How many times have we written this headline: Padilla leads Penn women past (fill in the blank)?
From deep, slashing through the lane and standing calmly at the free-throw line, the All-Ivy senior guard has so often been the difference. She was again Friday night at the Palestra with 28 points as the Quakers stopped Cornell, 62-54, for their eighth straight win.
It was a match between two teams on the rise this season, both looking down a long road of Ivy games with a chance of making the conference tournament. (The Penn women have qualified for it four times but missed last year’s. Cornell reached the tournament in 2019.) And a lively game showed that both are capable, if uneven.
Consider this: Cornell, which until walking into the Palestra was hitting a mediocre 26% of its threes, came within shouting distance of Penn while sinking a grand total of (checking my math) one in 16 attempts. Sure, some were rushed, some weren’t wide open, but most were perfectly good shots that simply missed.
And missed. And missed. And missed.
And on a normal night, Cornell has nine or 12 more points on threes. Penn, meanwhile, hit nine of its 17 three-point shots, the sort of ratio that sends coach Mike McLaughlin home with a smile on his face, if not exactly relaxed.
Of course, if we’re playing the what-if game, Penn shot an un-Quakerish 11-for-20 on foul shots (vs. 7-for-7 for Cornell), missing five in the final 1:07 to keep the game close. Don’t count on that happening again.
What you can count on, generally, is Padilla: She was a perfect 8-for-8 from the foul line, plus 8-for-14 from the field (including three threes). Padilla’s fourth personal foul, a rarity for Padilla, sent her to the bench for half of the fourth quarter and kept her below 30 points. And she did far more than score, with six rebounds, four assists, a block and two steals.
Also back in double figures for Penn was freshman guard Simone Sawyer. After drawing a blank against Brown, Sawyer scored 13 points on 5-for-6 shooting, mostly from deep, where she seems to release the ball as it arrives on her fingertips. And forward Jordan Obi pulled down 15 rebounds while putting up nine points.
Cornell’s most effective play came from Emily Pape, a 6-foot-1 forward and the reigning Ivy Rookie of the week — a title she may repeat after leading the Big Red with 14 points, 13 rebounds and three steals in 30 minutes off the bench.
The game was fast-paced from the start, and Cornell led for most of the first quarter. Penn pulled ahead for good in the final minute of the quarter on a three by Floor Toonders, who though a 6-foot-4 forward most often working in the paint (and a remedial shooter from the foul line) is remarkably comfortable from a couple of spots outside the arc.
In the next nearly nine minutes of playing time, Cornell registered one layup, six turnovers and 11 missed shots. Penn went into halftime with a four-point lead and expanded it to 15 by the end of the third quarter, when it shot 64% from the field. That was too far, with too little time, for Cornell’s fourth-quarter comeback to succeed, and the Penn lead never shrunk below seven.
Penn was again effective at moving the ball well and finding the open shooter, notching assists on 15 of its 21 baskets.
Both teams have big challenges up next, for Saturday afternoon: Penn (9-5, 2-0 Ivy) hosts Columbia (13-2, 2-0 after knocking off Princeton), while Cornell (8-7, 1-1) tries its luck against the Tigers (8-5, 0-2? Can that be right?).