Thought it would be nice to have seating...

Well, I want to be the first to say it...

Watch Out UCONN! Nova likes to break winning streaks!

Not much to say. We scored 2 baskets in the first 10:30 and trailed 23-4, scored one basket in the last 13 minutes of the second half, getting outscored in that span by 22-3. In between those offensive performances we didn't play much better, other than hitting a few threes.

No starter scored in the first half, no player scored more than six in the game, no player had more than 3 rebounds. After getting up big early, Gino never used the press again and we managed to escape with only about a dozen turnovers on the night.

Rutgers should be more of a contest this Saturday, but we would need to be very much better than tonight to capture a win at the RAC.

Anyone coming down for this Saturday game @ 2pm?

DC Chapter working on doing dinner with the team either Fri or Sat. We are waiting for Harry to confirm back the plans.

If interested in attending, please contact me via email on:

jerryquinn_us@yahoo.com

Awful. After taking a 9-7 lead about five minutes in, Nova proceeded to score only one more basket by halftime to trail 19-11, go scoreless for the first 8-1/2 minutes of the second half and score their first basket of the second half at the 10:30 mark. By that time Temple had a 35-17 lead and the game in hand.

A late burst(explosion for Nova) of scoring cut the margin to ten but we couldn't sustain on the defensive end to climb all of the way back. The final was 55-43 with Nova scoring 32 points in the last eleven and a half minutes after scoring only 11 in the first 28 and a half minutes.

Sweeney started out strong, scoring 7 of the first nine on the inside before they started doubling down on her. She then added eight more on a series of drives and foul shots during the late run. Once again she was aggressive on both ends of the floor. The Temple defensive speed and pressure caused numerous turnovers and fastbreak points the other way and prevented any sort of offensive thrust from the perimeter.

Sweeney had 15, Kane 10 and Roberts and Suhey had eight each. Of the announced crowd of 400 there must have been about 200 cardboard cutouts sitting on their hands with the rest of us live ones.

What is the solution for women's Basketball.What would happen if this was the men's team?

More of the same today. A sterling defensive effort in the first half scuttled by the offensive ineptitude.

Nova jumped to a 7-0 lead three minutes into the game and the defense held St. Joe off the board for the first seven minutes. After the quick start we managed to score just two more baskets over the next 17 minutes to "lead" by 12-11 at the half. Just awful. We should have rolled over them and won the game by halftime.

We quickly fell behind by more than five points and were still behind by 42-31 with a little more than five minutes left when we started to wake up.
Sweeney then scored ten straight points on two drives and two three balls to singlehandedly bring them to within 44-41. Kane then got an open layup to close to 44-43 with 28 seconds left. St. Joe then was able to get the ball up court without being fouled and found a wide open layup with eight seconds left to secure the final score. After a time out, Harry called Sweeney's number again but her tightly guarded three from the top of the key hit off the front of the rim.

Sweeney was a demon the whole game, scoring 25 and ripping down nine hard earned boards, fouling out her defender. Kane was solid in bringing the ball up through the press which once again created havoc with the other guards in getting the ball up the court. Only four Nova players scored, six others shot blanks, five for 28 from long range and numerous silly turnovers killed us. At one point we had four travelling calls in five trips up the court.

Temple visits next Sunday and we will need to do more than play defense to have a shot at that one. I will have seen them all by that game and then will take a 3 or 4 game break from seeing the live games and try to recover my sanity.

I was at tonigt's snore affair: 30-29 Final.
16-9 half-time score.
I'm a long time fan and I love this team but that was the worst played game I have ever seen.
What has happened to this program?
Posted from wireless.rivals.com
This post was edited on 12/3 9:13 AM by ace

In another thriller Villanova loses to West Virginia 39-36. What is going on with this program?

Hope he is gone soon

If there is anyone still interested in the women's team they lost to Marist, yes Marist, by 9 points the other night.

Drexel used a trapping press on stoppages of play and made baskets to harass the Nova offense to prevent any significant offensive flow. Some poor passing (or non-pass) decisions caused several turnovers early on, and defensive lapses allowed Drexel to pour in 8 of 10 three point shots in the first half.

