City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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Ava Renninger felt the rush of emotion engulf her, the referee’s whistle still echoing in her ear.

With two minutes left in a tie game on the road, Renninger had just left her defender reaching at shadows as she made a back-cut to the rim. Renninger went up, drawing contact but finishing anyway for the and-one on the game’s go-ahead basket.

It was by no means an unfamiliar situation for Renninger, who gave the orders the last three years at Archbishop Wood as “The General” on her way to three state titles. Now, it’s FDU that’s benefitting from being the program that saw all she had to offer and already seeing the results out of the freshman guard.

Renninger’s college career has gotten off to a superb start with plenty of winning plays to go with it.

“Coming out of my senior year at Wood where we had such a great team and were all so close and I thought there was no way I’d get as close of a team as that again or anything better than that,” Renninger said. “I got here and I was so wrong, this team is so close and we have so much fun. That’s the biggest thing on the court or off, we’re just having fun.

“I could not be more fortunate to have a team like this, they mean the world to me.”

Renninger talked with CoBL a few days after that and-one, which came on Dec. 4 as part of an explosive second half in a 69-62 win at Lafayette that saw the 5-foot-6 guard score 17 of her 19 points after halftime. Performances like that haven’t been outliers for the Yardley (Pa.) product, who has scored double figures in seven of nine games this season.

It took all of three games for FDU coach Stephanie Gaitley to move Renninger from super-sub to starter and the freshman has been in the first five for the last six contests. Gaitley talked to CoBL a day after a 62-54 win over Rider on Dec. 9 that improved FDU to 7-2 on the season, and the veteran coach isn’t surprised that Renninger has made her mark so quickly.

“We knew she was going to come in and help us, but we didn’t know it would be this much, we had our whole starting lineup back,” Gaitley said. “It was going to take somebody special to take that spot and she’s certainly been special. It’s intangibles with Ava, her toughness, her maturity on the court and her IQ. 

“I think Ava had a chip on her shoulder that she was overlooked - I don’t blame her - and we end up being the one to reap the reward of everybody else kind of bypassing her.”

Renninger also got an early start on adding a few commendations to go with her play, taking the first three NEC Rookie of the Week awards of the season and the overall NEC Player of the Week just three weeks into her career before adding a fourth Rookie of the Week honor on Monday.

Renninger, the PA Sportswriters Class 5A Player of the Year last as a senior at Wood last year, doesn’t play for plaudits. While the freshman certainly appreciated the recognition - and her friends, family and former teams have been more than happy to promote it for her - Renninger said it’s all a byproduct being embraced by her new team.

Renninger currently leads the Knights in scoring at 14.6 points per game while adding 4.6 rebounds and 2.0 assists per outing as part of a starting lineup that includes three graduate students and a junior around her.

Gaitley, in her second season at FDU, brought in six freshmen this year and the Knights’ leaders made it an emphasis to induct the newcomers into the team right away.

“They knew we were going to push them and they were going to push us,” Renninger said. “They felt coming in that we weren’t scared and we were going to give everything we had to give. They loved that, they wanted to feed off that and they push us to be better, they’re not afraid to get after us and for us as freshmen, we understood that.”

It didn’t take Gaitley long to notice a lot of the upperclassmen wanted Renninger on their team for pick-up games or scrimmages. The veteran coach has an exercise she has her teams do, essentially asking each player to pick four teammates they would take into a life-or-death game.

“It’s not about bringing your best friends, it’s about picking who you see as the most competitive and giving you the best chance to win and I think she was on almost everybody’s sheet,” Gaitley said. “That’s unusual for a freshman but that was the kind of respect she gained very early on.”

While it may look like Renninger simply showed up in Hackensack, NJ and started producing, the freshman was quick to dispel that. Renninger said it’s been a constant process of learning, adjusting and understanding, the guard adding she’s really been working on her defense knowing a mistake or breakdown could easily mean she’s getting pulled.

Every freshman has their “welcome to college” moment and Renninger’s came this past summer when she first got on campus. Turning the corner off a screen and finding 6-foot-2 post Teneisia Brown there waiting to send her shot back showed Renninger things weren’t going to come the same way as they had in high school.

The freshman also gave plenty of props to assistant coach Jeremy Thompson for constantly working with her on every aspect of guard play. Gaitley noted one area the staff has worked on, and will continue to work on as Renninger becomes more of a known commodity heading into NEC play, is her change-of-speed. 

“Trying to get around post players is something I’ve worked on, trying to get them to come out and play me then going by them,” Renninger said. “It’s been a lot of slow-to-fast paced moves that he’s specifically wanted me to work on because it’s going to work when I get a switch onto a big then be able to go to the rim or hit a pull-up depending how they defend it.”

