For much of Tuesday night’s game at the Palestra, neither team deserved to win, as Penn and La Salle traded turnovers and sloppy play. But after a successful third quarter, the Quakers put on a clinic in futility and watched the Explorers run away with a 63-49 victory.
How bad was it? Let’s say you were watching online, less than a minute into the fourth quarter, when a Penn miss bounced to Mandy McGurk to the left of the lane and she scored on the putback. Then, let’s say, your power went out, or the toilet overflowed, or your narcolepsy kicked in — and when you saw the game on the screen again, Penn freshman Lizzy Groetsch was driving the lane for another basket.
That happened with 50 seconds left on the clock, and in the intervening eight-plus minutes of game time, Penn had not sunk a single bucket.
The score had taken a 20-point swing in La Salle’s favor. Penn missed 15 of its 17 shots in the final quarter.
Penn also managed to commit 27 turnovers in a 40-minute basketball game. La Salle made plenty of mistakes, too — 19 turnovers among them, many thanks to Penn’s full-court press — but the Quakers reached a thoroughly un-Quakerish level. Consider that, in their most recent season, the Penn women averaged 11.9 turnovers a game vs. their opponents’ 16.3.
The pity of it is that the train-wreckish aspects to Tuesday’s game might obliterate the memory of the highlights. McGurk, who should come with a warning sign on her jersey, made two steals on successive possessions by La Salle, converting the first into an easy layup. Senior guard Mia Lakstigala had the first double-double of her career — 18 points and 10 rebounds — and sophomore forward Jordan Obi came up one rebound short of another. In just her first season of college ball, Obi has been in double figures for scoring six times in seven games.
And like every game so far this season, Tuesday’s came with an important caveat: Half of Penn’s juniors and seniors had to sit it out. The rolling suspensions for an unspecified violation of university rules end after Friday’s game at Bucknell. Would, say, Kayla Padilla have kept the Quakers from collapsing against La Salle? Well, it’s hard to imagine them going nearly a full quarter without a basket with a full lineup.