After falling behind 27-16, Nova tightened up the perimeter defense and with Drexel either missing shots or turning the ball over, Nova had time to walk the ball up the court and run their 30-second offense. Threes by Roberts, Kimmell, Pearson (2) and two layups by Kane led the charge to close within 34-33 at the half, highlighted by a final play top of the key isolation for Kane who took the forward guarding her to the basket to score at the buzzer.

After an opening three by Drexel to go up 37-33, the first ten minutes of the second half belonged to Nova. With Roberts hitting three more threes, a Pearson bucket and four points from Swiezynski the lead grew to 48-41 with a little more than ten minutes left. From that point on, Nova did little right. After Drexel tied the score at 48, Nova finally got another score by isolating Pearson on the right side to back down her player for a ten foot banker to go ahead for the last tiem with 2:20 left in the game.

Drexel immediately tied it up and caused a turnover on the inbounds play. A stop by Nova gave us the chance to take the lead again, and another isolation play to Pearson resulted in an offbalance shot from the foul line that was rebounded by Drexel. After a time out, Drexel immediately got a bucket on a designed play and Nova was down 52-50 with only little more than a minute to play. A missed driving layup by Roberts and several foul shots by Drexel closed out the loss.

Only six turnovers in each half for Nova which was surprising as the Drexel press really had them on their heels for most of the game. On at least six occasions they actually broke the press downcourt for potential two on one breaks - on three occasions we pulled up, on the other three we were out of sync, Jones being too far under the basket to score, Kane intimidated by a closing defender and scooping up a shot instead of laying it in, Roberts flat out missing a layup, etc. Even when we took our time and got the ball up court against the press, the minimal remaining time didn't allow us to run any kind of offense and it showed in the execution.

Suhey did not play and Scanlon and Sweeney saw less than ten minutes so effectively we played with a small lineup most of the game. Roberts led with 16, Kane and Pearson both had 10. The 12 turnovers were evenly distributed and it certainly was a team effort as no one really stood out on either offense or defense. Just an excruciating final ten minutes to sit through.


It would not be surprising to see more teams pressing us in the upcoming schedule if that was any indication of our ability to deal with it. Kudos to Drexel and Denise Dillon on playing the game that they had to be beat Nova for the first time.

Sounds like a Villanova type player that Perretta can use in multiple spots.

"This 6-1 wing from Pickerington, Ohio erased a lot of question marks about what position and what level might be in her future. Having played and been regarded as a forward prospect in the past, Edwards demonstrated she's more than adept and ready to play the wing at the next level. Her size and athleticism give her a versatility that should serve her well at both ends of the floor. Offensively her ballhandling is sound and combined with a lengthy first step to get her by defenders on multiple occasions. While not anybody's answer at point guard, she was able to put it on the floor and contribute effectively against the press and made good decisions in doing so. She shot the ball well from the 15-foot range but still has a little twist in the body that will have to be straightened out for consistency to come. On the defensive end she's active and with her size and agility becomes an imposing match up for opposing perimeter players. The intensity and effort with which she plays puts her in a situation to make an impact any time she's on the floor. Edwards is just coming into her own and should find her best basketball in front of her as she becomes more and more comfortable on the perimeter."

Nova verbal

In a bizzare game for Nova, the LadyCats escaped with an overtime win as a Lehigh layup and tip-in attempt in the final seconds rolled around the rim and out.

Nova continued hitting the three ball shooting 12 for 36 by could not stop Lehigh from penatrating to the basket the whole night including the final play. Once again it was a team effort, with Kimmel and Roberts leading the way with 16 points each. Carey chipped in twelve points, playing an incredible 41 minutes with five assists and only one turnover. Pearson played 33 minutes with five assists and only one turnover also. The team totals were 17 assists, only 9 turnovers with six steals and six blocks.

