When a good Ivy team plays a Division III team, the question isn’t “Who’s going to win?” It’s “Why bother?”
We’ll answer the first question first, though, in case you were anxious: Penn, 89-34.
Penn and Gwynedd Mercy both entered Sunday’s game with 7-5 records, but the similarities pretty much end there. Gwynedd has a successful D-III program, but it’s a small school, and every one of its players is from the Philly area — Pennsylvania and New Jersey, not even Delaware.
What the two schools have, though, are successful longtime Philly coaches (and former Philly Catholic high school players) who have known each other forever. Mike McLaughlin is in his 15th year at Penn, and before then he had 14 wildly successful years at his D-II alma mater, Holy Family. Keith Mondillo has been Gwynedd’s coach since 1995.
So it only makes sense that, now that he has the key to the best gym in the city in his pocket, McLaughlin will invite Mondillo and his team over for a game. The Gwynedd women got to play in the Palestra, with their friends and families in the stands, and their every basket or great play was a victory for the little guy. They also got a serious challenge a few days before their first Atlantic East Conference game of the season.
Penn, meanwhile, had a chance to give bench players extended minutes and see what they could do in game conditions against unfamiliar opponents.
The results were encouraging for both teams. Whatever hope the Gwynedd Griffins had of winning evaporated early, as they started the game with five straight turnovers. But Lynzie Eggers, a 5-7 senior guard, played a solid game with 10 points and seven rebounds. And the Griffins generally kept their cool under fire from a bigger, faster Quakers team, playing them pretty much even in the second quarter before being blown out by 20 points in the third.
Penn, meanwhile, got to play every able-bodied team member. No one had as much as 20 minutes on the court, but pretty much all had 10 or more. Senior forward Jordan Obi had a remarkably efficient 15 minutes — 14 points, 6-for-8 shooting including 2-for-2 on threes, and six rebounds — but that tells us nothing we didn’t already know about her. Freshman point guard Mataya Gayle had 14 of her own, and Stina Almqvist twisted and turned her way to a dozen.
More important, though, were the extended looks we had of players down the roster:
• Iyanna Rogers, the 6-1 junior forward, had 12 points on 6-for-8 shooting and seven rebounds in 17 minutes. In other appearances — always brief — Rogers has sometimes looked tentative around the ball, but she ripped down rebounds, went to the basket and took nice jump shots Sunday.
• Simone Sawyer, last season’s freshman guard shooting sensation, emerged from her ice-cold start this year to score 10 points on 4-for-6 shooting in all of 13 minutes.
• Junior guard Marianna Papazoglou had five points and three assists in her solid 15 minutes.
• Guard Ese Ogbevire, who has had substantial playing time for a freshman (including some starts) and has been a useful player, cut down the baseline like a lightning bolt for a flashy layup in the third quarter. That yielded her only two points, but maybe she’ll be confident enough to do that again (a few times!) at Columbia Saturday.