Guru’s WBB Report: Rutgers Upsets No. 21 Northwestern in Big Ten Road Triumph

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

Two games out from 38 days in shut-down COVID-19 protocols, Rutgers came up with a big road win in the Big Ten,  upsetting No. 21 Northwestern 70-54, in a blazing finish at a Thursday afternoon matinee in the Wildcats’ Welsh-Ryan Arena following Sunday’s one-sided home win over Nebraska as the Scarlet Knights (7-3, 3-3 Big Ten) returned to action.

The triumph over the Wildcats (11-4, 9-4) was Rutgers’ first victory on the road over a ranked team in two seasons, last coming up on the winning side in December, 2018.

Redshirt sophomore Ty Singleton had a career-high 17 points, shooting 7-for-9 from the field.

The game was close across the first three quarters, the visitors being ahead by a point, tied at the half, back up by three heading to the final 10 minutes in which they overwhelmed Northwestern 23-10.

The defense was tough enough causing the Wildcats to miss their final 11 field goal attempts as Rutgers closed out with a 12-1 run.

Afterwards, Singleton was happy to talk about practice.

“I’m proud of my work in the practice gym,” she said. “We wouldn’t be Rutgers without a presence in the post. I put that weight on my shoulders, and I know it would be hard to win without me stepping up.

“I took my time, focused on layups and the fundamentals. My team trusts me, and that’s something we need to be successful.”

Rutgers’ three losses had been all narrow and in the conference, losing at home to then No. 14 Maryland and then on the road at Iowa and the first of two meetings with Nebraska.

So call it a statement that the Scarlet Knights beat a team that had won three straight, including No. 11 Ohio State, and seven of their last eight.

“We are excited, happy and appreciative that everyone worked extremely hard and everyone made major contributions,” said Hall of Fame Rutgers head coach C. Vivian Stringer, who recently referred to the shutdown as this season being the strangest of her 50-year career. “It wasn’t any one person. Everyone wanted to eat. And everyone came to the table.

“As we head toward March, we need that level of confidence in every game.”

Takia Mack had a double double with 16 points and 13 rebounds, while Arella Guirantes scored scored 15, and Diamond Johnson, who was 4-of-6 from deep, scored 14.

Guirantes, Johnson, and Mael Gilles each dealt five assists.

Both squads lived up to their Big Ten stats as the top two teams in the conference in turnover ratio, each committing 11.

That was close enough to Stringer’s aspirations.

“Ten is the gold standard,” she smiled.

 

Jordan Hamilton had 13 points, while Paige Mott and Sydney Wood each scored 12 for the home team, but Lindsey Pulliam was held to eight points off 3-for-14 from the field, while Veronica Burton scored seven.

“It was a hard-fought game, two-point game with five minutes to go, then they hit a three and we couldn’t score, that was the basic difference,” said Northwestern coach Joe McKeown, a Father Judge grad who grew up in Northeast Philadelphia. “We had some momentum and they made a couple big plays, and we couldn’t get the ball to drop and made some turnovers.

“Rutgers is a really good defensive team. We knew that coming in. But we gave up some second shots and gave up some open looks, they made you pay.”

The visitors got their first win at Northwestern in five tries in the series since joining the conference in 2014-15 from a brief one-year stay in the American Athletic Conference and the old Big East before that.

The Scarlet Knights move on to Purdue Sunday afternoon.

The Boilermakers on Thursday lost 62-49 at home to No. 12 Michigan, a team that had just come out of a moderate length shut-down of their own, not having played since Jan. 21 when a department-wide pause was ordered by the university.

The Wolverines (11-1, 6-1 Big Ten) led all the way as Lehigh Brown and Naz Hillmon each scored 20 on Purdue (6-10, 3-9). Akiernreh Johnson had eight points and 12 rebounds. Hillmon also had 10 rebounds.

The Michigan defense forced 22 turnovers, mining 24 points through the defensive pressure.

The Wolverines are off until next Thursday, traveling to No. 15 Indiana.

In another game in the conference ,but involving unranked teams, Iowa freshman Caitlin Clark, who has been on a tear all season for the Hawkeyes, had a career-high 39 points, shooting 12-for-18 from the field, including 6-of-10 from deep, and a perfect 9-for-9 on the charity stripe, besides grabbing 10 rebounds and dealing seven assists, helped the visitors withstand a 13-0 Nebraska run down the stretch for an 88-81 win at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln as the Hawkeyes improved to 11-6 and 7-6 in the Big Ten, while the Huskers fell to 9-8 overall and 7-7.  

Kentucky Upsets Tennessee:  In the Southeastern Conference with the number of ranked teams and playing each other with the shifting ranking designations sometimes it is hard to say what is actually a true upset despite what the current Associated Press women’s basketball promulgates.

