The Guru Report: Drexel Upset by Northeastern; Three of Four Ivy Madness Tickets Punched by Penn, Princeton and Columbia

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PHILADELPHIA — All season long Drexel’s Keishana Washington has been one of the top floor shows in women’s basketball, especially locally along with Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist and Penn’s Kayla Padilla among a few others.

On Friday night here in the Daskalakis Athletic Center the native Canadian continued to be a statistics machine.

But this time the floor event that opened the action was the floor, a problem from a broken pipe and uneven section that caused a one-hour delay at the outset before resolved without anything actually done.

In fact the men’s team played on the same surface the previous evening in a double overtime contest.

However, the largest headache came from Northeastern in a game of counter rallies that ultimately resulted in the other Huskies from New England, Boston exactly, to have last say in the fourth quarter and claim a 71-63 victory in the Colonial Athletic Association.

The only positive from the gridlock at the top in the new-look conference was Drexel (18-7, 10-4 CAA), the preseason pick of the conference coaches, was still hanging on to first by a half-game over idle North Carolina A&T, a new member, Stony Brook, another newcomer, and Towson, each 15-9 overall and 9-4 in the league.

Right behind a game back William & Mary is at 14-11 and 9-5, followed by Northeastern (13-11, 8-5).

In a dubious spot, if Drexel wins out in its last four games, or someone else, minimally a tie with the 1994 Old Dominion squad will occur for most losses (4) by a No. 1 seed in the CAA tourney, which will be held next month at Towson, also the name of the Maryland suburb of Baltimore.

As for the latest encounter, coming on the heels of last Sunday’s upset loss at Monmouth, another newbie, Northeastern edged Drexel in the first two periods for a 32-27 halftime lead before the Dragons pulled a third-quarter 27-12 eruption only to get doused over the next ten minutes 27-10.

Washington, running a narrow third nationally in scoring behind Siegrist and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, had 33 points, bringing her February average up to 31.0 in her 10th game of the season with 30 or more points.

Freshman Kylie Lavelle had 12 points, all in the second half, while Maura Hendrixson dealt six assists.

Northeastern’s Derin Erdogan had 21 points and eight assists, Deja Bristol scored 18, JaMiya Braxton had 12 points, while Gemima Motema had 10 points.

“This was a tough one at home,” said Drexel coach Amy Mallon, “give up a lot of points in the fourth quarter for what happened at the end. So it’s a lesson learned for us, obviously four tough games to the end of the season that are very important.”

The first of which is at arch- and long-time rival Delaware Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark, where Drexel will try to complete a season sweep.

The Blue Hens beat Hofstra 65-54  in Hempstead, N.Y. at the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex on Long Island for a season sweep of the Pride, who they have beaten 16 straight.

Klarke Sconiers had 16 points, shooting 6-for-7 from the field for Delaware (14-10, 7-6 CAA), while Nakiyah Mays-Prince scored 13, Mkayla :Pippin scored 12, and Tara Cousins scored 11.

On the boards against Hofstra (9-15, 3-10), Jewel Smalls grabbed nine rebounds, while Pippin, Cousins, and Sconiers each grabbed seven.

Might there be a bigger lesson then the mechanics of the loss even should Drexel head into the CAA tourney as the number one seed, the tightness of the standings is showing no one can be taken lighlty.

“You go back to the beginning of the season and it was obvious everyone was going to put a target on our back,” Mallon said.

And even the Blue Hens are not the outfit at the moment of their existence in the Elena DelleDonne era, or the rebuilt group that took the CAA title here from Drexel last season or had it slipped away from the Dragons the previous season, “they’re always going to be a big rival.”

For all that Washington is, the 25 shots she took here against the Huskies is something that needs addressing.

“She’s going to be doubled and you can’t allow her to take that many shots,” Mallon said, alluding to the shared-ball emphasis which allowed the Dragons to thrive in many of their victories.

Big Nights for Penn, Princeton and Columbia Securing Their Ivy Madness Tickets While Harvard Could Lock Up the Field Saturday

Let’s take them as a group and then one-by-one, since Penn and Princeton are local.

Two of the teams gained lopsided road wins in Penn at Yale, 72-58; Princeton at Brown, 80-37; while in the tighest mix in the standings Columbia gained a sweep of Harvard with a 75-70 win in Cambridge over the Crimson at Lavietes Pavilion.

