City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Laura Ziegler is ready for some revenge. 

That hadn’t been on the Saint Joseph’s junior forward’s mind until after the culmination of a 69-40 rout of Albany in the opening round of the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament. But there was no denying the ripe opportunity sitting ahead, Wednesday’s win setting up a Sunday afternoon date with a friendly foe.

St. Joe’s and Villanova will play one final city rivalry game of the 2024-25 season, with quite a few standout careers on the line.

“It’s super-fitting,” Ziegler said. “I think the moment we knew we were going to play in the WBIT, I think we all kind of knew we were probably going to play Nova again [...] I don’t know how many times I’ve played them in my three years here but it’s always fun to get a rematch.”

(The answer, after Sunday, will be five.)

Villanova and St. Joe’s met in last year’s WBIT quarterfinals, top-seeded Villanova winning 67-59 and going on to finish as runner-ups to fourth-seeded Illinois. St. Joe’s is the top seed in its eight-team quadrant this time around, with No. 2 Stanford or No. 3 Seton Hall awaiting Sunday’s winner in the quarterfinal round next Thursday.

The Wildcats also got the better of the Hawks in their Big 5 contest earlier in the year, freshman guard Jasmine Bascoe scoring 26 points and sophomore Maddie Webber adding 18 in an 81-65 game back on Dec. 1. Villanova shot 30-of-59 from the floor and 9-of-17 from 3-point range in that game, while also winning the turnover battle 14-7.

"These Big 5 games, they’re more physical than the other games we play, it really comes down to that," Ziegler said. "They’re going to come in and they’re going to be on us. They know us so well so they know what they want to take away. Our first and second options might not be there, we need to be patient in our offense and get to the back end of it and get some good and open looks. We really need to be more tough than they are.”

Now in its second year of operation, the WBIT is a 32-team tournament run by the NCAA for teams who didn’t make it into the NCAA Division I tournament. It’s akin to the men’s version of the NIT in that teams don’t have to pay to enter, their travel and competition paid for by the NCAA; there is a WNIT, but that’s been a private ‘pay-to-play’ event unlike its male counterpart. 

Being one of the top four teams left out of March Madness stung. St. Joe’s loss to George Mason in the A-10 championship game was the difference between hearing their names on Selection Sunday and not. They’re trying to focus on what went well the two games before that, beating Rhode Island in overtime and then top-seeded Richmond on a Ziegler buzzer-beater to get back to the title game. 

“It was really hard emotionally for all of us, losing that game, it always is, a championship game,” Ziegler said. “We had some really good games [in] that tournament. You’re always going to remember the last thing [...] but we also won in overtime, won on a buzzer-beater, had some really good games and closed out some really close games, and we’re going to run into that again on Sunday.”

Ziegler, the Hawks' All-Atlantic 10 forward, led St. Joe’s (24-9) with 16 points and 13 rebounds, coming three assists shy of a triple-double against Albany. Sophomore Aleah Snead came off the bench for 14 points and nine rebounds, eight on the offensive end. Seniors Mackenzie Smith and Talya Brugler added 11 apiece to round out four in double figures. 

Saint Joseph’s, which never trailed Thursday night, created the separation it needed from Albany in the game’s opening stretch. Early 3-pointers from Smith, Zeigler and Brugler had the Hawks up 15-4 less than five minutes in, creating an advantage it never gave up. The Great Danes closed that gap to three with under three minutes left in the half, but that was as close as they got.

The Hawks closed the first half on a 7-0 run and carried that momentum right into the second half. That spurt became a 16-2 run spanning halftime, a stretch that expanded to 24-6 on a pair of Aleah Snead free throws with 3:14 left in the third period which put the hosts up 48-27. 

Albany — which had a terrific season, winning 26 games and the America East regular-season title, losing to Vermont in the AEast title game — couldn’t hang on the glass against St. Joe’s, which finished with a 53-28 rebounding advantage. The Hawks had nearly as many offensive rebounds (25) as the Great Danes had overall — as they shot 27-of-69 (39.1%), they recovered two-thirds of their own misses. 

Aleah Snead (with ball) looks for Talya Brugler (far left) during the first half of St. Joe's win. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Every loose ball seemed to end up in a Hawk’s hands, but they were also making their own luck, slapping away loose balls from Albany players and winding up with the rock on multiple second-and-third-chance opportunities. Snead, Brugler, Smith and others were constantly flying around the court to corral misses, especially during a few backbreaking possessions early in the second half that seemed to end Albany’s resolve. 

“To have 25 offensive rebounds is one of two things — we’re really hustling (or) we’re missing a lot of shots,” Griffin said with a laugh. “But we’re going to say we’re really hustling.”

Ziegler, who moved up to 1,384 career points in Thursday's win, is just outside the St. Joe’s top 10 in scoring. One more year on Hawk Hill would certainly cement her as one of the program’s all-time greats, as she’d be well on track to finish amongst the program’s top three leading scorers and atop its career rebounding list, as well as amongst the top 10 in various other categories, assists included. 

All of her success thus far has come as the youngest member of a core that’s included Brugler, Smith and the injured Julia Nyström, the team’s trio of four-year contributors, along with fifth-year senior Emma Boslet and reserve guard Kaylie Griffin. 

“I really want them to leave Hagan with a win,” Ziegler said. “That means right now going to the Final Four, having a good memory of their last game in Hagan and just leaving it all out there.

“I’m just really close with all of them, I came in and they took me under their wing, we just really built our relationship through those three years. We really talked about wanting to end their careers for them in the best way possible [...] we came up a little bit short in the A-10 tournament so it’s going as far as we can in this tournament. 

“They built this program up, the culture, really, we see all the things they do on the floor, they’re great basketball players all of them, but they contributed to building this program to somewhere where you just love being there and you want to go and show up every single day. I can’t say enough good things about them.”