By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru
PHILADELPHIA – Devoid of Saint Joseph’s leading scorer Gabby Casey due to illness and down 30-18 at the half to recent conference thorn Rhode Island here at Hagan Arena Wednesday night the Hawks pulled another comeback to knot the score 48-48 on a steal by Aleah Snead and layup by Cecilia Kay with 4:14 left in regulation.
But unlike some recent Saint joseph’s wins the Hawks (6-2) in one of several Atlantic 10 openers couldn’t pull this one out of the fire.
Two minutes later Brooklyn Gray hooked one inside to snap the tie, then Vanessa Harris scored after a turnover followed by shot from deep by Palmire Mbu and Rhode Island (7-2) completed an 11-4 closeout after the tie for a 59-52 victory.
“I was pleased with a lot of things tonight and I was unpleased with a lot of things,” said Hawks coach Cindy Griffin, now in her 25th season guiding her alma mater. “If you’re looking at from a production standpoint Rhian (Stokes) and Aleah and Cecilia, three guys in double figures.
“But you have to look at turnovers (18) and this is a possession game and you gotta be better. So, where do we go from here? It’s a good game for us to have this early, I wish it wasn’t a league game but it is but we’ll learn from it and we got to get the next one.”
That would be Sunday at 4:30 p.m. (NBC Sports Philadelphia) in the second annual championship of the Big 5 Classic championship against Villanova returning to the Wildcats’ Finneran Pavilion where the home team lost to Temple in the same round last year.
Villanova could be playing for a national ranking after pulling an upset Monday at No. 25 West Virginia and pending how the ‘Cats fare Thursday night in the nation’s capital at Georgetown (7 p.m., ESPN+) in a Big East opener.
The undercard in Sunday’s triple-header all airing on the same network will have La Salle and Penn tipoff at noon followed by Temple and Drexel playing at 2:15 p.m.
In the game here, Stokes scored 16 while Snead and Kay each scored 13 with Snead also grabbing seven boards.
Rhode Island, coached by Tammi Reiss, the backcourt mate with South Carolina coach Dawn Staley at Virginia in the early ‘90s, got 20 points and six rebounds from Mbu, and Gray collected 12 points and eight boards.
Nearby, starting a half-hour earlier, La Salle (6-2) at home in the John E. Glaser Arena, took its A-10 opener, a 70-62 victory over VCU (3-5).
Aryss Macktoon shot 9-12 from the field to score 21 with seven boards for the Explorers while Anna Przyszlak had 15 points, six rebounds and a career-high three steals.
Career marks were also set by Kiara Williams with eight boards and Ashleigh Connor with six assists.
Down in West Philadelphia Drexel (5-3) snapped a three-game losing streak taking a big lead early and holding on for a 55-48 win over American (1-6) at home in the Daskalakis Athletic Center.
The Dragons had been on an extended road trip so in pre-game ceremonies coach Amy Mallon was honored for reaching her 100th victory and Amaris Baker for collecting her 1000th career point.
Baker Wednesday night scored 20 points, and Molly Rullo had a career best 11 points shooting 4-7 against the Eagles whose first-year coach Kelly Killion, a former Father Judge star, made her second homecoming visit in less than a month, this one closer to her previous stomping grounds down 33rd Street at The Palestra where she was on the staff of her college coach Mike McLaughlin at Penn.
Molly Lavin grabbed nine boards and Deja Evans grabbed eight.
Up north in Bethlehem, Pa., Lehigh (4-5) at home in Stabler Arena took a 66-52 win over Cornell (4-5) as Lily Fandre scored 21 points and freshman Leia Edwards from London, England also scored 21 points.
The Mountain Hawks exploded for 20 points in the final period to build on a seven-point lead.
Next up is a Sunday visit to Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Md., at 2 p.m. on FloCollege.
Lehigh’s nearby Patriot League rival Lafayette is actually playing a day later Thursday at 7 p.m. at Northeast Conference champion FDU in Teaneck, N.J. On NEC Front Row.
Thursday’s other locally involved game has Penn back home at 6 p.m. hosting America East contender Maine at 6 p.m. (ESPN+).
The National Scene
On the first of the two-night ACC/SEC Challenge the SEC just missed a 7-0 sweep as Syracuse (7-1) was able to beat Auburn 66-60 in overtime in upstate New York as Dominique Darius scored 20 points, Nigerian Uche Izoje scored 16 points, Laila Phelia, whose previous two seasons were at Michigan and Texas, scored 14 points and Sophie Burrows scored 11 against the Tigers (8-2).
No. 19 Tennessee (6-2) playing at Stanford (8-2) meeting the Cardinal in a long-running series for the first time in almost three years won 65-62 in Palo Alto in the Bay Area of Northern California as Talaysia Cooper scored 19 and grabbed a career-best 10 steals and hit the game-winner with six seconds left.
The win virtually assures the Lady Vols will stay in The Associated Press Women’s Poll’s next rankings Monday to become the first team with 800 appearances.
This is currently week 890 in what is the poll’s 50th anniversary season.
Under the legendary late coach Pat Summitt, who was relatively new with the Lady Vols when the poll was launched Nov. 28, 1976 in The Philadelphia Inquirer, two years before the AP began running the weekly vote, Tennessee had only missed 14 appearances when she stepped down battling alzheimer’s disease.
Former players Holly Warlick and Kelly Harper followed while this is Kim Caldwell’s second season in Knoxville.
In other series results Wednesday, No. 9 Oklahoma (8-1) turned back an upset threat from N.C. State (5-4) winning 103-98 in overtime at home as freshman Aaliyah Chavez scored 33 points.
No. 15 Vanderbilt (9-0) at home in Nashville got 28 points with seven rebounds, seven assists and four steals from Somerset (N.J.) resident Mikayla Blakes in an 81-68 win over Virginia (6-3).
Tonie Morgan scored 20 and No. 17 Kentucky (9-1) won 64-48 at Miami (5-3) while Texas A&M (6-1) won 72-63 at home over Georgia Tech (3-6), Georgia (10-0) and won at Florida State (4-6).
The ACC even took it on the chin two non-series games: Boston College fell 76-49 to visiting Quinnipiac while Wake Forest at home was edged 67-64 by William & Mary, last season’s surprise Coastal Athletic Association tournament champion.
Nine more games are on tap Thursday highlighted by No. 3 South Carolina is at No. 22 Louisville at 7 p.m. (ESPN), No. 11 North Carolina is at No. 2 Texas at 7 p.m. (ESPN2), No. 5 LSU is at Duke at 9 p.m. (ESPN) and No. 18 Notre Dame is at No. 13 Ole Miss at 9 p.m. (ESPN2).
A two-day conference challenge series is also involved this week at the mid-major level Wednesday and Saturday between the Summit and Big Sky teams.
In regular games Army (6-2) under first-year coach Katie Kuester routed Saint Peter’s (1-6) on the road to a 65-43 win in Jersey City as Reese Ericson moved into second place insss program history with three pointers making five to total 207 and scored 15 points while Kya Smith had 17 points and 15 boards.
The Black Knights Saturday at noon host former A-10 member UMass (7-0) now in the Mid-American Conference. The game is on ESPN+.
Oregon (10-0), now in the Big Ten, hosted former Pac-12 in-state rival Oregon State (5-4), now in the West Coast Conference before heading back to a new-look Pac-12 next season, and cruised to a 96-73 victory as Katie Fisco had 23 points and 14 assists, while Mia Jacobs scored 21 with six boards.
Jenna Villa scored 27 for Oregon State.
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