Half a team, half a team, half a team onward! So rode the Penn women into Bucknell, and like the Light Brigade before them, they lost convincingly Friday night, 62-46.
This was the Quakers’ eighth game of the season, and it completed the rolling four-game suspensions that each of the juniors and seniors on the squad had to serve for violating an unspecified university rule. Sitting out this time were five women who have started multiple games this season: Sydnei Caldwell, Mia Lakstigala, Mandy McGurk, Kayla Padilla and Kennedy Suttle. They watched from the bench, and their absence on the floor was obvious.
The eight Quakers who took on a capable Bucknell team struggled in some key ways: shooting just 30% from the floor, including a hopeless 3-for-17 from three-point range; committing 18 turnovers that yielded Bucknell 23 points (while getting just two points from Bucknell turnovers); and failing to stop backdoor passes and drives that gave Bucknell 32 points in the paint.
Bucknell, now 6-2, was led by Taylor O’Brien’s 19 points and 10 rebounds. Penn fell to 4-4.
The highlight for Penn was the play of two women off the bench. This was a coming-out party for two first-year players: freshman forward Sima Visockaite, who kept the Quakers in the game with 10 rebounds and 14 points on 7-for-11 shooting, and sophomore guard Michaela Stanfield, who shot 4-for-9 and had 10 points and a couple of steals.
Since building a consistent winner and a successful recruiting operation at Penn, coach Mike McLaughlin has had an enviable challenge in finding meaningful game minutes — before garbage time — for first-year players who haven’t cracked the starting lineup. The clear benefit of the juniors’ and seniors’ benching this year has been the opportunity it has provided Penn’s newest players to show what they can do in tough game situations. McLaughlin now will have a hard time keeping Visockaite, Stanfield and others off the court. (They join freshmen Stina Almqvist, Lizzy Groetsch and Marianna Papazoglou as proven contributors.)
On Sunday afternoon at the Palestra, Penn will be back at full strength — for the first time since March 7, 2020 — and playing a full-strength opponent, Duke. It will be interesting to see how quickly all the pieces of a talented team that has played apart for eight games can come together effectively. Penn will need all those pieces working well. Duke is 7-0 and just handed No. 9 Iowa its first loss by a convincing 15 points.