The St. Joseph’s women’s basketball team will face the University of Scranton in the first round of the NCAA Division III tournament on Friday.
The Monks earned a berth in the NCAA tournament by winning the Great Northeast Athletic Conference tournament with a 74-67 win over Emmanuel on Sunday. St. Joseph’s finished 23-5 overall and is playing in the tournament for the first time since 2018.
Scranton, meanwhile, earned its spot in the tournament with a 69-54 win over Elizabethtown in the Landmark Conference tournament. The Lady Royals are 27-0 and have earned eight straight trips the NCAA Division III tournament.
The Monks will face Scranton at 8:30 p.m. Friday in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Also, Maine Maritime Academy earned a berth in the tournament with a 71-55 win over SUNY Poly in the North Atlantic Conference tournament title game. The Mariners (22-6) will face New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference champion Babson at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Babson Park, Massachusetts.
TOP 25: After a week of upsets that saw 15 ranked teams lose, South Carolina remained the lone unbeaten school.
The Gamecocks ran their streak to 36 consecutive weeks atop The Associated Press Top 25 women’s basketball poll to match Louisiana Tech for the second-longest run in the history of the poll that dates to 1976.
South Carolina (29-0) finished the regular season unbeaten and was back to being a unanimous choice at No. 1 in national media poll. The Gamecocks only trail UConn (51 weeks) for the longest consecutive streak atop the Top 25.
While the Gamecocks won both of their games last week and enter the SEC Tournament as the No. 1 seed, the rankings got a big reshuffling. The 15 ranked teams losing at least one game was by far the most Top 25 schools to lose in the same week this season; 11 had lost in the same week a few times earlier this season.
Indiana, which lost at the buzzer to then-No. 6 Iowa on Caitlin Clark’s 3-pointer on Sunday, remained No. 2. Utah jumped up five places to No. 3 after beating then-No. 3 Stanford to clinch a share of the Pac-12 title. It’s Utah’s best ranking ever. The Cardinal dropped to sixth.
(4) UCONN 60, XAVIER 51: Aaliyah Edwards scored 19 points and Caroline Decharme added 14 as the Huskies (26-5, 18-2) ended the regular season with a win over the Musketeers (7-22, 0-20) in Storrs, Connecticut.
Fernanda Ovalle scored nine points for Xavier.
MEN’S BASKETBALL
TOP 25: The top five spots in The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll remained the same. The rest of the AP Top 25 was a big jumble.
Houston was No. 1 for the second straight week in the poll, receiving 49 first-place votes from a 62-person media panel. No. 2 Alabama had five first-place votes and No. 3 Kansas received eight.
UCLA and Purdue rounded out the top five. The Boilermakers held at No. 5 despite losing to No. 15 Indiana.
VIRGINIA: Terry Holland, who elevated Virginia basketball to national prominence during 16 seasons as coach and later had a distinguished career as an athletic administrator, has died, the school announced. He was 80.
Holland died Sunday night, according to the school, which confirmed the death with his family. His health had declined since being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2019 and he stopped taking his prominent courtside seat at Virginia home games.
Holland took over a flailing program in 1974. The Cavaliers had had just three winning seasons in 21 years and Holland created a culture that proved a formula for success: His Cavaliers played rugged defense.
Two of his first three teams finished with losing records but only one more did as Holland compiled a 326-173 record, led Virginia to nine NCAA Tournaments, two Final Fours and the 1980 NIT title. He also guided the Cavaliers to their first Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament title in 1976 despite a modest 15-11 regular-season record.
MEN’S LACROSSE
PLYMOUTH STATE 10, UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND 8: Jake Dolcimascolo had three goals and two assists as the Panthers (1-0) beat the Nor’easters (1-2) in Biddeford.
Crosby Fay and Mike Fleury each added two goals for Plymouth State.
Jordan White, Colin Watt and Finn McCoy each had two goals for UNE.
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