Women's Basketball at Saint Joseph's Sunday

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Bronx, N.Y. – Fordham (12-7, 4-2) heads back on the road for another critical Atlantic 10 contest, this time at Saint Joseph's (14-4, 4-2) on Sunday at 2 p.m. on ESPN+ and WFUV.
 
Ramses Challenge
Join the Ramses Challenge, a new philanthropic initiative supporting our student-athletes! Pledge a set amount of money for each three-pointer or steal this year, or make a one-time gift to the program. All proceeds are tax-deductible and go directly to Fordham women's basketball. Read more here. So far, the Rams have 154 made threes and a whopping 168 steals! Thank you for all your continued support!
 
Last Time Out
The Rams suffered a 66-57 defeat to reigning league champion, Massachusetts, on Wednesday night due to a slow start offensively. Fordham's defense kept it in the contest, limiting the Minutewomen to just 22 first-half points, though the offense conjured up just 20 of its own. The hosts took their first lead since the opening minutes on Asiah Dingle's quick three to open up the second half, but the visitors rallied to retake the lead and grew it into double figures, though Fordham got within seven, 39-32, heading to the final frame. In the fourth, Anna DeWolfe went bonkers, scoring 14 of her season-high 33 points as the two squads combined for 52 points on 17-of-34 shooting in the period. DeWolfe and Dingle combined to erase the deficit and tie the contest, 43-43, but UMass went ahead for good shortly thereafter on a free throw.
 
DeWolfe finished one point shy of her career-high while notching personal-bests of 12 field goals and seven triples, shooting 12-of-23 overall and 7-of-15 from distance, also posting a season-high four steals. Dingle shared the team-lead of eight rebounds with Kaitlyn Downey while racking up 18 points. Downye chipped in four points and four dimes, as well, while Sarah Karpell handed out six assists and Matilda Flood contributed three steals, two rebounds, an assist, and a block in 23 minutes off the bench.
 
Series History
Saint Joseph's holds a 38-14 all-time series advantage since 1972. The schools met five times before Fordham joined the Atlantic 10 in 1995-96, all Hawk victories. Saint Joseph's won the majority of meetings until the Rams turned things around in 2013, a 70-63 overtime win at home starting an 11-5 run since, including five straight. This is the first time playing at Hagan Arena since 2019 - a 51-41 win in that year's season finale. Last year, Fordham defeated Saint Joseph's, 55-35, at home.
 
Nationally Speaking (as of 1/20)
Fordham have played at a much faster tempo this season, averaging 72.5 points per contest, which ranks 69th in the nation. The offense's 1.14 assist/turnover ratio, tops in the Atlantic 10, sits 37th nationally. The team's recent slump from distance has dropped the offense down from 12th to 36th with 8.1 makes per game and from 48th to 94th in percentage, now at 33.4%. The Rams are dishing out the 61st-most assists per game (15.5) while committing just 13.6 turnovers per game, ranked 38th. The offense is also hitting free throws at the 20th-best rate (77.7%) despite taking the 341st-fewest attempts (11.32).
 
Individually, Asiah Dingle is 14th in steals per game, 12th in field goals, and 23rd in points per game. Kaitlyn Downey is 19th in defensive rebounds per game, 78th in total boards per game, and 42nd in double-doubles. Anna DeWolfe is 41st in points per game, 20th in total threes, 15th in field goals, 45th in threes per game, and 36th in minutes per game.
 
Triple D - DeWolfe, Dingle, Downey
Shut the front door! The Fordham trio have been gnarly, righteous, dynamite, and, perhaps most importantly, the bomb-dot-com. All three earned Atlantic 10 All-Conference honors and had at least one A-10 Player of the Week award last season. Combined, they made up 66.1% of the team's scoring on a combined 40.2% shooting overall. They are the real deal. Through three games so far, those numbers are similar – 67.0% of the scoring on 42.6% shooting. For context for the uninitiated, this entire blurb is an ode to Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.
 
Three 1,000-Point Scorers
With her tough turnaround second-quarter jumper at Princeton, Kaitlyn Downey became the 25th Ram to score 1,000 points in program history. Now 17th with 1,163 points after passing three former Rams at Dayton, she joins Asiah Dingle (1,816 across three schools and five seasons) and Anna DeWolfe (1,640 - fifth-most in school history). Nationally, the Rams are one of 11 schools with three active student-athletes with 1,000 career points, although they are one of only two mid-major schools, along with UMass. Virginia Tech has four 1,000-point scorers.
 
