Guru’s WBB Report: Villanova Whips Temple as Does Louisville to DePaul But in PAC-12 Opener Arizona Edges UCLA in a Thriller

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

 

Blowouts highlighted the one local game on the Friday card and two of the three major ones of focus on the national offerings as Villanova stayed unbeaten here slamming Temple 90-72 in the Owls’ McGonigle Hall in a quite belated season start for the home team that tipped at noon.

 

Meanwhile No. 5 Louisville cruised over No. 20 DePaul 116-75 setting a program scoring record up in the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., and in the PAC-12 set of season starts No. 10 Oregon crushed visiting Colorado 82-53.

The outcome at Oregon (3-0) ran the Ducks’ win streak 22 dating back to last season, breaking the program mark of 21 set in 1978-79.

The home win in Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, set a mark with 22 straight home wins that snapped the previous run of 21 set in 2000.

“I love the trajectory so far,” Ducks coach Kelly Graves said afterwards.

Nyara Sabally, the younger sister of graduated and overall No. 2 Satou Sabally now with the WNBA Dallas Wings, in her first career start as a redshirt freshman having missed two straight seasons with injuries, was 9-for-9 from the field, scoring 20 points, with 10 rebounds, while Erin Boley had 17 points.

“I thought it would take me a little while to get acclimated,” Sabally said. “Because I’ve been on the sideline for two years, I’ve seen the game and know teams are really, really good. I was really glad to come out and play the way I know I can play.”  

 

Meanwhile, out in the desert, they had a dandy one as No. 7 Arizona drew first blood at home in Tucson rallying and then holding off No. 9 UCLA 68-65.

Each team had played one non-conference game before heading into an expanded 22-game home-and-home league competition ahead of the PAC-12 tourney in Las Vegas that will send the automatic bid winner and as perhaps as many as five more on to whatever format becomes the NCAA tournament.

 

For the visiting Bruins, no shame in the defeat but for the winning Wildcats it was quite a great conference start over a sister elite end of the projected standings and one to put in the jewelry box collecting offerings for however the NCAA women’s tourney is going to structure in the distant future, hopefully that it does.

 

Other Pac-12 scores had Arizona State edging Southern Cal at home 63-58 while visiting Washington handled California 80-53. No. 2 Stanford was suppose to host Washington but coronavirus issues and protocol in Santa Clara County has knocked the powerful Cardinal out of four home games so for the time being, they will be in neighboring Nevada Saturday playing UNLV in Las Vegas.

 

Also, so we don’t lose sight of another event, the WNBA made a halftime guest appearance in the collegiate world at halftime of the Louisville-DePaul game to announce the winning rotation of the four-team draft lottery pecking order next spring and for the second straight year the New York Liberty, with strong favorable odds, drew the top pick.

 

A year ago when a consensus pick loomed large in Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu, it was quite the prize that then got waylaid when the record-setting triple double queen was lost for the season with an ankle injury in her second game.

 

She is on the road to recovery so technically the Liberty, which won just two games in the enclosed bubble in Tampa, Fla., last summer, can be thought going into 2021 of  having two picks and while there isn’t a clear No. 1 target now, there is enough quality that the Brooklynites, the Dallas Wings (2nd pick), Atlanta Dream, and Indiana Fever will still be able to either deal for veteran help or hold on to their prize for selections that will help them tighten the competition in the 12-team league.

“If you really look at the trajectory of this franchise where it’s going ... this is exciting,” said New York general manager Jonathan Kolb. It’s about time some good stuff is happening. When you build something, it does take time. Now we have the opportunity.”

New York was owned by MSG, the same company over the NBA Knicks and and NHL Rangers, until sold to Brooklyn Nets owner Joseph Tsai prior to the 2019 season.

That was the second of a two year transition relocation from Madison Square Garden to the Westchester Center in suburban White Plains while Joseph Dolan looked for a buyer and then Tsai got it too late to move back to the city but was set to house the team in the Barclays Center until the onset of the virus forced the league to play in the bubble in Bradenton, where it successfully made it through, the 12 teams playing a reduced schedule every other day culminating in the Seattle Storm beating the Las Vegas Aces in three games to win their second title in three seasons.

Indiana second-year coach Marianne Stanley, an Immaculata grad, noted the problematical position right now since the NCAA has ok’d seniors another year of eligibility due to the Covid-19.

“As of right now, it’s difficult to get out and see players live,” she said. “And we may not know for quite a while who’s going to be in the draft and who’s not.”

 Villanova Ruffles Owls’ Feathers: It’s turning out that having played under Harry Perretta’s system and then applied it to a successful 17-year reign in West Philadelphia at Drexel, and returning to succeed the veteran of 42 seasons on the Main Line,has enabled Denise Dillon to dispense with getting many getting acquainted formalities and deal with the extra sniping hitting everyone with caution taken to deal with the COVID-19 worsening attack.

 

“Yeah, you can concentrate on what you normally do except that in the back of your mind is the awareness that any minute, no matter how cautious, you could lose players to quarantine or worse, or have long stretches the whole team on the sideline,” Dillon said.

 

“That said, we’re 3-0, we start the Big East Sunday at Saint John’s (7 p.m. on Long Island), we’re getting in practices and getting in games and the kids are hungry for both and have handled everything,” she continued.

 

“This week, no one knew we were going to play Temple till Wednesday. But they’ve become a very close group and I love coaching them.”

 

While the past Nova personality has been one of a methodical attack filling the air with threes and passing the ball around till the near expiration of the shot clock, in this one it was a rare afternoon of racehorse basketball in which the Wildcats put the most points on the board in a game in the program since scoring89 eight seasons ago against Georgetown in the 2013 Big East tournament.