As a result Columbia (20-4, 9-2 Ivy) and Princeton (18-5, 9-2) are tied for first, Penn (16-8, 8-3) is alone in third and Harvard (14-9, 7-4) is fourth, two games up on Yale (11-13, 5-6) for the last spot.

Princeton will visit Yale at 5 p.m. on Saturday in the Lee Amphitheater in New Haven, Conn., where a win over the Bulldogs sends them to elimination from the men’s and women’s combination tourney next month at Princeton’s Jadwin Gym if at the same time Harvard beats visiting Cornell at 5 p.m. on ESPN3.

Then it will be just a battle of the seeds, which will be somewhat more academic than in the past, pending on each team’s feelings, because unlike the past when the name of the game for the semifinals was. just avoid Princeton, or a few years perhaps Penn.

The Quakers still have a home game at the end in The Palestra hosting Princeton, which routed them earlier in the race at Jadwin.

But Friday, it was the Quakers who did the plundering when it came to Yale.

Penn got to make it just one missed year in the short history of the tourney with its performance against the Bulldogs.

Kayla Padilla scored 25 points, shooting 9-for-18 from the field, including 5-from-deep, and in a city where Kayla Spruill at La Salle recently became the new program holder for threes, Padilla is now one short of the Quakers career record of 196 set by Karen Habrukowich in 2005.

Jordan Obi claimed her fifth season double-double with 15 points and 14 rebounds, while shooting .500 on 5-for-10 from the field and 5-for-6 on the line.

Rookie Simone Sawyer had 12 points and Mandy McGurk had eight points and four steals.

Floor Toonders collected six points with six rebounds and three assists in just 35 minutes.

The Quakers now trying to stay mathematically in the hunt for first continue the two-night weekend at Brown in Providence, R.I., at 5 p.m. on ESPN3.

In Princeton’s game, the Tigers broke it wide open at Brown with a 33-2 third quarter and are on as 10-game win streak since the loss last month at home to Columbia.

Kaitlyn Chen scored 20 for the visitors, shooting 9-for-12, while freshman Madison St. Rose scored 16 with four assists. The newcomer has been in double digits in nine of her last 10 games.

Julie Cunningham had 11 points and eight boards.

The Tigers blocked 11 shots, a team best since applying the stuffs to Harvard in February 2020.

The Princeton visit at Yale will be aired on ESPN+.

In the Columbia win, Abbey Hsu had a career-high 35 points, including six from beyond the arc. 

The Lions have now built two straight 20-win seasons and will be heading to their third-straight Ivy tourney.

Harvard was in the hunt with one-point leads in the first and second period enders and then Columbia bolted from the break with a 9-0 run.

The Crimson made a late rally to move within five before the Lions applied the brakes.

“We started the second half the way we have been doing in these tight games,” said Columbia’s Megan Griffith. “We opened it up to 17 with six minutes to go, and that was looking good.

“I just thought it was a good test for us, honestly. We’re going to see that in the postseason. It was a great experience and we’re just thankful that we got the W and can get it on the road.”

Kaitlyn Davis scored 12 with 15 rebounds for the visitors, while Jaida Patrick had 14 points, six rebounds, two assists, three steals and a block.

Three Harvard players scored in double figures led by Lola Mullaney with 22 points.

Columbia will finish its weekend at Dartmouth at 4 p.m. in Leede Arena in Hanover, N.H. on ESPN+.

Nationally Noted: Stanford Takes Over First Following Arizona Upset of Utah

No. 3 Stanford barely avoided a second upset from now No. 25 Southern Cal in the weekly late night West Coast ranking rumbles out of the PAC-12, the Cardinal winning 50-47, which was enough in the game at Maples Pavilion to give Tara VanDerveer’s bunch. Sole possession of first place again in the conference after No. 18 Arizona punctured No. 4 Utah’s season ride into the Top 5 with an 82-72 win in the desert.

In the two other games involving ranked teams in the league, No. 21 Colorado won on the road at Arizona State 70-62, while No. 16 UCLA won at California 67-54.

The home-teams Washington and Washington State by the same totals handled the visit neighbor states, Washington 64-59 over Oregon State while Washington State beat Oregon 64-57.

In the Washington State game, featuring the Cougars’ first sweep of Oregon since 2001, Bella Murekatete scored 17, including her 1,000th career point, and the triumph sealed three straight home winning seasons for the first time since 1989-92. 

