The Guru Report: St. Joe’s Blasts Bucknell; Drexel Nipped at Lehigh; USC’s JuJu Watkins Sets Trojan Freshman Mark; No. 7 Colorado Beats Boston U With Closing Surge

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

 

If one wanted to be creative with only three local schools – two against each other — playing Tuesday night — and ahead of the Power 5, two-night ACC-SEC rumbles coming Wednesday and Thursday, then one can label Saint Joseph’s trip to Bucknell and Drexel’s jaunt up north to Lehigh as the Big 5/Patriot League Challenge though the Dragon women won’t be in formal City Series play until next season.

 

Creativity out of the way, for Saint Joseph’s after the Hawks’ escape from Temple in overtime last week, it was back to domination with Talya Bruglar’s turn to put up the numbers in a 71-46 win at Sojka Pavilion in Lewisburg, Pa.

 

As for the other game, Lily Fandre’s foul shot with one second left in regulation after missing her previous one made it a sweet 58-57 triumph for Lehigh and quite a painful loss for Drexel at Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, Pa.

 

The autopsy on the Dragons (2-3), who trailed by 11 in the first quarter, shows them taking a 44-40 lead into the last quarter and going through long scoreless stretches allowing the Mountain Hawks (6-1) to inch their way back in front.

 

“We kept a high scoring team to 58 points on their home court and we needed 59 to win….and we didn’t get it,” Drexel coach Amy Mallon texted during the Dragons’ return trip.

 

‘We had a lot of shot attempts, only 11 turnovers, and a strong showing on boards. We just didn’t make enough shots today.”

 

Fandre’s long shot from downtown tied it 46-46 with 6:49 left and Lehigh briefly took the lead at 5:51 to play on Maddie Albrecht’s score.

 

Grace O’Neil tied it with two free throws 48-48 with 5:19 remaining but Lehigh quickly struck back with a 3-pointer from Ella Stemmer.

 

It got to 56-50 and might have been more but Stemmer committed a turnover and Laine McGurk scored with an offensive rebound of Momo LaClair’s miss to cut it to 56-52 with 48 seconds left.

 

McGurk then stole a ball from Fondre and scored to cut it to 56-54 and after Lehigh scored on a free throw McGurk tied it from deep with six seconds left. 

 

Drexel’s Jasmine Valentine sent Foundre to the line with one second left and the drama ended after she scored on her second attempt from the line.

 

“We finally got to playing like ourselves in the fourth quarter, and I’m really proud of them,” said Lehigh second-year coach Addie Micir, a former Princeton star out of Lower Bucks County. “But, Drexel, you have to give them credit. 

 

“They gave us everything they had. (Villanova transfer Brooke) Mullin came out on fire. They crashed the boards, and they forced us to respond period,” Micir said.

 

As for the final play, the Lehigh coach observed, “For us, it's just go and knock our free throws down. We're really good shooters. We don't harp on it. We don't force it. Go up there and be loose.

 

“To miss the first one is pretty tough and to go in and make the second one, but she responded. She had a smile on her face after the first one. We knew, and her teammates knew the second one was going in.”

 

 Mullin scored a career-high 17 points and was a perfect 3-for-3 from beyond the arc, while McGurk scored 14, the only two Drexel players in double figures. Chloe Hodges had a team high seven rebounds.

 

The Dragons defense forced 18 turnovers, second worst for the Mountain Hawks this season.

 

Stemmer had 15 points for Lehigh and Colleen McQuillen scored 13, each connecting on three triplet attempts, while Meghan O’Brien grabbed a game-high eight rebounds.

 

The Mountain Hawks play their second straight against a Coastal Athletic Association squad when they travel to Hofstra Sunday before returning home to host La Salle, a week from Thursday.

 

Drexel are off until visiting Marist next Wednesday.

 

Meanwhile, Bucknell (2-5) may be known as the Bison, but it was the Hawks (6-0) who stampeded their way on the opposition.

 

That allowed a Hawks personal family moment in the fourth quarter when junior Kaylie Griffin, the eldest daughter of veteran coach Cindy Griffin scored her first career field goal.

 

Brugler was 11-for-15 from the field, scoring 23 points, while also grabbing four rebounds, dishing three assists and getting a pair of steals. Laura Ziegler double-doubled her way to 12 points and 11 rebounds, while Julia Nystrom scored six, dished six, and had three rebounds.

 

Bucknell’s Ashley Solfikanich was 8-for-11 from the field, finishing with 18 points.

 

The Hawks are back in Hagan Arena Saturday at noon (ESPN+) to host North Florida of the ASun Conference.

