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The DePaul Blue Demons’ season ended during the first day of the Big East conference tournament following a 69-55 loss to the Providence Friars at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut.

The final of three losses to the Friars this season, the Blue Demons’ post-season defeat marks the third straight year that DePaul has been unable to advance beyond the tournament’s first round.

This year’s loss came despite the Blue Demons holding a seven-point lead nearly halfway through the second quarter. After a tied first quarter, DePaul jumped out to an advantage largely because of the shooting ability of redshirt freshman guard Ally Timm. 

Timm knocked down a three-pointer, her first of the night, and drew a shooting foul in the meantime. Her trip to the line did not go, but an offensive rebound gave the Blue Demons the ball right back, and Timm opportunistically hit another shot from long range to convert a six-point play.

Timm was far from the only player to make an impact offensively throughout the game. DePaul had six players record five or more points, including Timm, redshirt freshman guard Alayna West, sophomore guard Natiah Nelson, sophomore guard Devin Hagemann, graduate forward Michelle Ojo and junior guard Kate Novik.

Novik led the way for the Blue Demons with 13 points, marking her 14th game this season as DePaul’s leading scoring. Senior forward Meg Newman finished with a team-high six rebounds, with Timm, Novik and Hagemann all tying in first place with three assists apiece. 

After Timm’s scoring outburst in the second quarter, however, the game’s script completely flipped. From thereon to about halfway through the third quarter, the Friars went on a 20-3 run that gave them a double-digit lead and a grasp on the game that they ever relinquished. 

“It feels sad, of course. Losing sucks,” Novik said upon her season ending. “We didn’t expect the result today because we expected to win … Today was not enough to win for each of us.”

The majority of Providence’s damage came from graduate guard Sabou Gueye, an All-Big East first team honoree who dropped a season-high 31 points on 15 made field goals.

“I’m a grad student and I didn’t want this to be my last game,” Gueye said of her performance. “My teammates trusted me and we just did it all together.”

Graduate forward Teneisa Brown also made her presence felt, finishing with 14 points and 14 total rebounds en route to helping her squad outscore the Blue Demons in the paint 48-32.

“My teammates were scoring off my boards every time I got it,” Brown said post-game. “It makes me want to keep going at the boards. It was just a great team effort.”

Gueye and Brown stepped up in a big way for the Friars, but Providence’s most unsung performance came perhaps from assistant coach Valerie Nainima. Head coach Erin Batth was a late scratch for the Friars due to an unforeseen illness, meaning that Nainima was thrust into the lead role on the sideline for their matchup against DePaul.

“I knew during our pre-game meal,” Nainima said on finding out that she would be the acting head coach. “We had a meeting yesterday when we were seeing that it might be a possibility, but we were prepared ahead of time. And then today when it became a reality, just took some deep breaths, a lot of prayer and just pushed through.” 

Despite the loss and her first season as DePaul’s full-time head coach coming to an end, Jill Pizzotti recognizes the steps that her young team took during the year.

“We’re playing with some young guards, and the Big East is a big challenge,” Pizzotti said. “We had a lot of tough games, but they took advantage of the opportunity to play and grow and understand the game better and what it requires to come out with a win.”

Finishing with a 5-16 record in the Big East, including the post-season loss, Pizzotti entered the season with a team that consisted 50% of newcomers between freshmen and transfer additions. With key injuries to veterans like Newman and senior guard Kate Clarke, who never returned to the court, Pizzotti’s squad faced a lot of adversity on and off the court.

“What probably impressed me the most about this team was, we were off to a very tough start, and then the resiliency they showed,” Pizzotti said. “There’s not a lot of magic here. You just have to get better and then you have to put in a lot of effort, energy and execution.” 

The season certainly did not go the way the coaches or players had drawn it up in the fall, but there were still key moments of growth for this squad. 

“I learned that no matter what ups, downs, you keep working,” Novik said of her first season as a Blue Demon. “I’m just so grateful for every coach who put a lot of effort on me and my teammates to get better this season, even though it was a hard season for us.”

The loss drops DePaul’s all-time record against Providence to 25-7, meaning that nearly half of all the Blue Demons’ losses to the Friars have now come in a 62-day span. Providence advances to play No. 2 seed Villanova on Saturday.

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