Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist and Drexel’s Keishana Washington rank No. 1 and No. 2 in the nation in scoring. Here’s the reason why.

Both players attract attention. Not the celebrity kind, say, walking down the street.

Maybe not even during warmups. Which one is she? Near the end of their college careers, Maddy Siegrist and Keishana Washington still occasionally get that before either a Villanova or Drexel game, some intrigued newcomer showing up.

Which one is Siegrist? ... That little one is Washington?

The game starts, all doubt removed — quickly.

Their stats keep adding up. Current NCAA Division I women’s basketball scoring leaders as of Jan. 11:

A crazy coincidence, or is it? The two top current scorers in the sport, who have traded places at the very top over the last month, play home games 11 miles apart, both on campuses touched by Lancaster Avenue. Even weirder (or is it?), the head coach who recruited Washington to Drexel, Denise Dillon, now is Siegrist’s head coach at Villanova.

Siegrist, last season’s Big East player of the year, averaged 25.3 points a game in 2021-22, second in the nation. She’s on pace to be ‘Nova’s all-time leading scorer, men or women, breaking a 36-year-old record. She’s also on pace to be the all-time Big East regular-season scorer.

Last season, Washington had taken another scoring step, finishing second in the Colonial Athletic Association, averaging 19.2 points a game. Big-scoring games have long been in her. She scored 40 last season against William & Mary. In 2020-21, she was CAA Tournament MVP after scoring 36 in the league semifinals and 30 in the title game. Even in 2019-20, she was national player of the week once after a 27-point game.

All that and it turns out there were more points to be had for both. Where do these extra points come from? Where on the court? What does it take for Washington and Siegrist to find them?

Where don’t Siegrist’s points come from? Against Georgetown last week at the Finneran Pavilion, Siegrist scored first on three straight possessions. She received a crosscourt diagonal pass from a veteran, Brooke Mullin, who long ago mastered the art of instantly seeing when Siegrist had established position near the low block. As a defender tasked with guarding Siegrist scrambled into a better spot, Siegrist simply waited out the scrambled move, then squared up, found her opening. Easy bucket.

Villanova’s next possession, Siegrist was more aggressive, dribbling into a double team, intentionally finding some trouble, drawing a foul, and making two free throws.

Next, a right baseline mid-range slight fadeaway. She scored a couple of more at the foul line … then went quiet for a while.

“I think the game is a lot more mental than it is physical, once you get to a certain level,” Siegrist said after that game.

What she meant, Siegrist said, was that even if she misses a flurry, even misses every shot in one half, nothing changes. She used the words never waver.

“You’ve played so many games in your career, had so many different experiences,” she said. “Having that to lean back on, no matter what happens.”

Since Georgetown wasn’t quite going away, Villanova needed Siegrist’s points. Another spree: a backdoor cut for a three-point play, followed by a step-back foul-line jumper.

‘Nova needed “every point she scored,” Dillon said later. “You’re seeing it with Drexel, too.”

She meant with Washington at Drexel.

“It’s almost like they lighten the load for everybody else,” Dillon said. “Maddy had such a great year last year. You have conversations. Her efficiency was so good. You’re like, that’s really tough to match, it was such a special season for her.”

Villanova’s second- and third-leading scorers from 2021-22 were gone, so there was a real chance Villanova would take a step back. Hasn’t happened. New stars have stepped up. Still, Siegrist found more, even as opponents loaded up on her. She knows that a double team is coming.

Same down at the DAC.

“Yeah, I definitely enjoy it because it’s something different,” Washington said two nights later after scoring 30 in a win over Delaware, asked about opponents throwing extra resources at her. “It’s something that we have to be able to pick apart.”

What has she seen this season?

“Box-and-one … triangle-and-two — first time we’ve seen that. Run and jump. Full-court zones.”

This night, Washington mostly faced more of a tight man-to-man with lots of help, her primary defender staying close even when Keishana walked over to talk to Drexel coach Amy Mallon while a teammate shot free throws.

“Did you see that?” Mallon said the next day. “We saw that in the last game, too …”

A Towson player got as close as she could get to the coach and player huddling. Mallon decided to have a little fun. She began whispering in Washington’s ear, “You think she wonders what I’m saying to you?”

