City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
––

VILLANOVA, Pa. — It was during a shootaround on Friday that Temple associate head coach Way Veney had some prophetic words for her boss, Tonya Cardoza.

Cardoza had been looking and waiting for someone to step up, the Owls struggling mightily from the field to start the season. At Villanova on Saturday, in the first Big 5 game of her career, freshman Aniya Gourdine answered the call — as predicted.

“(Veney) said Aniya was going to step up and make shots,” Cardoza said. “She called it...she was like ‘watch,  Aniya’s going to make big shots in the game,’ and sure enough she did.”

Gourdine, who came into the weekend matchup averaging 3.0 points through her first five career collegiate games, found her offense at just the right time. The freshman from Baltimore led the Owls with 17 points, hitting key shots and foul shots down the stretch to help Temple beat Villanova 68-62 at the Finneran Pavilion on Saturday afternoon.

A 5-foot-9 guard, Gourdine had eight points in the first half, hitting a pair of 3-pointers, as Temple hung step-for-step with its Big 5 foe through the game’s opening 20 minutes. But it was her contributions late that really made the difference: her buckets with 2:42 and 1:39 remaining both broke ties, and her four foul shots in the final 14 seconds of play sealed the win.

In the span of 40 minutes, the St. Frances (Md.) grad more than doubled her scoring output on the season, dishing out four assists and grabbing four rebounds in a career-best 27 minutes for good measure.

“Yesterday at shootaround, she was banging (shots) in,” Cardoza said. “She was on fire yesterday when we were up here shooting, and it carried over to today.”

Temple’s strong finish came after the Owls (3-3, 1-0 Big 5) saw the host Wildcats (2-3, 2-1) score the first six points of the fourth quarter, part of a 19-4 run which spanned the third and fourth periods and turned a nine-point Temple lead into a six-point Villanova advantage with under eight minutes to play.

“In the past I thought we would have lost the game by 20,” Cardoza said, “but we actually stayed in the moment and withstood that run and found a way to pull it out.”

Temple’s women came into the Finneran Pavilion one of the worst shooting teams in all of Division I, making just 35% of their shots and 20.2% of their 3-pointers through five games. Cardoza called out her team after a loss to Princeton on Tuesday, saying not only was she concerned about all the misses, “but we’re not really getting in the gym and working on it, so that’s an issue.”

The Owls were a much more effective 25-of-57 (43.9%) against Villanova, going 6-of-17 (35.3%) from beyond the arc and 12-of-14 from the foul line. 

Tonya Cardoza (above) was much happier with her team's effort against Villanova than she was four days prior. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

~~~

“We look at the stat sheets, and the stat sheets say we don’t get in the gym,” Cardoza said Saturday. “I made sure to show them the stat sheet [...] you look at the stat sheet and you’re shooting 10%, you need to get in the gym or else you don’t really care enough. 

“We stress it, and I think they want to do it, but it was just a ‘here it is in print...stats don’t lie.’ See for yourself what it is that you’re doing, and hopefully you’re embarrassed by it and want to do something different.  

“Yes, we made shots today, so that was a good thing.”

Gourdine was one of four Owls in double figures. Junior forward Alexa Williamson, who had a crucial block on a potential game-tying layup in the game’s last 30 seconds, had 16 points and three rebounds; second-year freshman Jasha Clinton had 11 points, and senior forward Mia Davis had 10 points to round out the group.

Villanova got a 22-point effort from sophomore Lior Garzon, who’s had to shoulder much of the scoring with Maddy Siegrist on the sidelines the last three games due to a right hand/wrist injury. Brianna Herlihy added 14 points and seven rebounds, and Bella Runyan had a season-high 13 points with seven rebounds and five-assists.

The Wildcats were undone by 18 turnovers and a 5-of-20 mark from the 3-point arc; Garzon was 3-of-13 from deep. 

“I think when things are a little stagnant, that’s when we have to use each other and not try to make one-on-one plays,” Runyan said. “Because we all know, we all feel, it just feels forced whenever we’re trying to get our own. We have to use each other and stay in the offense, and when we do it’s fun and good things happen.”

Bella Runyan (above) contributed 13 points, seven rebounds and five assists for Villanova. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

~~~

Villanova head coach Denise Dillon hasn’t given a firm answer on Siegrist’s injury or availability, saying she was “game-to-game” before adding “unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see her for a little while longer.” The Wildcats’ second-year coach has four days to prepare for a visit from Lehigh (5-1) before it opens Big East play at Providence (Dec. 3) and Creighton (Dec. 5); their final Big 5 game comes Dec. 21 at La Salle.

Cardoza knew a loss Saturday would have meant the Owls almost certainly falling out of contention for the city title in their first game; the win means they might just be the favorites, but they’ve still got plenty of time to play Saint Joseph’s (Dec. 11), La Salle (Dec. 29) and Penn (Jan. 11) before it all settles out. 

“If we don’t win this game, there’s no chance of us winning the Big 5,” Cardoza said. “So this was really really important — I didn’t say that to (the players), because I don’t want that kind of stress on them, but I’m looking at it like if we don’t win this game, we can’t win the Big 5.”

Before getting back into city series play, Temple gets one more road game against a Big East foe in Georgetown on Tuesday, then traveling out to play Duquesne (Dec. 6); AAC play starts Jan. 2 at Central Florida.

Cardoza hopes her team’s best showing of the year is a sign moving forward. 

“We talked about it, the last two day —  let’s let this game take us on a little run where we’re really focused and paying attention,” she said. “I think we’re a good team; I feel like in the summer, we were this awesome team, we worked extremely hard, and then something happened, and we’re trying to get that back. 

“We have a lot of guys that when things don’t go their way, it’s like ‘woe is me,’ and we need to forget about that and move on. And I felt like today that happened, where people were probably getting down, but they let it go, we had more teammates supporting one another and trying to get over it. It’s just maturity.”