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Talya Brugler's career night helps St. Joe's hold off Penn

11/15/2022, 11:00pm EST
By Owen McCue

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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It can be easy to forget that Talya Brugler is only a sophomore. 

Clutch moments from Brugler like the end of Tuesday night’s 57-50 Big 5 win over Saint Joseph's usually come from players with a lot more games under their belt.

With the shot clock winding down and her team holding a three-point lead in the final minute, Brugler had a defender on her back and one swiping at the ball as she posted up on the right side of the lane.

She ripped to her right and drove toward the basket, finishing a contested bucket with 28.2 seconds to add to what was already a career night and put away a win.

The 6-foot-1 sophomore forward finished with a career-high 23 points — surpassing the 20 she put up against Duquesne in the Atlantic 10 Tournament last season — and added eight rebounds, two blocks, two steals and an assist as her squad improved to 3-0.

“I just tried to stay composed,” Brugler said. “We preach just trying to get shots in the paint when it’s late clock, so I figured I should take that considering I had a hot hand at the moment. I just tried to stay composed, KJ (Katie Jekot) found me inside with a good pass and I just finished it.”


St. Joe's sophomore Talya Brugler had a career-high 23 points in a win over Penn on Tuesday. (Photo: Owen McCue/CoBL)

Everything offensively for both teams was difficult in the first half as the Hawks clung to a 25-23 lead over Penn (1-2), neither team separating themselves by more than five points in the first 20 minutes. Brugler had four points on 1-of-7 shooting.

Then came an offensive explosion from the Hawks out of the halftime break, spearheaded by Brugler.

The Hawks made their first six shots of the first half to go up 41-31 with 4:44 left in the period with nine of the points coming directly from Brugler, including a pair of threes and an and-one. She also assisted on a three during the stretch.

Brugler finished with 13 points in the period and made all five of her attempts from the field as the Hawks held a 46-34 advantage heading into the fourth. She totaled 19 points on 7-for-9 shooting total in the second half, which included a 2-of-3 showing from deep.

“She’s grown her game so much,” Penn coach Mike McLaughlin said. “I’ve seen her as a kid growing up. Her ability now to now shoot the three pretty consistent makes her really difficult to guard. And then she has enough post skill around the basket. She made a big shot there to make it five at the end. I thought we did a good job guarding her. Give her credit. She made a really good shot.”

One team’s star had a career night, while the other’s had an unusually quiet night. The Hawks locked down on Penn senior Kayla Padilla, holding her to 3-for-13 shooting for six points a day after being named Ivy League Player of the Week. 

Padilla opened the season with outings of 31 and 20 points but was held to the third lowest point total of her career and held to single digits for just the third time in her last 23 games (six total in 50 career games). 

“I thought we had some different players on her, she’s just so dynamic,” St. Joe’s coach Cindy Griffin said. “We’ve seen her score so many points in a short amount of time and I just thought we played really well today defensively as a group. Even though it was KJ’s assignment, I thought just collectively Julia (Nystrom) came in and did a good job, we did some switching. I just thought we did a really, really good job.”

St. Joe's sophomore Mackenzie Smith, left, drives on Penn's Sydnei Caldwell during Tuesday's game at St. Joe's. (Photo: Owen McCue/CoBL)

Penn junior forward Jordan Obi had a few hot stretches to finish with 17 points and eight boards and junior forward Floor Toonders chipped in nine points and seven boards for their best individual performances of the young season, helping the Quakers trim a 14-point deficit down to a one-possession game multiple times in the fourth.

Sophomore guard Stina Almqvist added 13 points (6-for-8) for the third highest point total of her career to help step up with Penn’s star struggling. Her bucket with 48.7 seconds left cut the Hawks’ lead all the way down to three, 53-50, before Brugler’s late-game heroics.

Padilla got an open look from three on the other end to give Penn a chance, but it went halfway down for rattling out — summing up her night.

“She wasn’t at our best, I give St. Joe’s ladies a lot of credit for that,” McLaughlin said of Padilla. “They guarded her hard. Everything she had to work for. We’re trying to get Kayla to understand, pick the times to try and do some things. She was just so anxious and excited to try to uplift us and score the ball, maybe we can at times slow her down a little bit and play off other kids. I think that may help her long term. She’s constantly the focus of everyone’s offense and defense.”

“This will help us a little bit in dividing the scoring up a little bit and the opportunities to score.”

Brugler and the Hawks turned a corner last season when she put up a then-career-high 18 points on 6-of-8 shooting in an 83-70 win that broke a seven-game losing skid.

After only one double-digit outing before that game (Dec. 7, 2021), she achieved the feat in 16 of St. Joe’s last 20 games to finish the season.

Brugler is averaging 15 ppg and 5.7 rpg on 51.6 percent shooting from the field in the Hawks first three contests after averaging 10.6 ppg and 5.7 rpg as a freshman last season.

“Highly blessed,” Griffin said. “Talya is an everyday type of person, which leads to an everyday type of player. She works on her game outside of practice. She has an incredible ability to focus for somebody her age because sometimes kids don’t focus. I’m just happy with the growth. We understand that she’s a sophomore, but she has some goals that she wants to set this year individually and for her team. She’s going to do whatever it takes to get there.”


St. Joe's freshman Laura Ziegler, left, blocks a shot by Penn junior Jordan Obi. (Photo: Owen McCue/CoBL)

Freshman forward Laura Ziegler added 11 points and eight boards, and sophomore guard Mackenzie Smith added 10 points and three rebounds to supplement Brugler on the offensive end. Graduate guard Katie Jekot chipped in six points, eight assists and two steals.

Ziegler, a 6-2 forward from Denmark, was the Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Week this past week after posting a 16-point, seven-rebound outing against Bucknell and a three-point, eight-rebounding outing against Yale.

Averaging 10.0 ppg and 7.7 rpg, she’s making things look easy as a freshman, which as Brugler knows from last year is not the case. 

“She has a lot of experience playing against older players, so she’s used to this in a sense,” Brugler said. “She’s doing a really good job of staying composed and making the right reads and right plays as a freshman. Her and I are playing really well together, especially from an early start to the season.”

A difficult stretch continues for Penn on Thursday as the Quakers host No. 24 Villanova in their home opener before traveling to California next week for road games at San Francisco and USC.

“We’re in it to win it like everyone else,” McLaughlin said. “We’re not playing for anything down the road. These kids only get a short time to play. We’re trying to compete to play now as we do prepare for the Ivy League.”

At this time last season, St. Joe’s was in the beginning of a seven-game losing streak as the Hawks tried to acclimate four freshmen into the mix. 

They’re still very young with three sophomores and a freshman in the starting lineup, but Griffin is excited by the visible growth she’s seen along with the tangible results.

“It feels really great, especially because we’re still young in a lot of ways just to get the confidence going forward and just to keep improving on things that we need to improve on,” Griffin said. “We’re fortunate that they came out with the wins. That’s where you want to be. As long as we are improving on areas that we need to improve on with rebounding we rebounded much better today than we did the last game so I was very happy with that. I’m very happy with where we are compared to last year. It’s not even close.”


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