

“Even when we had a close game with Dartmouth at the half, we want to crush teams and play to the best of our ability,” Alarie said. “We want to show the league and NCAA what we’re made of.”

The start was so lopsided with Princeton using a 14-2 finishing run to be ahead 21-8 after one quarter (the Tigers were 9-for-15 for 53.3 percent from the field while the Quakers dropped just three buckets), that who could blame the visiting fan base from taking an early exit to deal with the ongoing traffic problems here during repair of aging bridges over the Delaware and Raritan Canal, and Stony Brook and Alexander Creek.

But if they had, they would have missed another fine performance from Penn freshman Kayla Padilla, who prevented the 34-13 onslaught temporarily from getting worse by scoring 15 of her game-high 24 points in the third quarter, two more than the entire contingent could manage in the first half.

But the phrase is temporarily because the Tigers then closed with a 29-13 fourth quarter.

“We played really hard,” Berube said, “and got out on shooters, didn’t let them get in a rhythm and I thought our post players did a tremendous job just limiting their touches inside, both Crawford (Tori) and Parker (Eleah) do so much damage on the boards, I thought we did a good job boxing them out and keeping them from getting easy scoring opportunities inside and Padilla’s clearly good and we had to figure out ways to defend her, we put our bigs on her, we did a much better job.”

Parker and Crawford, who had been a major part of Penn’s seven-game win streak that was snapped, combined for just five points.

“We’ve grown a lot since Jan. 11,” Berube referred to the first meeting, “that was quite a while ago, we’ve gotten better, I think our defense is better and now I’m getting to know the league, and my staff’s getting to know the league and so we played teams a second time around, we just know them better and thought we did a pretty good job.” 

Standings-wise, the loss dropped Penn three games off the pace, but just one game ahead of the third place duo of Yale and Columbia, yes, Columbia.

“I’ve been on both sides of it,” McLaughlin said, “and you try to make a ten-point play and I thought there was a lot of that going on. I thought we lost our way a little bit. 

“But again, give them credit, they’re going to be a tough out for anybody, not only in the Ivy but across the country.  We’ll grow from this.”

Princeton needs just one more win next weekend against either Brown Friday night or Yale on Saturday, to claim another regular crown extending the decade-plus rule of the Ivies by either the Tigers or Penn.

Berube was part of the Huskies contingent that won UConn’s national title and was asked if there’s a comparison to be made.

“I think you take every team and you get ready the same way every time. You take nobody for granted and respect every opponent, and, yeah, there’s nights like this, and when you play hard and have talented players, these nights are going to happen.

“We have two really takented athletes that can defend anybody on the court,” Berube said of Alarie and Mitchell. “It puts us in a good position. Ellie is fortunate to be able to play with Bella and learn so much.”  

Retiring Villanova coach Harry Perretta once quipped of playing UConn in the old Big East wars, “we do well overall on the season because we have learned to take our medicine and then move on.”

Likewise, once the Quakers get over the distasteful dose they had to swallow and return to the business at hand, a sweep at the Palestra against Yale Friday at 7 p.m. and Brown Saturday at 6 will also make them a four-time Ivy tourney participant and place them closer to second, which gains an automatic bid to the WNIT if winning the NCAA berth doesn’t happen.

“This is behind us,” McLaughlin said. “We literally just put it all behind us as a group. It’s hard to do. Let them feel the pain of not feeling good tonight but we’re back at it tomorrow, getting ready for Yale and Brown.”

Both teams here are part of the Guru’s local Division I group and were the only ones playing Tuesday night.

Elsewhere nationally, Maryland and Northwestern won in the Big Ten and stayed tied for first but if that’s how they finish Sunday, Maryland via tiebreak will be the No. 1 seed in next month’s conference tourney in Indianapolis.

Looking Ahead: La Salle Goes for Finishing Sweep

“Who knew?” Explorers second-year coach Mountain MacGillivray said over the weekend with a smile when asked if the calculation is right that a finishing sweep of two games lands a home game in the first round of the Atlantic 10 tournament.

The first step comes against Davidson Wednesday morning in the annual Kids Day Game at 11 a.m. at Tom Gola Arena. The season finale in the league is Saturday against George Mason.

Just two other Guru teams are on Wednesday’s docket with Saint Joseph’s hosting Massachusetts at 7 in Hagan Arena in an Atlantic 10 game on Hawk Hill while Temple at 6 will be at UCF in Florida attempting to win and get a stronger finish in The American leading to next month’s tourney at the Mohegan Sun.

On Thursday, Rider is off to Fairfield in Connecticut at 7 as the Broncs go for maintaining a deadlock at the top of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference with preseason favorite Marist.

Michigan is at Penn State at 7 p.m. at the Bryce Jordan Center in a Big Ten game in Happy Valley, while Rutgers in the Big Ten wraps up its home slate hosting Wisconsin at 7 p.m.

Small Colleges: Rowan Advances to Title Game in NJAC

The Profs, who moved up three spots to No.20 in the national coaches poll, downed The College of New Jersey, 82-62 in a semifinal Tuesday at home in Glassboro to advance to Friday’s final in the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) with a bid to the NCAA Division III tourney on the line.

Top-seeded Rowan (23-3) had split with the Lions (16-11), the fourth seed, during the season, with each team winning on the other’s court.

The Profs will host Friday’s title game at 7 p.m. facing No. 2 Montclair State, which beat sixth-seeded Jersey City, 67-45.

Rowan and Montclair State (21-5) split during the season with the Red Hawks winning big up in North Jersey while the Profs gained a narrow win here to help eventually land the No. 1 seed and hosting rights for the championship.

In the win over TCNJ, the home team had six players score in double figures, Nicole Mallard, Grace Marshall, and Eliana Santa each scored 14 points, while Marshall, a reserve, had a career-high 10 rebounds and Santana also grabbed 10.

Savannah Holt had 12 points off the bench, while Paige Caldwell scored 11, and Kennedy Brown scored 10. Ayanna Johnson had 10 rebounds.

Shannon Devitt had a game-high 25 points for the Lions with 10 rebounds for a double double. 

  CACC: Jefferson Chasing Positioning for Tourney

The Rams, holding third, will try to maintain the prospective seed in the Division II Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, when Jefferson travels to Goldey-Beacom at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Wilmington, Del. 

They finish up Saturday hosting Holy Family, which clinched the second seed, at the Gallagher Center at 2 p.m. in East Falls.

Chestnut Hill has clinched the remaining berth in the South Division and can overtake Jefferson but the finish is daunting with a Wednesday visit to Holy Family in the Tigers’ Campus Center Gymnasium at 5:30 p.m. and then hosting USciences at 1 p.m.

The No. 18 Devils, who have won 18 straight, are idle Wednesday ahead of the visit to Chestnut Hill, and are the top seed and will be hosting the semifinals and final.

Meanwhile in the Division III Atlantic East semifinals Wednesday night, No. 5 Marywood is at No. 4 Marymount at 7, while No. 3 Gwynedd Mercy visits No. 2 Cabrini, also at 7.

The championship is at the highest surviving seed Saturday with the time to be determined.

CIAA: Lincoln Learns Opponent

In the Division II Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association being played in two venues in Charlotte, N.C., second-seeded Lincoln, which was idle Tuesday, learned it opens Thursday with Winston-Salem State at 1 p.m. in the Spectrum Center in a quarter final game.

Winston-Salem (13-15), the third seed out of the South, beat Claflin, 60-51, Tuesday in Bojangles Coliseum, to advance against the Lions, who won a program record 23 games.

And that’s the report. The Guru plans to be at La Salle and later Saint Joseph’s on Wednesday.