Jefferson’s Haley Meinel, heads into the NCAA D-II Tournament as the class of the CACC

Inside Herb Magee Arena, Jefferson University’s women’s basketball team established firm second-half control of its Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference quarterfinal game. Someone in the crowd pointed to a player on the court.

“She’s the league player of the year,” the Jefferson fan said of Haley Meinel, talking about the league awards just announced. Makes sense, since this group on Henry Avenue was the CACC’s dominant team and Meinel is Jefferson’s top scorer.

“And she’s the league defensive player of the year,” the fan noted.

Now, you’ve got something. When a league’s top player also is the league’s top defensive player, you’re bound to have a special team. Watching Meinel play defense for Tom Shirley’s Rams, you’d have thought this night’s result still was in doubt. The Central Bucks South grad must lead the CACC in deflections. There was a Meinel tip … then another one. Neither resulted in a steal but Meinel’s disruptive abilities remained on full display past the point when the game result was in doubt.

» READ MORE: In his first season as head coach at Jefferson, Jimmy Reilly looks back, and ahead

The 26-4 Rams were upset by Dominican (N.Y.) at home in an overtime heartbreaker in the CACC semifinals, but an NCAA Division II bid already had been locked up. Jefferson found out that its next stop is in Worcester, Mass., for a Friday date with Daemen (N.Y.) University.

Again, 26-4 leads back to good players being good defensive players.

Was Meinel, now a junior, a good defensive player in high school?

“I would say I had some steals in high school for sure, but I think, coming to Jefferson, and Coach putting me up at the top of the press, that kind of defense [helped], putting me up at the top of the 2-3,” Meinel said, sitting in her coach’s office following the quarterfinal win over Caldwell.

Did that happen immediately, putting a 5-foot-10 forward up top on D?

“We started to put this 1-3-1 [defense] in that we didn’t play a lot,” Shirley said, going back to late in Meinel’s freshman season. “I said let’s put this size and length at the top … Then the light bulb went on. Why not the 2-3? Why not the 2-2, which is our half-court trap? Then it just became common practice.”

The variable, Shirley said, “If we play it with anybody else, it’s more structured. With her, she has more latitude to go 94 feet if she wants to. Sometimes, I pull her back, so it doesn’t get so gappy. We talk about that.”

Does the team chart deflections?

“No, we chart steals, though,” Shirley said. “She’s No. 2 all-time [at Jefferson] in steals.”

Nationally, Meinel is second this season in NCAA Division II in steals.

“I like to think that defense fuels my offense, too,” Meinel said. “Putting me at the top of the press, getting those steals, I can get easy layups. I think defense is a huge important part of our game.”

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Jefferson’s defense gives up under 54 points a game, sixth nationally in DII.

“I think we’ve stepped it up a lot from last year – our man defense, we weren’t as good at it,” Meinel said.

“I think we put more time into it,” Shirley said.

Meinel said that step-up this season comes from this team being pretty close to the same one as last year, and the overall tightness of the group, living together, enjoying each other.

“At the end of last year, we didn’t shoot well from three, and I said to them as a team, ‘I can go into the portal and I can find us a shooter,’” Shirley said. “That’s our deficiency as a team. They said to me as a team, ‘We’ve got this. Just leave it alone, we’ve got this.’”

“Here we are, still bad at threes,” Meinel said, laughing.

“But … but, I let them decide and they decided we were OK,” said Shirley.

Meinel said of another player joining up from the portal, “We actually had someone come in. We talked to her, she was really nice and everything. But we were all like, we don’t want to mess up the team dynamic here.”

Shirley has won 847 career games, 698 of them in 33 seasons at Jefferson. That’s more than any women’s coach in local college basketball history, at any level. Learning to trust his gut and his players has worked out all right.

For players, was there some extra emphasis on offseason shooting after taking that stance with their coach?

“We shoot all the time in practice, and we get in the gym for extra shooting after practice,” Meinel said. “We’re there early trying to get shots.”

“They’re winning games with two-pointers, not three-pointers, Shirley interjected. “You look at our three-point shooting percentage, we stink. We can’t put a beach ball in the ocean from three.”

The Rams have made just 25 percent of their threes, despite leading the CACC with a 72.7% free-throw percentage, and leading the conference in overall field-goal percentage at 43.9%. Because they don’t make many threes, they purposefully don’t take many, 11th in the 12-team CACC this season with just over 10 attempts a game.

“I was 1 for 7 today,” Meinel added, looking at the box score.

“That’s not your shot,” Shirley said. “Every now and then.”

What’s her shot?

“What do you think, Coach?” Meinel asked.

“Well, number one, a layup,” Shirley said. “She gets breakaway layups. We run one play called BC, which is an X cut and she’s the second cutter and she’s got 300 of her points off that. Her forte in jump-shooting is a set shot when the ball swings and she’s open and there’s nobody within two steps and she’ll knock it down. Under pressure, she’ll tend to put it down.”

It’s no secret how you win big at the Division II level. You need your best players to be capable of playing Division I.

“We recruited probably the two best players in the district when they were seniors,” Shirley said. “We didn’t get the one, but we got Haley. I said, ‘You’re going to have a great career, you’re going to do well, you’re picking the right school.’ For me to have said those words, and this [to] happen to her, that’s the best part. This kid’s in the right place, there’s no question.”

Meinel could probably sit on Villanova’s bench, Shirley said. Which means she could have sat on any D-I bench in the area.

“Trust me, just trust me,” Shirley said he told her. “And she did.”

A referee went up to Meinel recently, “Are you a senior yet?”

“I’m actually a fifth-year, and I’ll be back next year,” said Meinel, who redshirted as a freshman, pointing out there was no 2020-21 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She’s getting an MBA in addition to already having a bachelor’s degree. This whole group is planning to be back again. For Meinel, averaging 15.4 points a game, one thing is a given. The ball will find her, whether it deflects away or not.

“I definitely notice the deflections,” Meinel said. “I wish we did keep [track] of them.”