The Guru Report: Penn State Routs Kansas; Rookie Watkins Shines Again for USC Out West; Tennessee Avoids Upset By Memphis; New Poll Has Major Shakeup

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

 

The local and national schedule was light but nonetheless interesting Monday night coming hours after the first Associated Press women’s poll of the season including 2023-24 action underwent a major shakeup from the preseason vote of a national media panel.

 

In the only local on the night’s schedule, Penn State was up a few notches in its third straight home game as Kansas of the Big 12 Conference came visiting Bryce Jordan Center in State College and left with a 91-85 defeat at the hands of the Lady Lions (3-0).

 

Makenna Marisa tied her personal best with PSU, scoring 34 points and coach Carolyn Kieger’s squad made it three straight scoring over 90 points.

 

It’s the fourth straight 3-0 start but how promising will soon be determined through some upcoming opponents as well as the start of play next month in the Big 10 race.

 

It’s been a long while since the two programs met, so long that the Lady Lions’ last win over Jayhawks (1-1) came nearby at Rec Hall on Dec. 16, 1995 when the visitors were representing the former Big Eight Conference.

 

Besides Marisa, who shot 11-of-18 from the field, including 4-of-6 from deep, the Lady Lions got double figure totals from reserve Jayla Oden scoring 14 points in 17 minutes, propelled by four 3-pointers, 10 points from Ali Brigham, and Shay Ciezki also scored 10.

 

On Thursday the Lady Lions leave home to come over to the seaboard, visiting St. John’s of the Big East at 7 p.m. on FloHoops at Lou Carneseca Arena in Queens.

 

The National Scene – Watkins Tops Career Mark at USC: It was a big day for the Women of Troy, skyrocketing from No. 21 off the upset of then-No. 7 Ohio State to No. 10 and then routing LeMoyne of the Northeast Conference with a 93-42 win in the Galen Center.

 

It’s the highest ranking for USC since 1994.

 

The Trojans, headed with UCLA, Oregon and Washington to the Big Ten next season, all but two PAC-12 members in refuse to stay mode, the women’s league are off to a mighty refuse to lose start, going 28-0 Sunday night.

 

While playing Monday’s opponent may not be much of a story, USC (3-0) apparently has a one-woman highlight reel for the first time since the days of Cheryl Miller in the early 1980s and later Lisa Leslie.

 

Her name is JuJu Watkins, the No. 1 recruit in the country, who last week set a program rookie debut mark in the upset of the Buckeyes in Las Vegas scoring 32 points, just a bucket better than when Leslie took the floor the first time in a USC Uniform.

 

Her first best may have been her personal best but that’s gone now after Watkins scored 35 with nine rebounds and six of the 12 threes from deep to set the second overall best USC night as a freshman. She also had six steals.

 

Miller once scored 39 in 1982 playing Northwestern as a newcomer for the Trojans.

 

But Watkins’ total for three games with 75 points tops Miller (67) and Leslie (64) in the same opening span.

 

In Monday’s game, Rayah Marshall scored 12 and Taylor Bigby scored 10.

 

It was the first meeting between the two schools, Latoya Baker leading LeMoyne with 14 points.

 

Next up, Coach Lindsay Gottlieb, the former rival PAC-12 coach at Cal who then landed on the NBA staff of Cleveland, takes USC on a shakedown cruise ahead of the conference wars next week in the Baha Mar Pink Flamingo tournament of pre-determined matchups in Nassau in the Bahamas where they face Seton Hall on Monday and future Big Ten rival Penn State on Wednesday.

 

Tennessee Escapes Memphis: Losing last week at then-No. 17 Florida State and then dropping from 11 to 15 this week can be temporarily shrugged off, but the Lady Vols barely avoided more explaining to do, surviving an upset bid from in-state rival Memphis to emerge at home with an 84-84 victory in overtime at Food City Center.

 

That’s the brand name on the home arena in Knoxville once called Thompson-Boiling.

 

Sarah Puckett scored 24 with eight rebounds for Tennessee (2-1) while Wake Forest transfer Jewel Spear had 19 points and 12 rebounds for her first double double playing for the Lady Vols.

 

Jasmine Powell added 17 and Jillian Hollingshead had 14 points and nine rebounds.

 

Missing star Rickea Jackson, who has a lower leg injury, coach Kellie Harper’s bunch trailed by as much as nine points in the second period to Memphis (1-2), a rival of Temple in the American Athletic Conference.

 

Kai Carter had 18 points for the Tigers, while Madison Griggs scored 16, and Alasia Smith scored 10.

 

Memphis scored in the last 13 seconds of regulation to extend the game, but the home team got back on track to pocket the victory.

