Guru’s WBB Report: Season of Coronavirus-Driven Uncertainty Gets Under Way Where Day-to-Day Applies to Entire Landscape

Updating at 11 20 am wed with change in nova start today till 3 and rutgers two-day delay

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

 

And here we are depending what time you are reading this — the wee or later morning of day one of a season unlike any other with an uncertain path that has already been disruptive to what had been a delayed start to when collegiate basketball normally has gotten under way in recent times.

 

Locally, in the Philadelphia area, the dominant features and topics would be all eyes are on Villanova, where for the first time in 43 seasons Harry Perretta won’t be at the helm on the Main Line ready to either develop a team of predominantly younger players — he did that in his last season — or take a ripened one to challenge in the Big East.

 

Except to do that means trying to overcome the huge hurdle that returns from the old glory conference days in the University of Connecticut.

 

Perretta will be around in a role as consultant to athletic director Mark Jackson, but on this day he will be out on a previously arranged golf date.

 

In Perretta’s place will be one of his former stars — Denise Dillon, who might have continued as long as Lil Haas did at Drexel were it not for the challenge to move up a bit to test herself in a world a tad above the wars in the Colonial Athletic Association.

 

“I’ve got work to do,” she sent a text recently in starting out as a preseason pick of seventh by the Big East coaches, though in Maddy Siegrist she has a one of the top newcomers of a year ago who had already been eyed as future stock by WNBA coaches making the tour looking at draft prospects.

 

And down Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia, Amy Mallon moves up from her long run as Dillon’s associate head coach to keep the Dragons, picked second behind James Madison, competitive in the wake of the graduation of Bailey Greenberg.

 

It was a seminal moment virtually 12 months ago when Dillon’s Drexel squad beat Perretta’s on a closing seconds shot in overtime.

 

The other shoe drops Dec. 13 when the return game is played at the Wildcats’ Finneran Pavilion as the Dragons go against their former coach.

 

Delaware, the other local CAA squad, if nothing else, can now boast being the school of incoming USA President Joseph’s Biden. The Blue Hens are picked sixth in the preseason.

 

Though picked in the middle of the American Athletic Conference behind front runner South Florida, Temple’s chances starting sixth in the coaches’ forecast of gaining the throne vacated by the seven-year perfect league mark of the Huskies are better with another WNBA local prospect in Mia Davis.

 

And if the Owls reach the promise land, it will not be at the Mohegan Sun, the new home of the Big East tourney, but in Fort Worth, Texas.

 

Up in Central Jersey, Rider, off its best season ever with now WNBA second-year pro Stella Johnson on the Washington Mystics, starts in the predicted middle of the pack of the Metro Atlantic Athletic  Conference led in voting for  the first time by Manhattan under former Villanova assistant Heather Vulin.

The Atlantic Ten will see the La Salle Explorers continue to take another step forward under third-year coach Mountain MacGillivray while on Hawk Hill, veteran Cindy Griffin, now the dean in the immediate neighborhood following Perretta, will attempt to guide her squad back up to the high rent district of the A-10 where preseason pick VCU dwells.

In the Big Ten, Penn State hosts Coppin State at 6 p.m. in the Bryce Jordan Center as second year coach Carolyn Kieger seeks to get a roster loaded with newcomers moving upward. For the first time since joining the Big Ten, Maryland is not picked to win the conference, yielding to a first-ever program choice of Indiana.

As for Rutgers, keep reading.

 

Nationally, South Carolina, under Dawn Staley, the Philly-bred player-coaching legend, starts at the top where the Gamecocks finished, but not as NCAA champion due to the cancellation of the tournament, with Stanford, Connecticut with No. 1 recruit Paige Bueckers, Baylor, Louisville, and Arizona among many in the mix in pursuit aiming to raise the trophy in April in San Antonio, Texas.

And there will be dual attention twice in the frontal part of the season as Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer and Connecticut’ Geno Auriemma pass the late and legendary Tennessee coach Pat Summitt’s career win record of 1,098, with VanDerveer now within four of the mark and Auriemma three-behind her.