 

No doubt a future WNBA prospect, sophomore Maddy Siegrist, a future WNBA prospect, hit the 20-point plateau for the third time in three games, posting 23 and grabbing 12 rebounds, her third double double and 14th overall, while Bridget Herlihy hit a career-high with 22 points, while newcomer and senior Sarah Mortensen had 18 points, a career-best nine rebounds, and a career-high five assists.

 

Siegrist has scored 20 or more points in 18 of her 34 career games.

 

Brooke Mullin tied a career high with nine points in a game in which the Wildcats shot 34-of-67 from the field, including six three-pointers, for 50.7 percent.

 

On the other side, Temple was just happy to finally get onto the court and play a game after a bunch of stops and starts until becoming the first team in the city at the collegiate level to play after the latest virus protocols.

 

“They found out they’re not as good as they thought they were playing the coaching staff,” Temple coach Tonya Cardoza quipped.

In the ongoing schedule shuffle caused by cancellations and re-assembled contests on the fly, the Owls were focused on finally getting started on Sunday at Florida Gulf Coast until Villanova’s Big East opener with DePaul was relegated to a future date, likely next month, and a call was made to see if Temple wanted to re-instate their game.

“We were definitely excited,” said senior Mia Davis, another WNBA prospect, who had 22 points and a team-best seven rebounds. “I feel that over the past weeks we were working hard, giving effort, coming in practice ready, so there was a lot of excitement.”

Freshman Jasha Clinton had 16 points and grad student Jada Graves scored 11.

“We were really out of shape,” Cardoza said of the delays, “but when the call came, what’s two more days.”

The game was put together so fast that Temple athletic department video impresario Kevin Copp had to scramble to get his ESPN+ telecast on the air with an analyst, which became Nicki Jones, familiar with Dillon having played for her at Drexel and done Dragons broadcasts in recent seasons.

“I had been wondering if I was going to get any games this season,” she commented during a reference to conditions caused by the virus.

Like most everywhere, fans were not in the building and crowd noise was pumped into the building.

“You know, when you’re involved with the game, once the ball goes up, you don’t notice it while you’re in the flow,” Dillon said after a big home win last week to open with Rider and then taking a one-day round-trip to Quinnipiac in central Connecticut on Sunday. “But when you do notice a difference is when you go into a timeout and it’s dead, cause normally while you’re going over strategy there’s either the band playing or some promotion or fan thing with the arena emcee on the mike or DJ music playing.”

The points cascade for Villanova was helped by the points the Wildcats mined on Temple turnovers.

“We were playing a little too fast, but I wanted us to play fast,” Cardoza said. “It’s the first time out with a lot of young guys that haven’t played a lot of basketball for us. We’re going to make a lot of turnovers because we’re going to play fast. But we have to make sure we are paying attention and not have unnecessary turnovers leading to easy buckets.”

The move of No. 3 Connecticut back to the Big East removes a major barrier in the American Athletic Conference though league favorite South Florida is still a formidable opponent.

“The first few games that we will play over the course of December is about learning and paying attention and what is going to help us in the end,” Cardoza noted of the next two games Sunday and at soon-to-be-former No. 1 South Carolina (Dec. 17) following the Gamecocks’ Thursday home upset loss to No. 8 N.C. State. “Right now we are trying to find a good group that will go out there and compete.

“It will take a little bit of time to understand each other and figure out how to play. I know come January we will be a better team than we are today.”

Cardoza noted one silver lining in the setback.

With Penn shut down by the Ivy League, which includes defending champion Princeton, there is no local City Series round robin, hence no formal quest for the local bragging rights, though inherently bragging rights are always involved when schools of the Big Five meet.

“Yeah, I was just saying the same thing to my staff,” Cardoza said. “It’s the first time we’ve lost to those guys and it didn’t cost us a championship.”

Louisville Blasts DePaul: Bubbleville up at the Mohegan Sun took a back seat Friday night to the women’s game and Louisville made a bid from the No. 5 ranking slot to move to the top in the wake of South Carolina’s loss.

The game was the second, including the South Carolina game, of a two-night promotion of the annual Jimmy V event on the women’s side joining the men’s side in the battle against cancer in the name of the late great North Carolina State coach who also worked at Iona.

Kianna Smith and Hailey Van Lith each had 21 points for the Cardinals, who blocked 11 shots, while Darrione Rogers scored 25 for the Blue Demons. 

Dana Evans, the ACC preseason player of the year, scored 20 for Louisville, and Olivia Cochran had 19 points and 10 rebounds, while Elizabeth Dixon scored 12 on a perfect 6-for-6 from the field, and Elizabeth Balogun blocked four shots.

DePaul’s Dee Bekelja scored 18 and lexi held scored 12.

In the Arizona game, the home team’s Aari McDonald had 17 points, Bendu Yeaney scored 11, and Trinity Baptiste had her initial double double with the program, scoring 18 points and grabbing 11 rebounds.

It’s the first time the Wildcats as a Top 10 teams beat another one at home in the McKale Center and first consecutive wins over the Bruins since 2005.

The virus continued to be disruptive in the conference. Stanford after Saturday’s game at UNLV will stay in Las Vegas to play Washington in a Sunday league while Washington State has to postpone Sunday’s league game at California and Tuesday against Stanford because the Cougars do not have the required PAC-12 minimum seven players following testing and contract tracing.

Looking Ahead: In games of note on Saturday, locally, Drexel is at Monmouth at 2 p.m., Rider is at Delaware State at 1 p.m., and La Salle is hosting Saint Francis of Pa. at 4 p.m.

No. 6 Mississippi State is at South Florida at 7 in a key national game, while 13 other contests that were set for Saturday are either cancelled or postponed.

And that’s the report.