At 5-foot-6, Renninger knows she has to work a little harder and be a little craftier to have the same output as someone with more height. It’s always been a driving force for her, the freshman continuing her long-standing practice of waking up extra early to get a workout in before most people are starting their days, and it’s something that stood to Gaitley as she pursued Renninger.

FDU had offered Renninger under its prior coaching staff, but when the program changed hands, she wasn’t sure where it left her. Gaitley didn’t waste much time making sure FDU was still very interested in her, extending an offer in late June of 2023 that Renninger accepted a few weeks later.

Renninger, who scored 17 points against American on Nov. 8 to help deliver Gaitley her 700th career victory, was just the type of player the coach wanted to help reset the program.

“We saw something in her that it seemed like a lot of other people missed and I’m thankful we did,” Gaitley said. “We just knew she was a winner. We brought her in right when we got the job and made sure she understood we were still offering her. I love the fact that she played for a great high school program and that she was a winner and she was a leader in anything she did, whether it was flag football or anything else she did, she seemed to have success.”

Asked if she felt overlooked during the recruiting process or if any of the accolades she’s collected were validation to what she knew about herself, Renninger said whatever opinion anyone else had of her, FDU is the one that mattered.

“They believed in me fully, they believed in me from the start and that’s why I didn’t want to wait it out,” Renninger said. “FDU was ride or die for me from Day One, the whole coaching staff wanted me to come here and play for them and Coach Gaitley, there was not a doubt in her mind. It’s not a question in my mind and now I’m going to go out and play every team like they didn’t see what I could do and I’m going to go prove it to them.”

Renninger still feels plenty connected to Archbishop Wood, another place that was firmly in her corner. She was back in Warminster the day after Thanksgiving to help out at a youth clinic and the Vikings have not missed any chance to highlight “The General” for her various achievements so far.

It’s not a nickname she came up with, but she did relent and allow that it was a good descriptor of her game at Wood. When Renninger came to the program - she played her freshman year at Central Mountain High School before her family moved to Yardley ahead of her sophomore year - Wood coach Mike McDonald identified her as a fierce competitor and bestowed the rank upon her.

“That is all Mike McDonald, he came up with it at some point and it just became a thing, he’s the only person who calls me that,” Renninger said. “It’s been his thing for me, so I’m going to let him have it. My senior year at Wood, that was my role but here, I’m still learning and still trying to get it all down.”

Renninger led FDU with 19 points in a test at national powerhouse UConn. (Photo courtesy Lexi Woodcock/FDU Athletics)

On paper, it was a coronation. FDU traveled to UConn on Nov. 20 as the presumed answer to the question of “what team did Geno Auriemma beat to become the all-time winningest coach in women’s college basketball?” 

It was an atmosphere lesser players would have folded in. Not only was a record on the line, but Azzi Fudd was making her long-awaited return next to superstar Paige Bueckers and a who’s who of who was the greatest to ever wear a Huskies uniform made up a significant portion of the VIP seats.

FDU lost the battle, as expected, but Renninger played fearlessly, scoring 19 points on UConn’s home floor. Once the game started, she was locked in and not really thinking about the fact that Bueckers, the presumptive No. 1 pick in this year’s WNBA Draft, was on the other side.

However, Renninger did take a moment pregame to absorb her surroundings.

“I knew I would never get an experience like that ever again,” Renninger said. “I was going to leave everything I had on that court and if there was never going to be another opportunity where I was going to be put in that position, the least I could do was give everything I had. It was something you had to have fun with because at the end of the day, you’re going to be a part of history one way or another.

“At the end of warm-ups when everyone had gotten there, it was so cool to see everyone in that atmosphere, it’s not normal to have seven WNBA players at your game.”

Renninger’s made some big plays already this season. Her first official college points came via  a four-point play in her first game and she hit an early three against UConn that at least temporarily silenced the crowd in Storrs but she pointed to the and-one against Lafayette as her favorite play of the season so far because of the rush of adrenaline and emotion that came with it.

“I’ve had so much fun here and playing with this team,” Renninger said. “It’s been a great fit. A lot of people may go to play in college and it’s not as fun as they want it to be, but it’s been that and more for me. I can’t wait to go to practices, go to workouts and just be around my teammates and coaches, that’s what makes FDU so much fun for me.”

Renninger may only be five weeks into her college career, but the guard's winning makeup has already made quite an impression on her new team. Gaitley wants to build a winner at FDU and challenge for NEC titles and as the Knights coach sees it, she not only wants Renninger to be a part of it, they need her to be a part of it.

“She has a chance to leave a legacy at FDU,” Gaitley said. “Where do you leave your legacy and how do you want to be remembered? She’s the consummate team player, her teammates like her and respect her, so I think FDU’s been the perfect fit for her.

“Sometimes people want you but they don’t necessarily need you. She was wanted and needed but we didn’t realize just how much we needed her until we saw what she’s been able to do, she can really make a difference.”