Seton Hall women's coach Anne Donovan get her first win of her Pirates tenure, beating Temple 72-59 on Tuesday.Last Friday, in her first game as Seton Hall women's coach, Anne Donovan watched her new team come up short against an Florida-Gulf Coast team that shouldn't have been close at all. She began to worry that this team might not have it.
Tuesday night in Walsh Gym, those fears were put to rest.
The Pirates notched their first win of the season and Donovan's tenure, knocking off Temple 72-59.
"Our kids have been working so hard and Florida-Gulf Coast was a big letdown," Donovan said by phone after the win. "So they re-focused. There's still a lot of things that we need to get better at, but it's really a positive step for the program for sure."
Junior guard Jasmine Crew led the way for Seton Hall, scoring 16 points. But it was the play of forward Kandice Green, who notched a double-double with 15 points and 12 rebounds for the Pirates, which keyed the first win of the year.
Donovan — who took the Seton Hall job in the offseason while still coaching the WNBA's New York Liberty — said that she saw a renewed sense of focus from her team after the opening-night loss.
"That one was very jarring," Donovan said of the first loss. "Just because we were in the game down the stretch. And it just was an ugly loss. It was a pretty poorly performed game — a lot of fouls a lot of turnovers down the stretch. And we had been practicing that quite a bit, every day we're working on end-of-game situations. And to have an end-of-game situation that was going to mean a win or a loss and not to execute, was hard.
"I didn't know if we could get that back. Tonight, we had a 20-point lead and in the last four minutes, I think we had one point. So I think it was a good reminder for our girls that we're not there yet, but we're making steps."
Seton Hall actually found itself down by four at halftime to the Owls, 30-26. But the Pirates outscored Temple the rest of the way, 46-29. Donovan admitted that it certainly is a big burden lifted from a program that won nine games and just one Big East game last season.
Especially with a matchup with LSU looming Saturday afternoon.
"We really needed this," Donovan said. "And they needed it. Just for that reward for the work. You can only ask kids to keep working hard at something that's extremely challenging without a reward. There's got to be a reward to keep them with it."