Of course, the invisible elephant-in-the-room asterisk is that had not Summitt been forced to end her run at the conclusion of the 2012 season fighting alzheimer’s disease which claimed her life several years later, the acclaimed duo would still be a bit of wide gap from the Vols’ great who would have likely piled more wins if not not necessarily adding multiple trophies to her collection of eight national crowns. 

 

So, sounds like a normal outlook so far in setting the map, right?

 

But this is where normal ends and chaos has begun.

 

While everyone’s trying to do their normal role, the sports information directors as liason between their teams and the media, the media attempting to do coverage, the NCAA and conference officials trying to shape the format of the postseason, the coaches and players doing their thing, the question looms, is this the start to the road to the Alamo City, or a road to nowhere.

 

Blame it on the most impactful individual who arrived early in this 2020 calendar year and was able to quickly shut down the entire sports world and virtually everything else on the planet last March.

 

And after getting over the shock of its immense power, instead of moving back to normal which we perceived by late spring, Covid-19 is still around more menacing than ever.

 

The annual Big Five round robin has gone up in smoke and with the Ivy League season cancelled, the two powers of Big Five member Penn with WNBA prospect Eleah Parker and top sophomore Kayla Padilla, and multi-defending champion Princeton are sidelined.

 

Aforementioned adjusted schedules are now getting adjusted daily, teams with the perceptions of cupcakes are now the Boston Cream pies for everyone trying to get their game counts up in the wake of cancellations.

 

Those of us who deal with the WNBA somewhat trained for this over the summer as the pro league played in a bubble atmosphere and we zoomed our way through from elsewhere by remote.

 

But that was a 12-team operation.

 

Besides the actual game detail of preview notes and other matters, our email inboxes are filling up with onsite media limitations for live coverage, zoom links and remote availabilities, last minute  cancellation and replacements and even replacements for the replacements. 

Just before Wednesday’s 11 a.m. start, which will be Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer’s 50th season, Rutgers announced a two-day pushback till Friday at 11 a.m. with Monmouth out of an abundance of caution on the Monmouth testing side, delaying a continuance of returning to relevance by the Scarlet Knights with veteran Arella Guirantes and rookie sensation Diamond Johnson out of Philly’s Neumann-Goretti High.

Stringer is the fourth overall coach across all divisions and first women’s coach to hit the half-century mark.

 

And of course the networks are affected as they try to provide content when the original event goes poof.

 

Here’s your local teams schedule through early next week and if they don’t appear they are forced into a later start than dates you were aware last summer.

 

We’ll add and subtract as they become available. This was updated as of 11:45 a.m. Wednesday 11/25 off Tuesday night’s original post of this blog.

 

Today – Wednesday

 

Monmouth at Rutgers — 11 a.m. postponed till Friday 11 a.m.

Salem (W. Va.) at Delaware — 2 p.m.

Rider at Villanova  — 3 p.m.

Coppin State at Penn State — 6 p.m.

 

Saturday

 

Drexel at Rider — 2 p.m.

Delaware at Delaware State 

Villanova at Manhattan – 2 p.m.

 

Monday

 

Saint Francis, Pa. at Penn State, 6 p.m.

 

Wednesday

 

Army at Rider – 2 p.m.

Lincoln (D-II) at Syracuse — 6 p.m.

La Salle at Monmouth — 7 p.m.

 

Thursday

 

Rhode Island at Penn State

 

Friday

 

DePaul at Villanova – 7 p.m.

 

Saturday

 

Saint Francis, Pa. at La Salle — 2 p.m.

Rider at Delaware State

Drexel at Monmouth

Sunday

 

Temple at Florida Gulf Coast — 2 p.m.

Villanova at St. John’s — 6 p.m.

Penn State at Syracuse — 2 p.m.

Delaware at Pittsburgh — 6 p.m.