There being no mercy rule in basketball, coaches on the comfortable end of a lead will pull their starters and give untried freshmen real-life college playing time.
When Penn’s Mike McLaughlin did that Thursday night against St. Francis Brooklyn, the game was only three-quarters over — and the Penn reserves made the lead even bigger, closing out a 78-44 romp.
It wasn’t just that St. Francis (1-9) was victim material, though it’s a young team. The Quakers played well enough to beat any team on their schedule, ending the drama early with a 33-point first quarter, knocking down three after three. Penn sank 12 of its 17 first-quarter shots, a stunning 70.6%. The pace of long balls eased up after that, but Penn’s threes — 15 on 37 attempts for the night, or 40.5% — were enough by themselves to outscore everything St. Francis put into the basket.
Leading the way, as they so often do, were senior guard Kayla Padilla and junior forward Jordan Obi, with 20 points apiece. Obi had an 8-for-16 shooting night and added 10 rebounds and four assists. Padilla hit six of 10 three-point shots, all in the first half, and if the game had been closer she could have threatened her own Penn record of nine threes in a game — but that would have been cruel, so she played only 28 minutes. (Padilla set that record last year in an overtime loss against Memphis in which she played all 45 minutes and scored 36 points.)
Another record missed: Penn’s first quarter was just one point shy of the highest-scoring quarter in Penn basketball history — that is, since the NCAA moved from two 20-minute periods to four 10-minute periods per game for the women at the start of the 2015-16 season. (That 34-point fourth-quarter outburst came in January 2018 against Division III Gwynedd Mercy.)
With the outcome no longer in doubt, Penn got to show the Palestra faithful a round dozen players off the bench. Each of them registered at least one point or rebound. Freshman Saniah Caldwell got an assist on a three-pointer by big sister Sydnei Caldwell. Helena Lasic, a 6-foot-4 freshman from Ontario, got in close for her basket and pulled down two rebounds. Iyanna Rogers, a 6-foot-1 sophomore forward from Virginia who sat out last season with an injury, looked healthy and agile as she defended the paint and scrambled for the ball, picking up a rebound, a block and a steal in five busy minutes.
After a 1-5 stumbling start to their season, the Quakers, now 5-5, put the pieces together and are looking like winners. They are passing crisply and often: Three-quarters of their baskets Thursday came with assists. They are as tenacious on defense as McLaughlin teams tend to be, with 12 steals against St. Francis. And they are disciplined, with just 11 fouls on the night.
They’ll face a bigger test at noon Sunday at home against Temple (4-5), after which they can enjoy a break (well, reading days, finals and a break). They return for Gwynedd Mercy on December 30 and then the start of Ivy League play.