Senior Mia Lakstigala is a dependable, versatile Penn player — a 6-footer who collects rebounds but also handles the ball and sinks threes. And she did it all well Saturday night for a career-high 21 points plus seven rebounds as the Quakers beat Brown, 67-53, in her second-to-last game at the Palestra.
Most of Lakstigala’s points came on her five threes, most of those from the corners, as she shot 8-for-14 overall.
Penn led almost all the way. Brown pulled ahead by two points late in the first quarter after a 10-0 run, but Penn never let its lead slip below five points in the second half, and it hit five of its last six shots to ice the win.
Sophomore forward Jordan Obi, who started her first year of collegiate play solidly in November and has only gotten better, had another double-double, with 19 points and 11 rebounds. In some games, Obi gets hot from outside. This time around, she was hitting consistently on 12-footers or faking and getting inside for layups.
Shooting guard Kayla Padilla, usually Penn’s scoring leader, had an off night from the floor — just five points on 2-for-8 shooting — but dished out 11 assists, the most for a Penn player since 2001, when Erin Ladley had 13 against Dartmouth (before Padilla was born). And point guard Mandy McGurk, who in the previous Ivy matches this year had averaged 2.6 points per game, knocked down a pair of threes and finished with 10 points while perpetrating six steals.
Penn (10-13, 5-6 Ivy), which the night before had lost to a taller Yale team, won this time around in part by outrebounding Brown, 42-28, including a devastating 18-2 margin in offensive boards, and a 14-0 margin in second-chance points.
Brown (6-18, 1-11) is a young team; coach Monique LeBlanc, in her second year at Brown and her first with actual games, started four first-year players, two of them freshmen. One of those, Isabella Mauricio, got 21 points on 6-for-11 shooting, her sixth 20-point game of the season. Sophomore Kyla Jones racked up 16 points and had four steals. And the Bears actually outshot the Quakers, 43% to 40%. Despite its record, Brown has given other Ivies headaches and close contests.
Speaking of headaches, Penn has a Wednesday night road trip to Cornell for a makeup game, where it can thank the Big Red for beating Harvard on Saturday and keeping the race for a fourth slot in Ivy Madness alive. Brown’s next game is Saturday at Columbia.