Simmons and Richardson-Smith Named 2nd-Team All-Met
4/21/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
April 21, 2014
SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. - Seton Hall University redshirt junior point guard Ka-Deidre Simmons (Newark, N.J.) and sophomore swing player Tabatha Richardson-Smith (Bay City, Texas) were named Second-Team 2013-14 Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association Women's Division I selections it was announced Monday. The Pirates' two leading scorers will be formally recognized on Tuesday night at the 81st Annual NIT/MBWA Haggerty Awards dinner in Tarrytown, N.Y.
The All-Metropolitan honors are the latest postseason recognition to be bestowed upon two of the players that helped lead Seton Hall to one of its most successful seasons over the past two decades. It is the first time since 2008-09 the Pirates had a pair of players receive All-Metropolitan recognition.
With first-year head coach Anthony Bozzella at the helm Seton Hall finished its 2013-14 campaign with a 20-14 overall record, earning an at-large berth to the WNIT for its first postseason appearance since 2007, and the Pirates advanced to the WNIT Third Round for the first time in program history in their fourth-ever appearance in the postseason tournament.It was the first 20-win season for Seton Hall since 1994-95 and just the eighth time in program history a team reached 20 victories.
SHU was 8-10 in BIG EAST play to finish seventh in the conference standings and the Hall dispatched Providence in the First Round of the BIG EAST Tournament to reach the conference quarterfinals for the first time since 2003.
Simmons was a First-Team All-BIG EAST selection, the first for the program since 1996, and was also named to the BIG EAST Conference All-Tournament Team. Richardson-Smith picked up a pair of BIG EAST postseason accolades in being named Second-Team All-Conference in addition to being her selection as the BIG EAST's Most Improved Player, after increasing her scoring average by 12.2 ppg from her rookie season to rank third in the conference in scoring at 17.1 ppg.
A number of significant milestones highlighted Simmons' season, which may rank as the best individual effort by an SHU point guard in program history. Her 174 assists broke Kathy O'Reilly's single-season mark of 158, which stood for 26 years and Simmons also became just the 20th player in program history to score 1,000 career points, finishing the year ranked 14th in school history with 1,139 points over three complete seasons.
She ranked fourth in the BIG EAST and 49th in the nation with 5.1 assists per game and her 368 career assists currently rank fifth all-time; if she duplicated her 2013-14 output next season she would fall just one assist shy of O'Reilly's record of 533. Simmons also set a new program record for free throws made with 195 and will enter her senior season just 41 shy of the school record.
In terms of scoring the basketball Simmons averaged a career-best 16.7 ppg, which was a 5.2 increase over last season and good enough to rank fourth in the BIG EAST. She scored in double figures in 33-of-34 games played, netting a career-best 25 points in a victory at Villanova on Jan. 11.
This season was also a record breaker for Richardson-Smith, who set a new Seton Hall single-game scoring and field goal record in addition to draining an all-time high 85 3-pointers, easily surpassing the old mark of 74 set by Brittany Morris just last season.
In an overtime victory over Marquette Richardson-Smith erupted for a single-game record 38 points, draining 15 field goals, five of which were from downtown, including the game-tying trey with just 0.7 remaining in regulation.
Her 582 points were the third-most for a Pirate in a single season in program history and her 17.1 ppg scoring average ranks sixth all-time. Richardson-Smith turned in 11 20-point games and hit five 3-pointers on six different occasions, including in back-to-back WNIT contests against Princeton and Rutgers to end the season.
She was named the BIG EAST Player of the Week on two occasions (Dec. 9 and Feb. 24), the first player to do so since Monique Blake in 2004-05, and she landed on the BIG EAST Weekly Honor Roll five times, which is a school record.
