Guru’s WBB Report: Temple, Rutgers and No. 1 UConn Get Lopsided Wins While No. 12 USF Rallies to Stay Unbeaten in American

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

Temple on the road picked up another series win Wednesday afternoon triumphing at 68-46 in the American Athletic Conference, while later at night, No. 12 USF had to rally in overtime at home to beat Cincinnati 69-65 to keep their record within the American perfect. 

Elsewhere Rutgers continued to hum since ending its 35-day COVID-19 protocol pause, taking its fourth-straight Big Ten game, this one at home 83-56 over Minnesota, and No. 1 Connecticut after getting needed rest returned to leg two of its five-game road swing, clocking host St. John’s 77-32 in the Big East, which also had a more competitive 83-76 win at home recorded by No. 19 DePaul over Xavier in Chicago.

Two other Big Ten games involving ranked teams saw No. 9 Maryland easily grab a matinee attraction over visiting Illinois 103-58 at home in the XFINITY Center in College Park while No. 24 Northwestern put its poll standing in jeopardy, being upset at home 71-64 by Nebraska at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, Ill.

The No. 19 West Virginia visit to No. 7 Baylor was one of three Big 12 games postponed due to the inclement weather in the Midwest, particularly Texas.

Adding to the daily disruptions by the coronavirus, in all 15 games on Wednesday’s slate were postponed or cancelled, though the NCAA has reported both men’s and women’s divisions have each managed to have in the low 80 percents of each’s scheduled games get completed.

Temple Duo Double Doubles Tulsa:  So far, so good, on Temple’s three-game road trip as the Owls grabbed their second straight away from McGonigle Hall as Mia Davis and Alexa Williamson each recorded double doubles in a lopsided 68-46 win at Tulsa.

Coaches will always say making shots can cover for a lot of things and that’s what the Owls (9-8, 9-5 AAC) did in the Reynolds Center in Oklahoma, firing away at 50.9 percentage clip from the field, including 33.3 percent from beyond the arc. Temple thrived on the inside, getting 40 of its 68 points in the paint, while the Owls owned the boards 43-32 and blocks 5-0, while also holding a slight edge in assists 15-11.

Williamson had a game-high 18 points, and tied for game honors in rebounds with 10 against the Golden Hurricanes (5-10, 4-10), while Davis scored 17 and also had 10 rebounds. Rookie Jasha Clinton continued her fine play with 12 points, four assists, and three rebounds. Nearing scoring in double figures, Emani Mayo and Kash Ayuso each scored eight points.

Revved at the outset, the visitors jumped to a 13-2 lead and finished the first quarter 24-11 despite four turnovers that became five points for the opposition.

The decision desk was ready to call it for Temple at the half, the Owls holding a 42-20 lead and later proving no need for hesitancy with a 55-33 advantage going into the final ten minutes of regulation.

The next road stop comes Saturday at Memphis in Tennessee at 2 p.m. on ESPN+.

The Tigers (4-10, 2-7 AAC), whose Wednesday night game was postponed, will be under interim coach Michelle Savage, the former associate head coach, in the wake of the retirement last Sunday of veteran Melissa McFerrin, who had been at the school 14 seasons from her hire in 2008 after spending three seasons coaching American in the nation’s capital.

McFerrin was a longtime assistant to the late Nancy Darsch, at Ohio State and in the WNBA with the NewYork Liberty and Washington Mystics, where she also served as a general manager with the latter organization. She also served two seasons as an aide through 2004 with the Minnesota Lynx.

Memphis will seek to fill the position permanently after the season. Two veteran assistants in the region who could be part of the hunt’s focus are Matt Insell, currently on the staff of his Hall of Fame father coach Rick Insell at Middle Tennessee, and previously was head coach at Ole Miss and an aide at Kentucky, or Sam Purcell, who is under Jeff Walz at Louisville.

