The Penn women had been struggling. Two 20-plus-point losses had pushed them from the top to the middle of the Ivy standings. They needed a trip to frigid upstate New York to get hot.
And they rode a 17-0 streak in the third quarter Saturday to beat Cornell, 67-54.
Cornell (9-13, 2-7 Ivy) took a lead on its first possession with a three by sophomore forward Summer Parker-Hall, but that was it. Penn (14-8, 6-3) quickly claimed the lead and never relinquished it. Both teams had trouble holding onto the ball with a woeful 20 turnovers apiece, including a run of unforced traveling calls for both sides.
But Penn was shooting well from the start — 64% in the first quarter, including four of six three-pointers — to build a 22-13 lead and maintain a margin of roughly seven to nine points through the first half.
In the third quarter, though, the Quakers blew the game open with that 17-0 run to create a 24-point lead. The big blows: three consecutive treys in less than a minute by Kayla Padilla, Penn’s high-scoring senior guard. The Big Red chipped away in the fourth quarter but didn’t have enough firepower to come back from that sort of deficit against the league’s second-leading defense.
Padilla had the sort of day that leaves opposing coaches shaking their heads: 23 points on a highly efficient 7-for-11 shooting on threes plus one jump shot from 16 feet (made), half a dozen rebounds and four assists. Junior forward Jordan Obi had a stellar game as well, with 21 points on near-perfect 10-for-12 shooting plus seven rebounds.
Parker-Hall and senior guard Ania McNicholas had 11 points apiece for Cornell, but Parker-Hall’s opening shot was the only three the Big Red hit in 14 tries (7.1%, a figure you don’t often see). Cornell’s shooting overall was a respectable 38%, but Penn was at 50% on an otherwise cold day in Ithaca.
Penn is back home Saturday afternoon and will try to knock Harvard (14-7, 7-2) out of its three-way tie for first place in the Ivies, while Cornell will stay at home against Brown (9-12, 2-7).