Hawk Classic Round 1

While Craig will be in attendance Tuesday in Dayton for the Men's game, I have also been busy with Terrier basketball of my own, that of the Women's variety. I have lived in the Philadelphia suburbs my whole life and if you are a college basketball fan, you know that Big 5 basketball rules Philadelphia and its suburbs.

For those who read this blog and do not know what the Big 5 is I shall quickly explain it to you. The Big 5 consist of five Philadelphia area teams that play each other each season. They consist of La Salle, Temple, Penn, Villanova, and St. Joseph's University. Young sports fans who grow up in or around Philadelphia associate themselves with one of these schools, and that school becomes your hometown college team.

Living only minutes from St. Joseph's University, I naturally became fans of the Hawks. While I feel a greater alliance towards their Men's basketball team, I have gone to many more Women's games. For the past 19 years Saint Joseph's have held a two day, four team, tournament between Christmas and New Years, called the Hawk Classics. Ever since I can remember I have gone to this tournament. As you can imagine, when I discovered that BU was invited to take part in the Hawk Classic, it became a can't miss event.

The Best College Mascot

St. Joseph's University absolutely demolished Brown in the first game of the Hawk Classic 65-36. Not even the magic of current Brown student Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) could have made the Brown Women's basketball team look good.


I admit I was not very optimistic prior to the start of the Terriers' game against the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. After having a going 16-0 in America East Conference play last season, BU has started the 2009-2010 campaign slowly going 3-6 prior to Monday's game. Losing Jesyka Burks-Wiley, Kristi Dini, Christine Kinneary, and Amarachi Umez-Eronini due to graduation, means expectations are different for the much younger Terriers' team.

A significant height advantage for the Gamecocks along with the fact that BU had only beaten one SEC team in the history of its program led me to question their chance of winning. To make matters worse South Carolina has 6'5 Freshman forward Kelsey Bone, who just happens to be a McDonald's All-American.

She is a woman among girls

The picture above, however, does not give the best perspective on her intimidating height differential.

And among boys.

Long story short, BU won a nail bitter 68-67 and will face St. Joseph's on Tuesday in the finals of the Hawk Classic. Freshman guard Caitlynn Moran led the Terriers with 21 points and seven assists. Youth led the Terriers to victory as sophomore guard Alex Young and freshman guard Chantell Alford also reached double figures in points. Senior Maggie McKemie played a key role off the bench grabbing 10 rebounds, while teamate Aly Hinton scored 10 points and grabbed seven rebounds of her own.

BU played strong defense against the 6'5 Kelsey Bone, double teaming her whenever she got inside their zone defense. Bone finished with only five points on 1-10 shooting, but did grab 15 rebounds. She has a ways to go if she wants to follow in the footsteps of other ridiculously tall players such as Courtney Paris and Juwanna Man.

The University of South Carolina were paced by junior guard Valerie Nainima who led all scorers with 29 points. Nainima took 31 total shots, almost half of her team's total shots for the game, but only converted on 11. The Fiji native was not shy about spotting up from beyond the arc, only making 5-17 three point attempts.

It was a near perfect day for yours truly. The cherry on top was that Dawn Staley, the former coach of the Temple Owls, and current University of South Carolina coach lost! I am sure that sounds incredibly immature on my part, but here me out. Ever since I was a young child I remember St. Joseph's having a tremendous amount of trouble defeating inner city rival Temple, in both Men's and Women's basketball. As the players came in and out, what remained the same were the head coaches.

I could go on forever explaining my strong disdain for former Temple Men's basketball coach John Chaney and why the word despicable perfect describes him when he was a coach, but that is for another time.



Unlike Chaney, Dawn Staley is a very highly respected coach, whom I can say nothing bad about whatsoever. Nevertheless, she has been present at and more than likely caused many tough losses for my beloved St. Joseph's Hawks. As the last second ticked off the clock on Monday, I was more than relieved to see that Dawn Staley would not strike again against another of my favorite teams.