Earlier against Delaware, the mood had been different, Washington on the floor holding her right ankle, staying there for a couple of minutes. Keishana already had 11 points in the first 12 minutes, but would she get any more? As she was being helped off the court, some quick calculations … 11 points for the game would drop her to 26.2 points a game, down to third in the nation.

Brings us to another necessary trait: resilience. Asked about previous career injuries, Washington ticked off a knee injury, a previously sprained ankle, a lower back issue, and a concussion — “minus being banged-up and sore and bruised.”

Yet when Washington came out of the locker room, she headed straight toward her coach, took a seat close by. She was back in with 2 ½ minutes left in the half. On her first possession? A 16-foot fadeaway. Swish.

Defending Washington, even off an inbounds pass, is a trial since she’s got the quickest first step in the game, virtually any game. Dragons inbounders often take most of the five seconds watching Washington move around screens, waiting for her to gain the advantage.

In the full court, forget it. Washington pointed that out to Drexel freshman guard Grace O’Neill after O’Neill had gotten to a loose ball at the other end but hesitated just an instant in sizing up the situation, allowing a defender to get on her. Washington was indicating to just throw it down the court, even a bit blindly. If Washington can chase it down, the risk-reward odds shift dramatically in Drexel’s favor, a layup the likely result.

» READ MORE: Check out these images in Drexel's 73-57 defeat of Delaware

Maura Hendrixson, another fifth-year guard, is setting assist records for Drexel, 13 against Delaware after a school-record 14 against Towson. Of course, she’s got half an eye on Washington the whole time, Hendrixson said after the Delaware game.

Defenders must see it all coming with a sense of foreboding. Washington starts in the low block, setting a screen for a cutting teammate, a split second before getting a screen that allows her to curl up to the foul line, open for a pass. With the ball, Washington will put a defender through the wringer, maybe starting with a rip move before she dribbles. Room for a shot? No wait, dribble, another through the legs, going left … Nope, there’s a lane right, not all the way to the hoop, just enough for a 10-foot pull-up.

“I think overall I’ve gotten a little more patient because I know people are going to be bodying me, they’re going to be doing a lot of junk,” Washington said. “I’m not trying to run through them or get into physical battles with them. Just taking what they give me. So if they face-guard me, I’m going to go backdoor. If they’re going to try to body me, I’m going to use a curl to set up my cut and get open that way.”

What has she added this season?

“A little bit more of the low-post game, short corner area — being able to elevate over people and shoot that shot,” Washington said.

With a couple of point guards out there with her … “I don’t have to worry about going back and getting the ball, exhausting energy, having to bring the ball up, run the play, and then the play is for me.”

Mallon sees improved passing from Washington herself as helping her get easier shots.

“Then she’s open to the next cut,” Drexel’s coach said. “You’re seeing her getting to an open spot quicker than a defender. It’s hard to guard her even with two players.”

What good is a double team if neither defender can get to her? Mallon feels the need sometimes to tell officials: “The only way you can stop her is to hold her.”

Back to that ankle injury … How much did it hurt at the time, scale of 1-10?

“An eight,” Washington said. Even afterward, she said, “it’s hurting a fair amount. I’ve got to go see a doc right now. It’s probably just a mild ankle sprain.”

The next day, Mallon said, “She’s good. I think she just tweaked it. They got under her feet a little bit. I think she just landed wrong.”

Two days later, Drexel hosted Stony Brook. Washington scored 27.

» READ MORE: The making of a go-to player: Drexel’s Keishana Washington

Washington is from Pickering, Ontario, just outside Toronto. She played high-level, travel-team ball.

“We knew she was definitely a scoring guard,” Dillon said of recruiting her. “She was thrown into the fire early.”

To get Washington comfortable within the offense, Dillon said, they ran more isolation plays for her until she learned how to find her shots within the flow of Drexel’s five-out offense, which was new to her.

Her intensity, she brought with her. Her father, Randy Washington, said in a 2021 interview how he remembered seeing his “bored” little daughter — “she picked up the ball and threw it at me. After a while, there was a vent. She’d throw it at the vent.”

Dad took the next step himself.

“I went to the Dollarama, bought a bunch of basketball nets,’’ Randy Washington said. “I think I bought 10 of them. I placed them all around the house.”