No. 12 USF Holds Off Cincy: Meanwhile elsewhere in the American, after a relatively easy game coming out of a long pause dealing with COVID-19 protocol issues, No. 12 South Florida had to get into overtime and continue to stay the course in a back-and-forth battle featuring 10 ties and 18 lead changes with Cincinnati before emerging with a 69-65 victory.

Though the visiting Bearcats (4-14, 3-11 AAC) sit in the lower portion of the American standings they played in the second half and overtime like they were fighting the Bulls (12-1, 9-0) for the top of the conference championship.

Had Cincinnati won, it would have been the program’s first triumph over a ranked team since beating No. 24 Marquette 65-62 a decade ago in 2020-11.

The Bearcats’ Llmar’l Thomas scored 23 points, 14 in the second half while teammate Caitlyn Wilson scored all 18 of her points after the break. Eight came in the third period built on a pair of shots from beyond the arc.

USF’s Sydni Harvey scored 23 helped by a trio of 3-pointers, while Bethy Mununga scored 19 and grabbed 14 rebounds for a thundering double double and Elisa Pinzan scored 11 and dealt nine assists.

Though Cincy had slight leads in the closing minutes of regulation, Pinzan and Mununga closed a four-point gap on Mununga’s score with 1:33 to tie it 56-56 and the game spilled into the overtime.

The Bearcats had their last lead 65-64 with 1:26 left in the overtime before Mununga regained it back on a pair of free throws and then scored on a layup to seal the outcome.

The bonus on the win for Jose Fernandez, who was early in the day named one of 15 on a late season watch list for the Werner Ladder Naismith Coach of the Year, was USF got to game No. 13, thus reaching the NCAA tourney minimum requirement for eligibility.

Keys to the win were getting 15 points out of 16 Bearcats turnovers while shooting 20-for-29 from the line, including 9-of-12 in the bonus period. For the game, the Bulls also dominated 18-6 on the offensive glass to gain a 10-point 15-5 advantage on second-chance points.

The 11th straight win extends the new record for the program set the last game beating Tulsa.

The three-game homestand for USF ends Saturday when Tulane visits the Yuengling Center at 7 p.m. on ESPN+ The Bulls then hit the road against Temple Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. on ESPN+.

 Rutgers Rolls Rocking Minnesota: Nearly two weeks ago Rutgers emerged from a 35-day pause caused by coronavirus issues and routed Nebraska with Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer promising the Scarlet Knights would begin to hit their stride within two weeks.

That time has come and while there’s still much to do Stringer conceded the forecast is close to being on schedule.

Rutgers made it four straight in the Big Ten since returning to action, the most recent, a lopsided 83-56 victory at home in the Rutgers Athletic Center over Minnesota as the Scarlet Knights (9-3, 5-3 Big Ten) moved within one of the 13-game regular season minimum requirement for the NCAA tournament, loopholes notwithstanding.

The squad has been rotating star of the night roles depending how each of the four wins have played out and in this one Diamond Johnson, the freshman from Philadelphia, was certainly a gem with a career-high 26 points, shooting 10-of-15 from the field, including 6-of-7 from deep, upping her 3-point shooting percentage to .537, the best of all listed in that NCAA statistics category for Division I women.

Arella Guirantes continued to be a threat with 22 points and seven assists, while Tekia Mack scored 12, grabbed eight rebounds and swiped a personal best eight steals tying a single game record in the RAC.

“We try to mix our defense up and the last few games, I feel like it wasn’t aggressive enough,” Mack said of her ball swiping prowess, the most by a Rutgers player since 2015. “I took the initiative to put the press on (I ran it by ‘Coach first), and we made them play in the backcourt. That’s our basketball and our way of playing defense.”

Minnesota (7-10, 6-9), which in recent seasons has been coached by former Golden Gophers star and WNBA All-American Lindsay Whalen, committed 22 turnovers allowing the home team a monstrous 35-9 advantage on gaining points from the miscues.

For years Rutgers lived on the trademark defenses drawn up by Stringer, but has been a two-way street this season, the Knights in this game shot 54 percent from the floor, including an even-better 56 percent on three-balls, and 12-of-16 from the charity stripe for 80 percent.