In the Arizona-Utah game, the home team Wildcats (20-6, 10-5 PAC-12) saw Shaina Pellington make 11 straight shots and finishing with a career-high 35 points.

Cate Reese scored 16 for Arizona while Helena Pueyo scored 12, including four foul shots at the finish to secure the win.

Utah (22-3, 12-3) had won seven straight and beaten the Wildcats 80-79 last month in Salt Lake City.

The visitors earlier in the week rose to their highest ranking in the history of the Associated Press women’s poll.

Allison Pili, the transfer from Southern Cal, scored 26 for Utah, while Jenna Johnson scored 19, and Gianna Kneepkens had 13.

Arizona will host Colorado on Sunday.

In the Stanford game, the Trojans (19-7, 9-6 PAC-12) were just short of forcing overtime and were looking for their first series sweep of the Cardinal (25-3, 13-2) since 1986-87.

Destiny Littleton scored 15, while Okako Adika scored 13, and Clarice Akunwafo grabbed a career-high 12 rebounds.

Stanford’s Cameron Brink had 12 points and 10 rebounds, while Haley Jones also grabbed 10 boards.

Brink had six blocks to reach 278 in her career breaking Jayne Appel’s 273 reached in 2010 to become the new record holder for the program. 

Following the Trojans’ limit of four points in the first quarter with Stanford in the earlier game in Los Angeles, in this one, they held the Bay Area folks to six in the fourth/

In the earlier game, the defense of USC held Stanford to 19 in the first half and in this one went one better with allowing just 18 in the second half.

Southern Cal was missing Rayah Marshall with an injury.

Stanford hosts UCLA in a President’s Day matchup on Monday night at 9 p.m. on ESPN2.

VanDerveer’s Division I women’s record win total moved to 1180, which is ten ahead of UConn’s Geno Auriemma.

Looking Ahead: The No. 1 game on both the local and national slate Saturday is right in the area televised on the main FOX Sports network at 2:30 p.m. where in a 1-2 Big East matchup No. 6 UConn finishes its season series closeout as the Huskies visit No. 14 Villanova at what will be a sellout crowd at Finneran Pavilion, only the second in the women’s program, the first back in 2004 in February on Senior Night.

Villanova won that one following the previous season upset of UConn in the Big East championship, ending a then-national record 70-game win streak by the Huskies.

Coach Denise Dillon’s team lost just by five last month up in Hatford after pulling an upset there a year ago ending a 169-game conference win streak.

A ‘Nova win ties the Wildcats at the top of the conference and it will be a race to see in the final three games to see who gets the top seed for the Big East tournament next month at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn.

A win by UConn virtually clinches a first-place finish but ‘Nova cannot finish worse than second or third, having clinched a finish above fourth.

The game here is Auriemma’s annual homecoming near Norristown, where he grew up.

A week ago, Wildcats senior Maddy Siegriest, the nation’s leading scorer, scored 50 points here on Seton Hall and then at St. John’s on Wednesday in a win over the Red Storm she scored 39, becoming the all-time career women’s scorer at the combined six Division I Philly schools, topping Gabriela Marginean, who Dillon coached at Drexel.

Siegrist needs just 28 to become the combined second place local scorer among men and women ahead of La Salle’s Mo Brooks and behind the Explorers’ Lionel Simmons.

In the other local games not mentioned in this post, Temple will host Houston in an American Athletic Conference game, trying to break a three-game slide, at 2 p.m. in the Liacouras Center on ESPN+, while Saturday night, Quinnipiac will visit Rider in Alumni Gym in a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference game at 7 on ESPN+.

In the Patriot League, Lehigh hosts American U. At 2 p.m. in Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, Pa., while Lafayette at the same time hosts Army in the Kirby Sports Center in Easton, Pa., both games on ESPN+.

On Saturday, another national game of note in the Big 12 has Iowa State visiting Baylor at 6 p.m., while on Sunday, three other local games of note besides the Drexel-Delaware tilt, has a key Atlantic 10 game Saint Joseph’s hosting Rhode Island at 2 p.m. in Hagan Arena on ESPN2. The Rams just lost their first game on the conference schedule and in the previous meeting in today’s series just nipped the Hawks in double overtime up in Kingston.

Elsewhere in the conference, La Salle visits Saint Louis at 2 p.m. on ESPN+, while on Monday, Rutgers is at Wisconsin at 8 p.m. on the B1G network in the Big Ten.

And that’s the report.

 

  

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