Every room Keishana walked in, she could throw a little ball in a little hoop.

Siegrist’s father, George, was a former Marist player and then Marist assistant coach for 14 seasons until Maddy was 4 or 5 years old. He noted that a variation of Maddy’s fadeaway came from them watching a Virginia Tech player when Maddy, who grew up in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was sitting out her first year at Villanova with an injury.

This is where the basketball world, and the Philly hoops world, can feel small.

George Siegrist had played for Cardinal Dougherty graduate Dave Magarity at Marist. He wanted to watch that Virginia Tech player because she was Magarity’s niece Regan, who learned this fadeaway technique in her native Sweden. Her own father, Billy, had been an early Philadelphia basketball expatriate, playing professionally in Sweden into his 40s.

So the ball swung full circle …

“I told Maddy immediately after the game, this is something you’re going to need to develop,” George Siegrist said. “It was like a mid-post move. She created some separation, a classic step-back.”

But with a knee up. Success or failure often is about the little wrinkles.

“The defense has to come into your space to defend you — they’re going to have to foul you,” he said. “That’s your space.”

“I worked on it a lot,” Maddy said of that little move. “Fortunately, my Dad’s 6-foot-6; I practice with him, and he’s always trying to block it.”

Any pressure put on Maddy, her father said, has always been applied by Maddy herself.

“She gets me up … ‘It’s 8 o’clock, let’s go work out before it’s too hot,’” George Siegrist said.

Slowing down on the court is a common theme for both of these players.

“Early on, the CYO games, she was just going a million miles an hour,” George Siegrist said. “She would take a shot and it wasn’t always a good shot, just to get the rebound. It was her way to pass it to herself.”

Former Villanova coach Harry Perretta and Dillon have pushed her to slow things down.

» READ MORE: Here’s where Villanova women stand as Big East play heats up

“Harry used to get on me all the time when I was a freshman to not look for the contact because I used to think, if you go fast, you’re going to get hit,” Maddy said. “Instead, he was really big on teaching me the step-away.”

Perretta’s point: Don’t leave a play in the ref’s hands.

The only advanced offensive stat where Siegrist is below average in Division I according to CBBanalytics.com is the ratio of personal fouls drawn to field-goal attempts. In other words, she has learned her lessons well.

Where she’s almost off the charts, in the 99th percentile nationally, is not turning the ball over. She’s also in the 86th percentile in effective field-goal percentage. She’s not just racking up shots. The right move for Villanova has been to get the ball in her hands. Dillon said Siegrist has developed both her ballhandling — creating a shot for herself — and, like Washington, her passing, knowing that while she’s a scorer first, she’s attracting crowds.

“The number of shots she’s taken [this season], it’s not crazy high,” Dillon said.

» READ MORE: Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist is a Big East prime-time attraction

Both Siegrist and Washington are in the 99th percentile in scoring in the paint. (So, by then the best chance to stop them is already gone.) Washington is in the 97th percentile in not turning the ball over. These vastly different players end up with similar advanced analytics. They’ve both gotten effective at the mid-range game. Washington is elite — and extra elite for her shooting guard position — at an assist-turnover rate. Where she’s below average, in attempting three-pointers, may be another strength. She doesn’t depend on the three ball even though she takes enough to keep defenders honest. She hit one on Drexel’s first possession against Delaware.

Maybe it’s all coincidence and weirdness that the two scorers have these connections. Or is it? Dillon teaches defense as much as offense, her secret sauce. Dillon and Mallon, strong college players themselves, both Perretta offensive protégés of sorts, understand how to get the ball into the hands of their top scorers, but they’re not looking to have them shoot early and often. The same methods end up in the same place, with both programs winning.

Maybe WNBA mock drafts are just a mishmash of conventional wisdom at this point, but Siegrist is projected as being a late first-round pick, while Washington is in a lot of third rounds, suggesting her pro future might start in another country.

The common thread: Two highest-end competitors, with elite skill sets, are now savvy college veterans with an understanding of how to move without the ball, when to give it up to get it back. They watch each other when they can, and have played together in a couple of pickup games over the years. Each admits to being both aware and impressed by the other’s individual accomplishments.

“Go Philly,” Siegrist said.