Hungry Like DeWolfe
The 2020-21 Atlantic 10 Co-Player of the Year and two-time WBCA All-America honorable mention, senior Anna DeWolfe is averaging 18.2 points per game on 41.9% shooting overall and 36.2% shooting from distance (50-of-138). Named to the Preseason All-Conference First Team, she became the 24th Ram to reach 1,000 career points on December 12, 2021 against Lafayette, doing so on a patented mid-range jumper, hitting nothing but net.
 
For her career, across 98 consecutive starts, DeWolfe has joined the top-five all-time with 1,640 points and has now moved up to fourth with 645 field goals and fifth with 209 threes. She is also fifth with a career 16.7 per-game scoring average and eighth with a 82.9% rate the line. She also joined the top-10 for career minutes played on Wednesday, now 10th with 3,606.
 
Dingle All The Way
The Boston native is up to 128 career appearances across three schools and four-plus seasons, now with 110 career starts, starting all but one contest for Fordham since she arrived. Last year a Third Team All-Conference selection and a preseason Second Team honoree, Dingle leads the team in scoring (19.3 points), assists (60), and steals (57), while shooting 44.6% from the floor, 36.4% from behind the arc, and 77.6% on a team-high 76 free-throw attempts.
 
For her career, she has accumulated 1,816 points, averaging 14.2 per game, 648 field goals, 283 steals, and a 396 assist/418 turnover ratio. She is a 42.7% career shooting with averages of 4.1 rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 2.2 steals per game. Prior to her arrival in the Bronx, Dingle was a 19.2% three-point shooter on 104 career attempts. Last year she shot 18-of-64 (28.1%) and has continued to work at her long-range shot, shooting 36.4% this year on an already-career-high 88 attempts.
 
Among active players in Division I, she has been in a three-way battle all season for steals alongside Michigan State's Stephanie Visscher and Gardner-Webb's Jhessyka Williams, but is currently tops in the nation with the latter, five ahead of the latter. She's also ninth with 450 free throws made and sixth with 621 attempts.
 
Downey Moving Up
The graduate forward became the 25th Ram to reach 1,000 career points at Princeton with a tough turnaround jumper in the paint. She's up to 17th now with 1,163, passing Cecelia Wanker ('83), Hannah Missry ('17), and former teammate and now assistant coach Lauren Holden ('19) at Dayton. Against Wagner she moved into the all-time top-10 for career rebounds and just passed both Sharon Nast ('86) and former teammate Kendell Heremaia ('22) for fifth with 818. She is up to eighth with 198 career threes, joint-third with 132 appearances, all consecutive, and is one start shy of breaking Samantha Clark's ('16) school record of 126.
 
Where Do The 2022-23 Rams Stand in Program History?
Fordham is playing at a much faster tempo this season and its 72.5 points per game average, 63rd in the nation, is a perfect example of that. In fact, that would be second only to the historic 1978-79 squad for the program record (73.8). As a result, with another 10-15 or so games left on the schedule, this team will surely threaten the record for made field goals, both inside the arc and out, while the team's current 77.7% free-throw clip and 1.14 assist/turnover ratio would rank second.
 
Asiah and Co. Steal the Show
You thought Asiah Dingle's five steals in the season opener was a handful? She doubled that with a program-record 10 against Saint Peter's, notching her ninth and 10th on consecutive possessions in the third quarter. Her previous best was six, which she'd accomplished several times over her career, including once with Fordham. The previous school record was eight, done five times by four student-athletes, but not since Lauren Fleischer in 2001. Her teammates added 11 thefts against the Peacocks to set a new single-game team record, as well, by three, with 21.
 
Are You Experienced?
Fordham's current starting lineup entered this season with a mammoth 488 career games played, unofficially the most in the country via asking national Division I SIDs. Behind them at the beginning of the year were Virginia Tech (431), Oklahoma (427), and UT Arlington (402, but 444 including JUCO). Fordham is now up to 583 games played for its starting five with grad transfer Jada Dapaa adding 105 off the bench.
 
Up Next
The Rams return home to host Richmond on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. on SNY, ESPN+, and WFUV.