 

Looking Ahead: Temple’s schedule resume got switched on Monday, the Owls are headed to Oxford down South to play Ole Miss at 7:30 p.m. on the SECN+ subscription network. 

 

The win would still be credible, but the Running Rebs are now 23^rd in the AP Poll, downgraded from 12 in the preseason vote after an upset home loss to Oklahoma, which made it into the new rankings at No. 25.

 

Locally, the first Big Five game of the season tips at 6 p.m. Tuesday night at The Palestra on ESPN+ when Penn, off its season-opening triumph on Saturday, hosts Saint Joseph’s, which opened 2-0 beating Rider at home on Hawk Hill and at Yale in New Haven, Conn.

 

Lehigh is at Delaware Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark, while nationally, Duke is at Columbia at 7 p.m. on ESPN+, and Utah visits Baylor at 8:30 p.m. in Waco, Texas, in a scaled down Preseason WNIT matchup.

 

On Wednesday, La Salle is at Drexel at 6 p.m., the first of two local back-to-back city opponents for the Dragons, who host Saint Joseph’s Sunday at 4:30 p.m. at the Daskalakis Athletic Center.

 

Both games are on FloHoops, Ari Bluestein on the call.

 

Drexel on the women’s side doesn’t formally get into a Big Five format to be decided until next season a year after the men have gone into a local tournament mode.

 

The two series are ongoing and expected to continue even if the women also go the local tournament route but don’t meet in the pairings.

 

The schools are interested in maintaining their games so if a tourney is held and there’s no match the meetings would occur after the champion is decided.

 

The games could be categorized as what occurred during the pandemic 2021 season when so many games were cancelled there was no formal round-robin.

 

Poll Shakeup: Since the schedule on Monday was light, here are all the historic moves that ocurred in this week’s vote off nine of the first 14 teams taking losses, including No. 1 LSU and No. 2 UConn.

 

The Huskies were poised to be back on top after LSU fell to Colorado earlier in the week but on Sunday unranked NC State shocked UConn and the Huskies fell to eighth on a day that they broke the consecutive appearance record at 566 straight weeks dating to preseason 1993-94 when they were 18^th, the lowest mark since then.

 

They were tied for a week for the mark with Tennessee, whose 565-game streak ended back in the last decade.

 

There’ll be more on the record, but the mayhem has caused the Guru to turn to a few other matters before trotting out a package later this week.

 

South Carolina, which ended its second-best 38 streak at No. 1 in the preseason vote, set a leap mark to the top moving from sixth after the routes of Notre Dame and Maryland.

 

Iowa, featuring reigning national player of the year Caitlin Clark, and seemed poised to take two steps from the third to the top after an impressive neutral win over then-No. 8 Virginia Tech in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday, moved one spot to second, being leapfrogged by Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks off their two impressive wins.

 

LSU’s loss to then No. 20 Colorado in Las Vegas dropped the Tigers to seventh while the Buffs soared to fifth.

 

The 15-spot move forward is the largest in the 48-year history of the poll.

 

NC State, one of the long-time programs earning rankings, re-entered at 14^th, the best for an outsider since Kansas State did likewise in in 2003.

 

Stanford, with a wipeout at home of No. 9 Indiana, zipped from 15 to six.

 

The PAC-12 placing five teams in the Top 10 ties the SEC achievement in the final poll of the 1997 season.

 

No. 25 Mississippi State didn’t lose but got bumped aside in the shakeup while Illinois’ loss at Marquette cost the Illini their spot.

 

UConn coach Geno Auriemma, who a while ago set the coaching appearance streak since both the late Pat Summitt and her successor Holly Warlick at Tennessee combined on the previous mark, following the week’s active now trails Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer in the all-time women’s win column by seven 1,188 to 1,181. 

 

Both passed Summit’s mark after she stepped down in her battle with dementia.

 

LSU’s Kim Mulkey reached 400 rankings appearances in combination with her former school at Baylor and her present one, while next week Auriemma will be the third coach to reach 600, though UConn will be the fourth school.

 

The difference is Auriemma passed a bunch of retired legends a while back, but Texas as did Tennessee got a head start on the Huskies’ success.

 

When Summitt retired with 618 appearances, she was the leader missing only 14 having been around when the poll was launched in The Inquirer in November 1976.

 

Dawn Staley’s build of the South Carolina program has been so phenomenal that combined with 26 rankings Temple got under her she is 25^th on the all-time list at 239 and fifth on the active list.

 

The Gamecocks have been in the Top 10 all 68 weeks this decade and 64 in the Top Five.

 

This is the 845^th week of the poll. 

 

And that’s the report.