Subscribe to Full Court PressBig East Notebook: Sizing Up the League as Nonconference Play Draws to a Close
Photo Caption: 2011-12 was considered by many to be a rebuilding season for the Connecticut Huskies following the loss of all-everything forward Maya Moore to graduation. Not so much, anymore, as UConn hovers in the No. 2 spot in the national rankings after notching wins over powerhouses Texas A&M and Stanford, in addition to a near-miss at an upset over Baylor. One big part of the reason: Freshman forward Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis, who despite coming off the bench, currently leads the Huskies in scoring at 15.3 points per game, to go with five rebounds and nearly two assists per game.
Photo Credit: Courtesy UConn Athletics Communications
By Mel Greenberg
Correspondent
The Big East has had its share of surprises since the season got under way besides the perks that also come with being one of the dominant women’s basketball conferences in the nation.
After starting the preseason AP Poll with seven members, six have maintained their standing with only St. John’s falling from favor among the national media panel that votes each week.
Though most of the teams in the league got their first taste of conference play in early December, nonconference schedules are only now coming to a close with the first week of the new year marking the real beginning of the Big East Conference season. Let’s take a look at how the league’s teams have fared to date.
Kim Barnes Arico’s St. John’s squad has played a rugged schedule and given the absence of leading scorer and All-America candidate Da’Shena Stevens throughout much of the early going, at least some of the Red Storm’s losses have been justifiable. Two of their defeats came at the hands of nationally ranked opponents—a 52-69 loss to Big East conference-mate DePaul in early December and a 59-73 fall to top-ranked Baylor in the Maggie Dixon Classic.
Then there have been other losses that are more difficult to explain. St. John’s suffered an opening day loss to what has become one of the better Atlantic 10 teams to date in St. Bonaventure (58-64), but later beat A-10 co-favorite Temple in a Bahamas Thanksgiving tournament (59-53). The latter win was even more impressive as an indication of the Storm’s resilience, coming as it did, a day after a after a 52-60 tournament loss to Iowa.
In a local clash the Red Storm also lost at what has become a prime Colonial Athletic Association squad in Hofstra.
But then, came a real shock last Thursday on Christmas getaway day when the Storm stumbled, 56-63, at Harvard and fell to 7-6 on the season. Stevens was back in action, having returned to the line-up in mid-December against Prairie View A&M, but Stevens is still coming off the bench, and with just five points to go with five assists against Harvard, she is plainly not yet at full strength.
At the same time it could have been worse. In the Maggie Dixon Classic on December 11, St. John’s was showing its potential, was threatening a major upset when it carried a 32-30 lead against the top-ranked team in the nation into the Madison Square Garden locker room. Baylor put the hammer down in second half to take a 73-59 victory, while the Red Storm nearly lost a second key player when junior guard Nidrah McKenith went down with what was later diagnosed as a knee sprain.
Fortunately, McKenith would be out for only a few games and should be ready when the conference schedule gets under way in January.
The team showing the biggest improvement to date is Villanova. Nova opened its season with an impressive 75-64 upset over Michigan State which had been ranked No. 25 in the country in the preseason coaches poll. Nova followed up its victory over the Spartans in Iona’s tournament in suburban New York by beating the host Gaels the next day to give veteran coach Harry Perretta his 600th victory on opening weekend in November.
Villanova also beat local rival Saubt Joseph’s, one of the better A-10 squads, 52-46, and won, 60-53, at Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference-favorite Marist. They have lost only to two mid-major powerhouses in Ivy-favorite Princeton (41-56) on the road and CAA-favorite and nationally ranked Delaware, led by the NCAA’s top scorer Elena Delle Donne, at home (56-64).
Since then, Villanova has racked up a 9-2 record overall (1-0 in conference play, thanks to a 69-42 pounding of Providence in their early December Big East game). On Thursday of last week, Nova kept the beat going, upsetting host Temple, 56-47, in a Philadelphia Big 5 game that clinched a tie for the local title. The Wildcats can win outright by beating Penn next month, or if the other teams in contention pick up at least two losses apiece in the four-game round robin per school.
Laura Sweeney has been the top Wildcats star and has already taken one conference player of the week award.
On December 29 and 30, the Wildcats take a trip to Monmouth’s tournament to play St. Bonaventure, an Atlantic 10 squad that’s 11-1 (with their one loss being to Delaware).