“I like the energy, the attitude, the defense and the willingness to share the ball,” said Stringer ticking off all the facets attributing to the hitting stride question. “We did the things we needed to do, and that was the magical recipe for success. The gold standard is limiting our turnovers and forcing the opponent into them.”

Yes, the 55 defense is still very much in play but it’s just no longer the only thing to spend much time discussing in postgame pressers.

With their third game in conference play scoring at least 80 points, the program had reach that total across six seasons, one in 2017-18, and two more in 2014-15.

Series wise with the Golden Gophers, it’s 5-4 in favor of the Knights plus one more for the overall 6-4 total counting a conference tournament match.

Next up is a visit Saturday at noon with recent road victim Illinois on the Big Ten network.

Elsewhere in the day in the conference, No. 9 Maryland routed the Illini in a home matinee 103-58 in the XFINITY Center in College Park, the win coming after coach Brenda Frese on Sunday had set a new Terrapins coaching victory mark at 500 and two days after the squad was made a No. 2 seed in the first Reveal snapshot look at the top 16 seeds as of now set by the NCAA tournament committee.

Harvard transfer Katie Benzan scored 22 points, including 6-of-12 on threes, for the Big Ten leaders (15-2, 11-1 Big Ten), who could be the dark horse in the NCAA field when the entire tourney opens next month in the San Antonio region of Texas.

As explosive as Maryland has been, being up 30 midway through the third quarter wasn’t good enough in terms of how the team was playing defensively, so Frese was requested a timeout to discuss the situation.

“Our team, our captains really took ownership,” Frese said. “They weren’t happy with how many points (Illinois) were scoring. At that point, they had 53 points, and they finished with 58. The ownership is there. We get that we can score the basketball. You see that.

“There’s an understanding that we have to tighten things up on the defensive end. It’s coming. It’s exciting.”

Chloe Bibby had 20 points and nine rebounds for the home team. Ashley Owusu scored 17 and dealt seven assists, while Diamond Miller scored 11 and also with seven assists.

“When we get our defense in lockdown, it’s just so much fun to play with,” Bibby said of subduing Illinois (3-14, 1-13), which must now go to Rutgers, Saturday. “Everyone feeds off that energy. If we’re locked in, I don’t think anyone can really beat us.”

Maryland, which joined the Big Ten in 2014 is now 12-0 on the Illini and a combined 49-0 adding Indiana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Penn State and Rutgers.

Minnesota will visit Saturday at noon, coming out of the Rutgers thrashing of the Golden Gophers. The game will air on BTN Plus.

In the other Big Ten game of note, No. 24 Northwestern, which has been in the AP Poll all season, is now in danger of being ousted following an upset loss to visiting Nebraska 71-64 in Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, Ill.

The rally by the Huskers (10-9, 8-8 Big Ten) snapped a four-game losing streak, though with the strength of the conference serving up opponents, Nebraska as of Wednesday night was the only Big Ten squad with four wins over AP ranked teams.

Kate Cain was perfect from the field, shooting 7-for-7 and tying a personal best 22 points, including her 1,000th, for the visitors, while Isabelle Bourne scored 21 and grabbed a career-high 17 rebounds. Cain was also 8-for-8 from the line.

Cain’s perfect six foul shots in the final 40 seconds clinched a comeback from a 14-point deficit in the second quarter against Northwestern (11-5, 9-5).

The Huskers were still playing catch-up, trailing by four heading to the final period, but then erupted for 31, including 10 from Cain, who for the game also had eight rebounds and two blocked shots to complete a sweep of the Wildcats.

Ashley Scoggins added 10 points.

One one side, Northwestern had a crushing 28-4 points off turnovers advantage but the Cornhuskers made up for it with a dominating 52-33 advantage on the boards.