 

The National Scene: There were only two games off a light schedule the Guru put on the radar chart.

 

However, though the outcome was predictable, a late insert off the noteworthiness of the No. 6 Southern Cal 85-44 victory over visiting Cal Poly (2-5) in the Galen Center in Los Angeles is freshman sensation JuJu Watkins had 30 points, her fourth 30 plus game for the Women of Troy (6-0) breaking the rookie program record set by Lisa Leslie and Paula McGee.

 

One of the non-Watkins highlight plays came at the end of the third quarter when former Penn star Kayla Padilla stole the ball and fed former Harvard star McKenzie Forbes who beat the clock with a three-pointer.

 

Watkins, meanwhile, has come on the scene lighting the scoreboard the way Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and Uconn’s Paige Bueckers did when both were freshman in 2020-21.

And because the way it went was unexpected, No. 7 Colorado finally broke free in the fourth quarter and crushed visiting Boston University 85-55 in Boulder to bounce back from the weekend upset loss to then-No. 10 N.C. State. 

 

Frida Formann had 22 points to pass 1,000 in her career, while also scoring five triplets and grabbing six steals.

 

Her total of 201 from beyond the arc moved her into sixth place in program history passing former ESPN and Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Kate Fagan.

 

Colorado (7-1) outscored Boston U. (5-2) by 26 in the final period.

 

As for the original two games on the Guru’s tracker, the first, while Penn was done its games in the San Diego Thanksgiving Classic and returned home, two city locals met to wrap it all up, and it went beyond the wire in overtime after UC San Diego and host San Diego State each missed a chance in the final five seconds of regulation to claim victory.

 

But in the overtime UC San Diego, the team Penn beat Sunday, prevailed 77-71 over the Aztecs (4-3), who beat the Quakers Saturday.

 

Sumayah Sugapong had 18 points and reserve Denali Pinto scored 17 for the winning Tritons (3-4), while Katie Springs grabbed 11 rebounds.

 

Kim Villaobos scored 16 with seven rebounds and Abby Prohaska scored 15 for the home team.

 

In a single game host Wyoming, a high Mountain West preseason pick, beat new Big 12 member BYU 86-74 as Malene Pederson scored 19, reserve McKinley Dickerson scored 17, Tess Barnes scored 13, and Allyson Fertig scored 12 for the winning Cowgirls (4-2).

 

Lauren Gustin, a senior forward on a bunch of watch lists in her career, scored 26 points with eight rebounds for BYU (6-1), the first season loss for the former perennial West Coast Conference contenders.

 

Looking Ahead Locally: It’s going to be a busy day and night highlighted by La Salle’s visit to Penn at the Palestra at 6 p.m. for the fourth of the ten-game City Series schedule.

 

It’s the visiting Explorers’ first of the season thus a Penn win – the Quakers are 0-1 — means only Saint Joseph’s and Villanova remain with a chance to go 4-0. If it goes the other way, then La Salle stays in the mix. 

 

In the morning, Rutgers hosts Delaware State at 11 at Jersey Mikes Arena for the annual Education Day battle.

 

Speaking of battle, another in the Jersey trio battle shapes up when newly ranked Princeton hosts Seton Hall at 7 p.m. on ESPN+ in Jadwin Gym.

 

Elsewhere Penn State tries to stay on the winning side hosting Radford at 6. p.m. at Bryce Jordan Center in State College, while two 7 p.m. contests in the remaining group has Delaware at American U. in the nation’s capital on ESPN+ while Lafayette also on ESPN+ visits UMBC in Baltimore.

 

On Thursday just one game, but now looking big, Villanova hosts streaking Richmond of the Atlantic 10 at 7 p.m., at Finneran Pavilion, serving as a homecoming for former Cardinal O’Hara star Maggie Doogan, who was this week’s conference player honoree and also one of the five USBWA national player honorees.

 

Looking Ahead Nationally: The ACC/SEC two-day challenge gets under way and Wednesday’s highlights have No. 18 Notre Dame at No. 20 Tennessee at 5 p.m. on ESPN2; at 7:15 p.m. on the ACCN, Vanderbilt, coached by former UConn star Shea Ralph, is at No. 5 N.C. State, both unbeaten at 7-0; and No. 22 Louisville is at No. 19 Ole Miss, both 6-1.

 

On Thursday No. 24 North Carolina is at No. 1 South Carolina on ESPN; two teams in the Final Four semifinals last April have No. 9 Virginia Tech at No. 7 LSU.

 

And that’s the report.