Another in the surprise success category to date is the development of Seton Hall in Anne Donovan’s second season coaching the Pirates after having been in charge of the New York Liberty in the WNBA.
Mind you, we’re still not talking about a rise to the top of the Big East rankings. We are, however, talking about significant improvement as compared to the state in which Donovan found the team last year. The Pirates were 7-5 earlier in the week with a win over Louisiana Tech (72-69), a narrow loss to Alabama (56-62, OT), and a lop-sided 60-49 win against Old Dominion, where Donovan was one of the nation’s top players in the early 1980s. All three of those games came in a holiday tournament in the Virgin Islands in late November. The team has also beaten CAA power Drexel, 77-64, as senior Jasmine Crew has led the way.
In their lone conference game to date, the Pirates took a (perfectly predictable) 37-70 drubbing at the hands of No. 2-ranked UConn, but there’s little shame in that loss.
Donovan is doing it with her usual emphasis on defense “until we can get some talented players in here who can score.”
Not a surprise, per se, but another team on a strong upside in development is Rutgers, ranked No. 11 in both of this week’s polls.
The Scarlet Knights (10-2) are blending one of the more talented freshmen classes with senior stars such as Khadijah Rushdan, playing a fifth season because of a knee injury earlier in her career, and April Sykes.
One of the newcomers is Betnijah Laney, yet another prime star out of Delaware, whose mother Yolanda was an All-American in the early 1980s for the future Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer at Cheyney in suburban Philadelphia.
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| Photo Caption: Rutgers is yet another Big East program in which newcomers are helping to bring about major improvements. One of those newcomers is freshman wing Betnijah Laney (6-0), a McDonald’s All-American who arrived on campus as one of the top recruits in the country. Laney, who is Coach C. Vivian Stringer’s goddaughter, has worked her way into the starting line-up where she is currently averaging 7.9 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. With a 9:23 assist-to-turnover ratio Laney still needs to develop a better handle on the basketball, but already she is showing glimpses of the star she will likely becoming, posting 18 points in her first collegiate game. |
| Photo Credit: Courtesy Rutgers Athletics Communications |
Rutgers’ nonconference schedule has been a little milder in the past, and the Knights’ two losses have a bit of what-might-have been to them. Rutgers had a 16-point second-half lead at ACC-favorite Miami, a Top 10 squad that boasts the NCAAs top-scoring offense. However, Rutgers not only squandered that advantage, but also saw the game tied up, ultimately losing, 81-92, in double overtime. Just recently, Stringer’s group was poised to beat Tennessee at home but the Lady Vols took over down the stretch to secure a 67-61 victory.
Nevertheless, Rutgers seems ready to make a deep run through the early part of the conference schedule, with the first likely bumps in the road coming on Jan. 31, when the Knights host conference favorite and No. 3-ranked Notre Dame, followed by a road stop at perennial national power Connecticut, ranked No. 2, on Feb. 4.
But by then, unlike recent seasons, Rutgers will not seem in need of a late rally of wins to be assured an NCAA tournament berth.
As for the top of the heap, Notre Dame (11-1), ranked No. 3 in the nation, is rolling along with only an 81-94 loss at top-ranked Baylor in the preseason WNIT title game.
The talent of Natalie Novosel, Skylar Diggins and several others are helping steer the Irish through a rugged nonconference schedule highlighted by Novosel’s winning shot for a 56-54 win over top-ten power Duke in the Bahamas after trailing the Blue Devils by 16 points at halftime.
Novosel also came up big, leading five Irish players in double figures with a game-high 23 points, in Notre Dame’s recent 92-83 win over another Top 10 team in SEC power Kentucky.
With the post-Maya Moore era under way, Connecticut (10-1) is showing a dominance not all that much different than when the previous era was still active. Despite a soft preconference schedule comprised largely of blowouts over unknown foes, the second-ranked Huskies boast two major wins after dispatching a pair of nationally ranked opponents in No. 4 Stanford (68-58) and reigning national champion Texas A&M (81-51).
Indeed, Connecticut almost had the adjective “rebuilding” tossed away altogether when they seemed poised to upset Baylor last Sunday in Waco. The Huskies carried a 34-28 lead into the half, and still led—by double digits (50-39)—five minutes into the second period. UConn’s hopes to retaking the No. 1 national ranking were quashed when Brittney Griner and Odyssey Sims led the Bears on a rally late in the second half to take the 66-61 victory.