Lindsey Pulliam had 22 points for the Wildcats, who recently lost at home to Rutgers a week ago. Sydney Wood had 12 points, six assists and six steals. Veronica Burton had all 10 of her points in the final period, with six rebounds and eight steals, while Jordan Hamilton had 10 points, 10 rebounds, and five steals.

Nebraska hosts Penn State at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln Sunday at 3 p.m. on the Big Ten+ network.

On Saturday, Northwestern will host Wisconsin at 3 p.m.

“It was a tale of two halves,” said Northwestern coach Joe McKeown, a Father Judge grad who grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and also coach New Mexico State and George Washington.

“We had Nebraska where we wanted them, first quarter, second quarter.

“Halftime we felt good about our defense and we just had defense really hurt us third and fourth quarters. They made some tough shots. Made some threes. They got inside, they had a size advantage and we just struggled shooting the ball. But we’ll be fine because we got great players. Have to give Nebraska credit. They made tough shots, controlled the fourth quarter. Disappointing. Biggest thing we can do is get ready to be Wisconsin on Saturday.”

Well Rested UConn Dominates St. John’s: It was like old times in St. John’s Carnesecca Arena in Queens for the visiting Huskies, who’s return to the top of the Associated Press Women’s Poll on Monday for the ongoing 246th record time, but first this season, meant the Red Storm would be the first to defend the honor against.

Hall of Fame Geno Auriemma’s squad was going off a four-day break that finally included two days rest away from basketball for those that chose.

Though UConn had won all but once, a narrow loss at then-No. 17 Arkansas last month, the looming March Madness, unprecedented format and all, meant it was time to answer the bell.

Out the window went the recent stretch of slow starts until the Huskies (17-1, 14-0 Big East) eventually responded to rescue themselves.

When the smoke cleared UConn had itself a 77-32 victory with Auriemma not much to complain about in what was the program’s 1,200 victory joining Tennessee in reaching that total.

There was even a bus ride back to campus in Storrs at a decent hour, one of the benefits the UConn coach had referenced when the university a year ago announced it was leaving the AAC after seven seasons of never losing within that conference and headed back to the Big East.

Noting the mid-month portion of February and the looming conference tourney at the Mohegan Sun followed by the NCAA tourney in its new-look all-games in the San Antonio region of Texas because of the coronavirus on the horizon, Auriemma said, “I told them. If you’re going to be an NCAA team, now is the time you start looking like an NCAA team.

“We spent a couple of days back home where we had real practices,” said Auriemma, whose team had played six games in 13 days into last Friday.

“I thought this was one of the best games where we moved. We moved well defensively, we moved well offensively. 

“Players were connected, we communicated well, and it ended up resulting in a lot of open shots for us.We showed up tonight with fresh legs, fresh minds, and you could see it.”

On the scoring side, three scored 15 or more points and the visitors shot 65 percent, while defensively, the Red Storm (6-12, 3-9) was held to 29 percent and committed 29 turnovers.

“And Joe (Tartamella) runs some pretty good stuff.

One person on the home side not running anywhere was Leilani Correa, who has been putting up 30 games in wins and losses on Big East foes, including 33 on the Huskies in their previous meeting, but was held to two points from from Christyn Williams, who had been in a scoring funk but seems to have finally shook her basketball woes.

Raven Farley had seven points and five rebounds for St. John’s as the top player in this game for the Red Storm.

“This was one of Christyn’s best games, certainly the best game she’s played this year, because it was a complete game,” Auriemma said.

Williams had a team-high 21 points, on 8-for-11 from the field, including 3-for-4 from deep, while Nelson-Ododa with 17 points and seven rebounds.

Freshman Paige Bueckers, who has already made more history in the weekly awards department from the Big East and the United States Basketball Writers Association, scored 20, the seventh 20 plus effort for seven out of eight games, shooting in this one 8-for-10, including 2-for-3 on three-balls, and dealing nine assists with four rebounds.

Earlier this week, Bueckers became the first to sweep both the Big East player and freshman awards twice, after a week ago becoming just the fourth in the conference to do it once.

