The Guru Report: Temple Gets Big Five Win Beating La Salle While Princeton Top Towson on Road

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PHILADELPHIA — Having rescued Temple just 48 hours earlier, Tiara East came off the bench Monday night and poured a career-high 25 points, grabbed nine rebounds, and dealt four assists to lead the Owls at home in the Liacouras Center to a 70-56 win over La Salle, giving first-year coach Diane Richardson her first win in the Big Five.

In the only other game involving a local on an overall lite night, Princeton traveled to play Richardson’s former team Towson in suburban Baltimore and downed the host Tigers, who bear the same mascot name as the Ivy contingent.

Jasha Clinton had a double-double for Temple (4-5, 1-2 Big Five), which neared getting to a .500 record, scoring 12 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. Ines Piper had a near double-double with eight points and nine rebounds.

Temple began making separation near the end of the first period and forging to a 21-10 lead.

The Owls  kept going in the next period making it a 15-point differential  before the Explorers’ Charity Shears hit a shot from deep just before time expired to shorten the Owls’ lead to 12 at 33-21.

La Salle (6-4, 0-2) launched a surge from 15 down in the third period getting the differential to five and ultimately a 50-50 tie before, as in the previous game, Temple started cooking again with a 15-0 run to grab control.

Claire Jacobs had 13 for the Explorers, while Shears scored 12, but the. Owls defended one of the other big scoring machines in Kayla Spruill, holding her to three points on a completed shot from deep out of eight attempts, the same shot also being 1-for-11 overall and 1-for-8 from beyond the perimeter.

“I think it was a great win for us, again a Big Five win, those are so really, really important in Philly and I think we did a great job, defensively,” Richardson said. “There were a couple of times we lulled a little bit and and then we bounced back.”

It’s finals week here on campus so Temple is off until the Sunday when the Owls will play their final Big Five affair, traveling to The Palestra to play Penn at noon on ESPN+.

The Explorers will host Monmouth Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. on ESPN+.

“We knew our speed was going to be the key, so if we could hold them defensively and get stops and get out in transition,” Richardson said. “Tiara East did a great job getting five steals and turning us back around and we scored in transition.”

This was the first time in two seasons the teams met, the original game date schedule for last year was postponed due to pandemic issues and then the two sides could not find a date once each in their respective conference phases creating barriers. 

“When I saw they beat Drexel, I know a lot about Drexel,” Richardson said of her annual home-and-home and sometimes more series competing against the Dragons in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA). 

As for the Monday night view from La Salle, coach Mountain MacGillivray, who is a Temple grad, said, “Temple did a really good job on the glass (rebounds), really did a good job of forcing turnovers at half court, did a real good job defending the perimeter on Kayla Spruill, all those factors put us in position, where we play catch up.

And then we caught up. And they made the right plays to get themselves some space. I thought we defended the three-point line really, really well, until we gave the two threes, and that’s a good recipe to lose a game when you crawl all the way back and you give up a turnover for a layup and then back-to-back threes.

“I think Diane’s doing a good job and they’re going to grow as the season goes along.”

Princeton Zaps Towson: In what became a battle of Tigers, the visitors from up north representing the Ivy League were more ferocious winning 71-54 at the SECU Arena, which will be the host arena this March for the CAA tourney.

Julie Cunningham had 13 points for Princeton (5-2), whose losses were at Texas when the Longhorns were ranked and at home to Villanova, which got the Wildcats into the rankings where they remained Monday for the fourth straight week despite Friday’s home loss to then-No. 13 Creighton in a Big East opener.

Grace Stone and Madison St. Rose each scored 12 and Kaitlyn Chen scored 11, while Ellie Mitchell grabbed 12 rebounds.

The Tigers on the visiting side led by 17 at the half before the home team (4-4) opened with a 6-0 spurt from the break and later launched an 8-0 run to trail 55-47 with 6:28 left in regulation before Princeton denied Towson any baskets in the final 3:45 to claim the win.

Kylie Kornegay-Lucas scored 20 for Towson, whose coach Laura Harper is a former Maryland star out of Cheltenham High in the Philly burbs.  She was hired when her predecessor took the Temple job.

Patricia Anumgba had 10 points for the host Tigers, who became the first Princeton opponent to be denied any three pointers since Dec. 29, 2019 when New Hampshire was blocked from deep.

On Thursday night at 7 Princeton coach Carla Berube will take her squad to play at No. 6 Connecticut, on campusat 7 p.m. on SNY at Gampel Pavilion, where she was a star in 1995 on the first unbeaten Huskies NCAA national champion

Nationally noted: In two games of mentioning, No. 8 N.C. State won at Georgia 65-54 in Athens while in the last of the opening set of Big Ten contests, Purdue won at Michigan State 76-71 in overtime.

The host Spartans (6-4, 0-1 Big Ten) got a score from Kamaria McDaniel to tie it with two seconds left in regulation but with 3:30 left in the extra period, the Boilermarkers (8-1, 1-0) went up on two foul shots from Madison Layden.

Getting a stop at Michigan State’s end, Purdue then made it a four-point advantage on Lasha Petree’s layup.

Michigan State struck back on Gabby Elliott’s layup and soon thereafter added a foul shot from Kamria McDaniel to make it 67-66 but the Boilermakers used an old fashion three-point play from Jeanae Terry to make it 70-66 with 1:05 left in the overtime.

Purdue then forced a turnover and increased the lead to 72-66 on two foul shots from Abby Ellis with 33 seconds left.

Michigan State sliced the deficit in half with a shot from deep with 31 seconds remaining before Ellis pushed the advantage back to five with 18 seconds left on two more Ellis foul shots.

Layden took the differential to five for the visitors with 14 seconds remaining and that became the outcome.

N.C.  State (8-1) in nonconference action got 19 points from Mimi Collins, while Camille Hobby scored 10 both for the Wolfpack.

Georgia (8-2) got 18 points from Audrey Warren while Brittney Smith, Diamond Battles, and Alisha Lewis each scored 10 points.

AP Women’s Polling News: Stanford Hall of Fame women’s coach Tara VanDerveer replaced the late Tennessee legend Pat Summit as the mentor with the most appearances with their teams at 619 when the new list voted from a nationwide media panel was announced Monday afternoon.

A small chunk of her combined total came after appearances with Ohio State before heading to Palo Alto, Calif., where VanDerveer has been ever since.

Ever since is no more for Tennessee, Texas, and Louisville. Following the first-ever preseason AP women’s poll in November 1976 where none of the three appeared, the next 828 weeks at least one of them were ranked until Monday when the shutout was replicated from the media group.

Texas and Tennessee, which were Top five in this season’s preseason vote, are gone, the Vols went first a week ago. 

A week ago Louisville ended a streak of 198 straight Top 10 appearances.

Villanova despite the loss to Crreighton stayed in at No. 25, while Ohio State is now third, Indiana fourth, and Notre Dame fifth.

Looking Ahead: On Tuesday in nonconference games, Villanova at 7 p.m. will host American of the Patriot League on Flohoops while Penn the same time will host Bucknell of the league in The Palestra on ESPN+.

The first of two weeks of lighter schedules with teams taking fall semester finals shows on Wednesday unbeaten Saint Joseph’s will be at Rider at 7 p.m., while No. 10 Iowa State will be at No. 16 Iowa at 7 p.m. on ESPN2.

And that’s the report.