One key to the Huskies’ early success: Though coming off the bench, freshman Kalena Mosqueda-Lewis is showing much of the star power Moore had and has already started piling up the weekly Big East freshman awards to her name with four in the showcase to date.
Sophomore center Stefanie Dolson and her classmate, point guard Bria Hartley, are showing the improvement they gained playing on the gold-medal USA U-19 squad last summer.
Caroline Doty is back on active duty from the third recurring knee injury that sidelined her last season but she has yet to make the impact that she did as a perimeter shooting ace before getting hurt.
Georgetown (10-2) got off to a shaky start, with early losses to then-No. 10 Maryland (53-72) and then-No. 20/21 LSU (40-51)— though no shame in either. Since then, led by All-America candidate Sugar Rodgers, the Hoyas have been perfect, and currently stand at No. 15/16 in the national rankings.
The Hoyas won a major clash last Wednesday night, hosting and routing No. 7 Miami in the nation’s capital. The Hurricanes seemed to have no answer for the Hoyas’ consistent defensive pressure, as the nation’s No. 1 offense fell to Georgetown, 71-46.
Led by Kia Hampton and Anna Martin, DePaul (13-2) has stayed in the rankings, despite losing to unranked San Diego State, 74-82, in an early-season tournament in Hawaii, and more recently, to then-No. 7/8 Tennessee, 61-84, in the Maggie Dixon Classic in mid-December.
Notable triumphs are not yet in the Blue Demons’ collection but last week’s 78-67 win at Princeton is worth something considering that the Tigers are far beyond the stereotype of an Ivy “David” playing major-conference “Goliaths.” Likewise, DePaul’s recent 73-55 win over Arizona State may be worth something when the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee meets next spring.
DePaul has one conference win to its credit in its early-December 69-52 victory over St. John’s. Once Doug Bruno’s group hits the conference slate, more will be known about its true strengths and weeknesses.
Louisville (11-2), the other nationally-ranked team out of the Big East, registered both its losses to nationally-ranked schools in Texas A&M (58-76), the defending national champion, and state-rival Kentucky (54-74). But the Cardinals also own an impressive 85-76 win at Florida State. They picked up their first Big East conference win at Cincinnati, 64-59, on December 14, and like DePaul, the Cardinals will show just how worthy they are when the conference portion of the schedule kicks off in earnest after the New Year.
Among the rest of the Big East, Cincinnati (7-5), coached by former UConn star and assistant Jamelle Elliott, claimed an early win beating A-10 co-favorite Dayton, while Providence (7-6) got a home win over Clemson on Thursday.
Here’s where things stand as the teams head into the new year and the impending conference season:
Current Standings
| BIG EAST Women’s Basketball Standings | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (As of December 29, 2011) | |||||
| Rank | School | Conf. | Pct. | Overall | Pct. |
| 1 | Notre Dame | 1-0 | 1.000 | 12-1 | .923 |
| 2 | Connecticut | 1-0 | 1.000 | 11-1 | .917 |
| 3 | DePaul | 1-0 | 1.000 | 12-2 | .857 |
| 4 (tie) | Georgetown | 1-0 | 1.000 | 11-2 | .846 |
| 4 (tie) | Louisville | 1-0 | 1.000 | 11-2 | .846 |
| 6 | Villanova | 1-0 | 1.000 | 10-2 | .833 |
| 7 | West Virginia | 1-0 | 1.000 | 9-3 | .750 |
| 8 | Rutgers | 0-0 | .000 | 10-2 | .833 |
| 9 | USF | 0-0 | .000 | 7-6 | .538 |
| 10 | Syracuse | 0-1 | .000 | 10-4 | .714 |
| 11 | Cincinnati | 0-1 | .000 | 9-5 | .643 |
| 12 | Marquette | 0-1 | .000 | 8-5 | .615 |
| 13 (tie) | Pittsburgh | 0-1 | .000 | 7-6 | .538 |
| 13 (tie) | Providence | 0-1 | .000 | 7-6 | .539 |
| 13 (tie) | St. John’s | 0-1 | .000 | 7-6 | .538 |
| 16 | Seton Hall | 0-1 | .000 | 7-7 | .500 |
| Source: BIGEast.org | |||||
Originally published Fri, December 30, 2011
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