A day later, she became the second freshman overall and the first since the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) began separately handing out frosh honors in 2018 to win the player of the week and the first to win both the same week in sharing this week with Iowa freshman Caitlin Clark, a previous winner this season. 

Bueckers has now gotten the USBWA frosh citation four straight weeks, a record of consecutive achievements when she repeated off her first.

Another UConn frosh, Aaliyah Edwards scored 10 points.

Auriemma continues to gain his own honors, Wednesday being named as one of 15 on the late season national coach of the year watch list.

The victory was his 1,108th, second to the record 1,113 held by Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer for NCAA Division I women’s coaches.

The late Tennessee Hall of Fame legend Pat Summitt held the record at 1,098 when she retired at the end of the 2012 season battling Alzheimer’s Disease, which claimed her life several years later.

VanDerveer passed Summitt’s total in early December while Auriemma came along a month later to move into second place.

Stanford next plays Friday night hosting Arizona State while UConn begins finishing off the five-game road trip with the third leg visiting Xavier Saturday at 3 p.m. in the Cintas Center in Cincinnati.

Then next week the Huskies visit Creighton in Omaha, Nebraska, on Thursday, and then Butler on Saturday at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. 

There was even time for some of the vintage Auriemma levity when on the postgame zoom press conference the Hartford Courant’s Alexa Philippou asked for comment on a video showing Auriemma dressed as a male practice player playing and playing with the Huskies’ Aubrey Griffin.

He quipped his appearance (he wore a headband, sweatband and basketball shorts) could have been related to the Huskies’ play against St. John’s.

“That’s not a coincidence you know,” he said. “Don’t discount the effect that that particular day had on our team. The intensity level was raised, the urgency level was raised. Certainly the level of play went up, the skill level went up, the basketball IQ level went up, and everybody just kind of fed off of that.

“I waited as long as I could, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to break it out. I didn’t want to deprive the team any longer.”

In the only other Wednesday and Big East game with a ranked team, No. 19 DePaul, which trails UConn by two and sits in second place, beat visiting Xavier 83-75.

Lexi Held scored 25 points for the Blue Demons, winning their fourth straight and ninth in 10 games. She also had five steals and four rebounds, while Sonya Morris scored 22, with seven assists and six rebounds, and Dee Bekelja had 20 points and six rebounds.

The visiting Musketeers (13-4, 10-2 Big East)have been one of the hard-hit teams shut down by COVID-19 protocols, having last played almost a month ago on Jan. 23.

Xavier (4-6, 1-5), though was able to extend DePaul most of the way until after closing within three in the final period, the Demons then launched a 7-0 run.

The Musketeers fought back within six with 22 seconds left in regulation, but Bekelja and Darrione Rogers each hit a foul shot to end it.

DePaul is now 21-1, losing just the first time they meet, in the series. The Musketeers had been in the Atlantic 10 when the great conference membership shakeup occurred.

Looking Ahead: On Thursday, locally, Penn State is at Iowa in the Big Ten at 4 p.m., while in the Atlantic 10, Saint Joseph’s will try to snap it’s losing streak when the Hawks visit Richmond in the Robins Center in Virginia at noon on ESPN+, and La Salle will be nearby at 6 visiting VCU, both games on ESPN+.

Among ranked teams, a huge showdown game No. 21 Tennessee hosts No. 2 South Carolina at 7 in Knoxville on the Southeastern Conference network, though three other SEC games are postponed either by weather or in the case of one, the suspension of Vanderbilt’s season thus canceling the Georgia visit.

In the Atlantic Coast Conference, No. 3 Louisville is at Pittsburgh at 8, while No. 4 North Carolina State is at Wake Forest at 7 p.m.

In the Big Ten, Purdue is at No. 15 Ohio State at 4 p.m., while No. 11 Michigan is at No. 14 Indiana in the Hoosiers’ Alumni Hall at 6 on the Big Ten Network in Bloomington.

In the West Coast Conference, No. 16 Gonzaga is at BYU at 8 p.m.

And that’s the report.