The women’s basketball team travels to Philly tonight to take on St. Joseph’s at Hawk Hill. The ’Cats come into this game with some national attention after defeating the Houston Jaguars in a exhibition game.

After falling to ’Nova, the Jaguars the handed UConn their first loss in nearly 18 months and went 3-1 on their exhibition season.

The ’Cats will rely on the strong play of senior guards Katie Davis and Trish Juhline and junior forward Courtney Mix to help propel them to victory. Though the team comes in on a high note, no one is taking St. Joe’s and their junior guard Stephanie Graff for granted. “St. Joe’s is a good team, but we’re just going to try and play our normal game by slowing the tempo, shooting threes and playing solid defense,” coach Harry Perretta said. “Also, we are going to try and focus on stopping Graff from beating us.”

The Hawks come into this game with high hopes of their own, as they are coming off an 88-76 exhibition victory over Team Concept.

Team Concept is a team made up of WNBA and overseas players. The Hawks showed off their offensive muscle in the game.

The team was led by, junior Graff who dropped 24 points and junior Irina Krasnoshiok who contributed with 23 of her own.

Along with Graff and Krasnoshiok, the team returns starters Amra Mehmedic and Collen McGahan. Both are considered deadly from the outside. Mehmedic ranked among single season and career three-point field goal percentage before breaking several fingers that kept her sidelined for the rest of the season.

Just like the ’Cats, the Hawks made it to the second round of the NCAA tournament last season, but they lost to Vermont in a close 60-55 contest.

Both teams have returning starters and a solid freshmen class, so this should be a close-nit battle right down to the buzzer.