The Guru Report: Drexel Wins Over Charleston at the Buzzer; No. 2 Stanford and No. 4 Arizona Grab PAC-12 Victories

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

Though 24 days have elapsed since Drexel last played, the defending Colonial Athletic Association tournament champions got conference play started Friday night the way the Dragons performed in non-conference action — on the winning side.

The triumph at Charleston however was achieved in dramatic fashion with Mariah Leonard scoring the game-winner with 3.8 seconds left in regulation for a 61-60 victory.

Keishana Washington produced another dominating performance, scoring 33 points, her third career game with 30 or more points and fourth straight reaching the 20 plus level.

Additionally, there was nothing unlucky about the number 13 for Tessa Brugler, who made the figures appear twice in points and rebounds for a double double while Leonard grabbed 12 boards.

“ It was a tough gritty win on the road,” said head coach Any Mallon. “When you get a win shooting 2-16 from 3 it’s a great road victory.

“The key was only 10 TOs and execution of plays down the end.” 

The Dragons (9-2, 1-0 CAA) were idle a long time due to three games affected by Covid-19 positive results from testing.

The first came near the end of last month when a non-conference game to be hosted by Delaware State down in Dover was cancelled from the books. 

That was followed with the original conference openers at home in the Daskalakis Athletic Center a week ago — James Madison and red-hot Towson since rescheduled.

On Friday night, the host Cougars (8-4, 0-1) came up with enough work to almost force Drexel into two straight seasons dropping the first affair though the finish was dandy enough winning the CAA crown against regular season champion Delaware last.

Latrice Perkins scored 15 points, Jenna Annecchiarico scored 13, while off the bench a double double came from one reserve in Arynn Eady with 12 points and 16 rebounds, while substitute Grace Abercrombie scored 10.

Drexel was down a point with 14.5 seconds left in regulation and appeared to flip the lead when Washington drove to the basket but she was fouled. Charleston got the rebound off a missed shot, then quickly lost possession on a travel.

The Dragons inbounded with Maura Hendrixson passing to Leonard, whose layup with the clock winding down became the differential.

Mallon’s group will go for a weekend sweep on Sunday, visiting UNCW in Trask Coliseum in Wilmington, N.C., at 1 p.m. on Flohoops. 

UNCW was set in reschedule mode Friday with Delaware, which had come up positive, the game since rescheduled for later in the season.

Meanwhile among all the other locals, the Omicron variant continues to be disruptive.

Already sent to reschedule city with a new date to be determined off Friday’s action, No. 11 UConn at Villanova; Penn at Cornell, plus at Columbia Saturday in Ivy League back-to-back games; Princeton in an Ivy tilt at Columbia - the Tigers are still set to visit Cornell, Saturday.

Meanwhile on the visitors’ part, Saint Joseph’s hosting George Mason Saturday got postponed and now the Hawks in the Atlantic 10 will play a makeup Sunday, traveling to play VCU in the hosts’ Coliseum in Richmond on ESPN+

As mentioned in the previous post, the delay of Rhode Island at Fordham and La Salle at Massachusetts in the Atlantic 10 now has La Salle Sunday traveling to the Bronx to play in a move-up at Fordham in Rose Hill Gym at noon on CBSSN.

The Princeton at Cornell game is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Saturday while Temple finally gets back in action visiting Cincinnati at 2 p.m. on ESPN+ in the Owls’ American Athletic Conference opener. They had not played since a visit to Northwestern in Evanston, Ill., on Dec. 19. The host subsequently came down with Covid cases soon thereafter and had to cancel a visit from Oregon the following Tuesday and Temple the next night postponed a Big Five visit from La Salle.

Rider is still set to host Fairfield Saturday at 7 p.m. in a MAAC game at home in Alumni Gymnasium in Lawrenceville, N.J. The Broncs are coming off a tough-giveaway loss at Manhattan in the fourth quarter Thursday night.

As for the rest of the locals on Sunday, Rutgers off a loss at home Thursday to Minnesota, travels to No. 8 Michigan at 2 p.m. in Ann Arbor on B1G+; Villanova’s trip to Georgetown is postponed in the Big East due to Covid issues on both teams; and Delaware gets back in action visiting Charleston at 1 p.m. on Flohoops.