Nova almost blew a 69-61 lead in the OT with less than two to play. Still leading by three with the ball, 44 seconds left on the clock and ten seconds to shoot off of a timeout, Sweeney's inbound pass was picked off for a coast to coast layup to cut the margin to one. After milking almost all of the 30-second clock, Roberts missed a running shot with 13 seconds left and Lehigh rebounded and called time out. The final play had their star guard Prosser cut to the lane, forcing up a layup that rolled off to her, putting up last second tap that cleared the rim and out of bounds. After hitting almost all of their shots in the paint, the final ones went Nova's way to gain the win.

No time to research it, but when was the last time we gave up 68 points in a game and still won? After some great defensive games in the past week, we were incredibly pourus tonight and only some decent scoring at the other end kept us ahead for most of the game.

A main line brawl at Drexel coming up on Friday and then home on Sunday to play Marist. Two more tough but winnable games for us, but the play on the defensive end will need to tighten up.

Sorry, couldn't resist the subject line.

Nova stymied the Navy offense pretty much the whole game and finally opened up and maintained the lead from about the mdipoint of the second half. Perfect free throw shooting in the final two minutes sealed the deal.

Starting guards Rachel Roberts and Jesse Carey spent a good part of the game in Harry's doghouse but Devon Kane, Sarah Jones and Megan Pearson stepped up quite nicely to pace the win. Kane picked up two quick fouls but Harry allowed her to continue and she did a fine job of bringing the ball up court and shutting off Navy's excellent point guard from taking over the game. Jones hit some key threes to jump start the offense when needed and Pearson had agruably her best game to date, including clutch foul shooting at the end.

Pearson paced the scoring with 15 points and Jones had 13. Kane had no turnovers in over 28 minutes of court time. Click on the link for the Navy's online game summary and box score.

Not a pretty game (is any Nova game ever that?), but all in all a good road win against a very physical team. Not much time for the team to rest as the Saturday game with Oral Roberts is scheduled for an 11 a.m. tip-off. OR seemed to be out of sync from the long travel and dropped an 8 point decsion to Harvard in the other game.

Navy website game summary

Went to the game today and Villanova had an awesome game plan to slow down the fast breaking, trapping, Golden Eagle team.

Got down early 15-5 but settled down and played awesome defense. Perretta switched from man to a match-up 2-3 zone that just stifled ORU. Their shooters could not get open looks, they never attacked the high post so Nova stayed back and watched the baseline runners.

ORU tried a trapping 2-1-2 but Nova spread them out and hit multiple three's and constant high post jumpers. When ORU went to man to man the backscreens and slips seemed to confuse them and got open looks.

If ORU averges 105 ppg then the Wildcat women held them to less than half of their usual total. Hardly any transition buckets for ORU because the Nova women got back on defense and had few TO's.

I have read on here about the Nova offense. Well, Perretta never got on one player today about shooting. If anything, he got on them when they didn't shoot! If I was an offensive minded player I would love this system. Green light to shoot if open!

If Nova is hitting shots, look out. Their offense will get them open looks from outside, they just need to hit them. We'll see if they can stay hot.

By they way, if you have not visited the Naval Academy it is an awesome place. The museum itself is unreal with the all the historical artifacts and information displayed. Beautiful campus too.

Facing an Oral Roberts team averaging almost 100 points a game, we quickly got down 15-5 as a result of two turnover breakaways and three transition three pointers and things looked bleak. The turnovers continued but the offense started to click. Still down about 10 halfway through the first half, Nova went on a run to finish the half up by six points. Kimmell hit 15 from outside, Sweeney for 8 inside to pace the first half attack. 12 Nova turnovers kept OR in the game.

The defense really picked up in the second half and forced a lot of bad passes, bad shots and turnovers by OR to really shut down their offense. OR had no fouls in the second half had had to foul seven times in the final two minutes just to get us to the foul line where we sealed the deal for the second night in a row.

Good news - Emily Suhey got some quality minutes in and finally got her shot to start falling, hitting 3 of her last four shots to finish with 8 points. Kimmell finished with 20 points, Carey returned to form with 11 and Pearson had another fine game with 10 points. We ran some excellent offensive sets and had only six turnovers in the second half. Harry was in a much more agreeable mood today.