Nevertheless, with the No. 20 Wildcats having been on a gradual slide and the Lady Vols, who were shut down their last two games off coronavirus issues, been otherwise a bit on the rise, call the 71-56 win over No. 16 and visiting Tennessee an upset in the game played in in Lexington at Rupp Arena.

The triumph avenged a 70-53 loss to Tennessee less than three weeks ago when star player Rhyne Howard did not travel with the Wildcats as part of COVID-19 protocols.

This time it was the No. Lady Vols missing one of their stars in similar circumstances, Rennia Davis. 

Each situation was the first absence of the season in a game for both players.

The upshot was the defense by Kentucky (14-5, 7-4 SEC) forcing 17 turnovers resulting in 24 points on Tennessee (12-4, 6-2), which had a four-game win streak in the conference snapped.

“Had too many turnovers that led to easy buckets for them,” second-year Lady Vols coach and alum Kellie Harper stated the obvious. “I thought their zone stalled us out a little bit offensively to start the fourth quarter.”

Howard, the reigning SEC player of the year, had seven of Kentucky’s 11 steals. 

Chasity Patterson scored 21 for the winners, while Jazmine Massengill, a transfer from Tennessee, peppered her former team with three from beyond the arc on the way to a season-high 11 points.

Howard had a well-rounded night if not necessarily through the basket where she scored eight points, but she also grabbed seven rebounds, had the seven steals and dealt six assists.

The Wildcats were 10-of-20 in all on three-point attempts, and on fastbreaks had a dominating 18-2 advantage.

“So proud of Jazmine,” said Kentucky coach Kyra Elzy, a Tennessee alum, about a key three-pointer that helped change momentum down the stretch. “She and I talked yesterday that she had to be a threat, to see herself as scorer, even though she’s a facilitator. She’s an unbelievable passer. But she stepped up and I’m proud of her.

“As how we finished, as Tennessee made a run, we talked in the huddle, `Do not panic. Let’s not settle for quick outside shots. Let’s move the basketball. Either get layups or wide open shots and we hit them.”

Tamari Key, who recently had the fourth triple double in Tennessee history, had nine points, grabbed six rebounds, and blocked six shots, though she fouled out in the fourth quarter.

Rae Burrell scored 22 for Tennessee, while Jordan Horston scored 11, and Jordan Walker grabbed nine rebounds.

Meanwhile, as the calendar dwindles toward the conference and ensuing NCAA tournaments, not that there’s much choice, but the schedule maker is doing Tennessee no favor in making up previous postponed games.

No. 6 Texas A&M was already on the books on the road for Sunday, Valentine’s Day, being shown no love, and now Mississippi State has been added for Tuesday. Next Thursday currently No. 1 South Carolina visits and there’s still the return trip to No. 24 Georgia, which in the first meeting early, won in Knoxville for the first time in 25 years.

“I knew that Tuesday game was going to get put in there,” Harper said. “The thing that we have to do, I will never excuse a loss, so they’re going to have to feel bad about it tonight.

“That’s fine. I need them to. I need them to chew on it a little bit, figure out what we can do better. We have’t had a lot of adversity recently, so this is a challenge for our team.”

SEC Survivors: Elsewhere in the SEC, the ranked team crowd survived in various ways, other than Georgia, which had an easy 74-54 victory over Auburn at home in Stegeman Coliseum in Athens.

No. 1 South Carolina, at least until the next poll AP poll Monday, in its first game since Monday’s narrow overtime loss at No. 2 Connecticut, struggled for a half with visiting Missouri before eventually powering on to a 77-62 victory at Colonial Life Arena in Columbia.

Destanni Henderson had seven of her 11 points in a third period that gave the Gamecocks (16-2, 11-0) their 30th straight win in the SEC, including last season’s conference tournament, while the program-record regular season win streak rose to 27.

Zia Cook scored 15 for the home team, Aliyah Boston had 11 points and 12 rebounds.

The Gamecocks had returned to No. 1 for the first time since early in the season a few hours before losing a tight battle to the Huskies.

Missouri (7-8, 3-7) trailed just by a point in the third when Henderson exploded.

The Tigers have lost four straight to South Carolina and five times in the past seven games.

Misssouri’s Shug Dickinson had 15 points.

LSU visits Sunday at noon on the SEC network.

No. 18 Arkansas was in yet another close one within the conference before finishing with an 86-80 win at home in Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville over Mississippi State.

Myah Taylor had a career night for Mississippi State (8-6, 3-5 SEC), scoring 22 points for the Bulldogs, who on Monday ended what was a fifth current run of 125 straight weeks in the Associated Press women’s poll.

Aliyah Matharu scored 17, Rickea Jackson scored 14, Jessika Carter scored 11,

Arkansas (15-7, 5-6)  got 26 points from Destiny Slocum, while Chelsea Dungee scored 22, and Amber Ramirez scored 12 as the Razorbacks shot 32-for-55 from the field for 58 percent.