Nationally noted: Of the PAC-12 teams which got to play, No. 2 Stanford, the defending NCAA champions, downed visiting Oregon 80-68 at home in Maples Pavilion near Palo Alto, while No. 4 Arizona came out of hibernation to beat Washington State 60-52 at home in Tucson.

But postponements involved Oregon State at California; UCLA at Utah and Washington at Arizona State. Host Colorado did beat Southern Cal 71-58.

On Sunday, with Oregon State at Stanford in postponed mode, the host Cardinal, who a year ago spent most of the season away from home, who welcome Gonzaga of the West Coast Conference in a second game this season, playing at Stanford at 6 p.m. on the athletic department’s live stream network.

Arizona in a reshuffle will visit Southern Cal at 6 p.m. on the  PAC-12 network.

In Friday night’s Stanford game, which was under protocol procedures in limiting fans to Cardinal family members, Lexi Hull set career marks with 33 points driven by seven from deep, though the Ducks did mount a late rally.

Hull and her sister Lacie each made threes to start the game for the Cardinal (10-3, 2-0 PAC-12) though a slew of turnovers later enabled the Ducks (7-5, 0-1) to mount a 14-2 rally.

Oregon had won two straight in Stanford visits.

“I guess this is our new normal,” said Hall of Fame coach Tara VanDerveer, who extended her NCAA Women’s Division I career record win total to 1,135. That’s ten more than Hall of Fame UConn coach Geno Auriemma, whose team had been idle but set to host the second Gonzaga encounter as mentioned.

“I would have loved to have our fans here to see Lexie have such a great game in person and Anna (Wilson) such a great game in person,” VanDerveer said.

The Ducks were set to have their three top players together again until four hours later they learned Sedonna Prince had tested positive.

Endiya Rogers scored 22 while Nyara Sabally had19 points and eight rebounds for the visitors, who had their openers last weekend with Colorado and Utah postponed and in this one shot 5-of-20 in the first quarter.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Ducks coach Kelly Graves. “Here we go again. I think it’s actually even worse this year because we don’t know, we don’t know from day to day.

“Last year it was different, we kind of knew what we were in for we were getting tested every day and now it’s just the wild, wild West.”

Oregon, which lost to South Carolina in the tropics earlier this season, have never beaten a team ranked 1 or 2.

The Ducks are across the bay at California on Sunday.

VanDerveer said Long Beach also offered to travel to Maples Sunday.

Colorado is one of two unbeaten teams remaining in Division I women.

The other is Arizona, which stayed that way Friday, which stayed that way with the home winin McKale Arena.

The Cougars though threatened the perfect season record near the end, trailing 54-52 with 48 seconds left in regulation.

But following a technical foul on top of a common foul, Arizona (11-0, 1-0 PAC-12) had four foul shots, made three, and a layup on the next possession to go ahead by seven.

Washington State is now 9-5 overall and 1-2 in the conference. Krystal Leger-Walker scored 12 points, had nine rebounds and six assists, while Bella Murekatete scored 11.

“I’m disappointed that we lost the game,” said Cougars coach Kamie Ethridge, a former Texas star. “I loved the way we competed.”

Arizona, meanwhile, had not played in three weeks and took the floor with a shortened roster on a night they had former star Aari McDonald, now in the WNBA, for an honor. But they played on, giving coach Adia Barnes her 100th victory at the finish.

“I think it was a little bit of mental lapses,” said Arizona’s Cate Reese. “I think it just comes from being a little rusty. We hadn’t played in a while.”

Reese had 20 points, seven rebounds, three steals, and an assist. Helena Pueyo, a substitute starter, had 12 points.

Two teams in the Big East but not in the Guru’s tracker for Friday because of the nature of the matchups, had split results, DePaul beating Providence on the road 98-77 while Marquette lost on the road at Creighton 62-45.

Right now the NCAA qualifying low number of games is 25 to make the tournament, different than a year ago when the marker was 13.

The feeling is that the NCAA will soon change the 25 because the markers will soon begin to run out of calendar room for makeups.

Stay tuned.

That’s your Friday report.