Excellent game synopsis and box score on Nova and Delaware websites:
http://www.villanova.com/sports/w-baskbl/recaps/111610aaa.html and
http://www.bluehens.com/teams/womens-basketball/stories/2010/november/111610a.html

The long famine in the first half really killed us. Missed short shots, missed long shots, three consecutive turnovers led to a nine minute scoring drought and a hole we never recovered from.

DellaDonne was unstoppable in the first half. Delaware did a nice job of setting picks and screens for her and just a little daylight is all she needs to square up and fire. Nova essentially doubled her everytime she touched the ball in the second half which left other players wide open. They still don't have a lot of talent surrounding EDD but they were able to nail enough shots to keep us at bay. I don't think EDD had a field goal in the last 15 minutes of the game as she gave the ball up to the other open players. With 22 at the half she finished with 34 points. Kimmel bombed for 20 points to lead the Cats.

A really poor offensive display in the first half was tempered a bit by their comeback in the second half. A couple of key missed shots during the final three minutes prevented them from closing to a one possession game that they could have stolen. The team could have easily lost their composure in the first half, especially after Harry really tore into them in consecutive time outs, but to their credit played fairly well in the second half.

Navy and Oral Roberts are going to offer us some stiff tests in Annapolis this weekend. Both have lots of talant coming back from good seasons last year. After three games Oral Roberts is averaging more than 105 points a game! Is Paul Westhead coaching them? Should be interesting against Harry's 29-1/2 second offense.

Delaware WBB website game story

A typical Nova game, except we actually made the open threes that teams typically give us at the start of games before they adjust to our offense.

After Kimmell bombed away hitting four of her first five we were up 18-5 with less than four minutes played. Incredibly LaSalle left her wide open the first seven times up the court before calling a time out to regroup.

LaSalle then pushed out the perimeter defense and the first line offense wasn't able to get cutters open or failed to hit them when they were, the threes stopped falling and the offense bogged down for most of the rest of the game. Harry went with a five for five substitution about eight minutes in. After scoring 18 in 3:45 we scored only 8 more in the next 12 minutes or so. Fortunately we put some more points on the board before half to be able to keep a 10+ point lead the rest of the way.

The story on the Nova website pretty well documents the game. I will attempt to make as many games as I can this year and post up summaries when I can. Give me a shout out if you are interested so I at least know that there are some left on the board that care. No need to hear from you-know-who since we all know where he stands (sits?).

LaSalle was awful, not much to learn from this game other than Kimmell may be able to jump start them to some wins that might not otherwise have been possible. DellaWare lurks on Thursday in their house. A lot of backstorys with that game but the end result is proably not going to pretty from the Nova aspect.

Any ideas / predictions as to who will start in the first game?

Sweeney, Pearson, Suhey, Carey, Kimmel?

Swiezynski, Sweeney, Pearson, Carey, Kimmel?

Scanlon, Sweeney, Suhey, Roberts, Leer?

I think it will be...

Carey, Scanlon, Pearson, Swiezynski, Kimmel

just a guess...

What do you think?

M
This post was edited on 4/9 11:34 PM by tpenter

For those interested, Shannon will not be playing this year.

If you go to the University site, there is a report on the trip to Europe, and the games are included. I think you will see some new names that might help up this year.

I am perfectly aware of the LadyCats' play and record the last few years, but when we were nationally competitive about seven or eight years ago I enjoyed watching them as much as any mens' team. I prefer a great backdoor cut to a highlight reel dunk any day of the week.

We are picked to be 14th. Surprised. I'm not.

I'm jacked up - it should be compelling stuff! Oh, wait. Are there more than 247 people that care about women's hoops? Family and friends, that's about it. Without Title IX, it wouldn't even exist. Title IX is the biggest farce that was ever forced down the throats of Collegiate Athletics.
Apart from family and friends, what's the average home attendance for the "Lady Wildcats"? 53?
A complete freakin' joke. Stick to Ballet, cooking, ironing, needle point, prancing down the fashion runway, make up applications, shopping and the like. It's a wastefull drain on an Athletic Depts. budget.