“We could have folded in the second half,” said Mississippi State first-year coach Nikki McCray-Penson. “We didn’t quit. We didn’t give up. We believed we could win this game.”

Louisville and N.C. State Easy Winners: Over in the Atlantic Coast Conference, after the carnage that cost both Louisville and N.C. State to be number one, nationally, the two programs were on the upside Thursday with No. 3 Louisville beating Georgia Tech 85-70 at home in the KFC Yum! Center, while No. 4 N.C. State thrashed Clemson 86-65 at home in Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh.

In what was apparently her home final, Dana Evans scored 25 points for the Cardinals (19-1, 12-1 ACC), who’s sole loss was three games ago to N.C. State at home. Kianna Smith scored 21, while Elizabeth Dixon and Olivia Cochran each scored 13.

Georgia Tech (11-5, 9-4) got 19 points from Kierra Fetcher, while Loyal McQueen scored 14, and Nerea Hermosa scored 13.

Louisville’s 17-8 second quarter proved the difference, though the final 25-19 in the fourth helped close out the win.

On Sunday at 1 p.m., the Cardinals are at Syracuse, which was upset Thursday night at Florida State 67-52.

N.C. State (13-2, 8-2 ACC), which got upset Sunday at North Carolina, costing the Wolfpack a chance at No. 1 or No. 2 in the rankings, came back with an explosive first quarter and continued on to downing Clemson (10-8, 5-8) in a matinee attraction to stay unbeaten at 9-0 at home as Kayla Jones scored 21 points off 8-of-10 from the field, while dishing a matching career-high seven assists without making any turnovers.

Jakia Brown-Turner scored 13, while Camille Hobby scored 12, and Elissa Cunane scored 11.

Clemson got 24 points from Delicia Washington, while Amari Robinson scored 11.

Notre Dame visits Monday in the annual Play4Kay Game to fight breast cancer.

Zags Keep Rolling: In the only other game involving a ranked team Thursday, out in the West Coast Conference, No. 17 Gonzaga at home ended San Francisco’s six-game win streak, downing the Dons 79-66 at home in the McCarthy Athletic Center in Sopkane, Wash.

Jill Townsend scored 19 for the Bulldogs (17-2, 12-0 WCC), who are unbeaten in conference play, while Jenn Wirth scored 14, and Kayleigh Truong scored 11.

Lucie Hoskova scored a game-high 19 for San Francisco (11-9, 7-7).

“I’m proud of the way we played in the second half, for sure,” said Dons coach Molly Goodenbour, a former Stanford star. “When playing a good team like that you have to do everything right and there were a few times that we let people get loose for open looks and they were able to capitalize.

“But overall, I’m pleased with our effort.”

Looking Ahead: On Friday, Saint Joseph’s, locally, visits Fordham at noon, while La Salle visits Davidson at 2 p.m., both in the Atlantic 10 and both on ESPN+.

In the first of two and at each other’s arenas in the CAA, Delaware hosts Drexel at 6 p.m. in the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark before the teams head  to Drexel’s Daskalakis Athletic Center, Sunday on Valentine’s Day at 1 p.m., both on the Flohoops streaming apps.

Other ranked teams in action Friday has No. 8 UCLA at Utah in the PAC-12, while No. 10 Arizona will host Washington State at 9 p.m. on the PAC-12 network. No. 11 Oregon hosting California in the PAC-12 is postponed due to coronavirus issues on the part of Cal.

No. 25 Missouri State will visit Illinois State Friday at 5 p.m. in the Missouri Valley Conference on ESPN+

On Saturday, in the ranked categories, No. 14 South Florida, if cleared, will be hosting Tulsa at 4 p.m. in Tampa, Fla., in the AAC, while No. 25 Missouri State will be playing its second game at Illinois State in the Missouri Valley Conference.

No. 5 Stanford will be at Oregon State in the PAC-12  at 11 p.m. on the PAC-12 network while No. 17 Gonzaga in Washington will be hosting Santa Clara at 5 p.m., and No. 23 South Dakota State will be at Oral Roberts at 3 p.m. in the Summit League.

Rider in the first of two back-to-backs will host Niagara in the CAA in Alumni Gym at 1 p.m. on ESPN3 in Lawrenceville, N.J, and Sunday at 1 p.m. on ESPN+

Temple hosts East Carolina at noon in McGonigle Hall in the American Athletic Conference,  on ESPN+ looking to bounce back from Wednesday’s rout from Houston, while Penn State in its annual Play4Kay game to fight breast cancer, will host Michigan State in a Big Ten game in the Bryce Jordan Center at noon on the Big Ten Network.

We’ll talk about Sunday in the next overnite for Saturday.

And that’s the report.