Reports of the death of the Yale women’s basketball season have been greatly exaggerated.
The Bulldogs came to Penn for Saturday night’s game with an unenviable 4-15 record, including just one win in their first six Ivy games — not a good start for pursuing a top-four finish and a spot in Ivy Madness next month. But many of Yale’s losses have been heartbreakingly close, and coach Dalila Eshe has players — senior point guard Jenna Clark especially — who can pull off exhilarating victories.
And Clark carried the Elis to their best of the season, a come-from-behind 74-68 overtime win.
Clark is not exactly a secret weapon: Now in her fourth full year of play (she took the Ivies’ COVID break as a gap year), she’s a perennial leader in points and assists, earning second-team All-Ivy honors the past two years. On Saturday in the Palestra, she delivered game highs with 25 points and nine assists, including the dish when she was double-teamed to Klara Astrom for the three that tied the game as regulation time expired.
Astrom, unlike Clark, is not the name that springs to mind when someone says “Yale offense.” The senior guard from Sweden by way of California has appeared in 19 of Yale’s 20 games, averaging 1.1 points a game. This was her third three-pointer of the season in 20 attempts.
But Clark told ESPN+ afterward, “As soon as it went off, I knew it was in. I’ve been playing with Klara since we were freshmen, so we’ve been doing this for a long time. I knew she’s got that shot, put it right in her pocket, where she likes it, and it looked good going off.”
Penn took the lead in the five-minute overtime with a pair of free throws by senior forward Jordan Obi, giving her 17 points on the night, along with seven rebounds. A Clark jumper and a Clark layup gave the lead back to Yale. A layup by junior guard Nyla McGill stretched the lead to four. Penn junior guard Stina Almqvist hit a free throw and a layup to get the Quakers within one with 38 seconds left. But Yale put the game away with free throws and a Brenna McDonald layup.
For much of the first half, this didn’t seem like a game in which a last-second shot in regulation would make a difference: Penn looked assured after its win over Brown the night before, and Yale maybe a bit shaky after a loss at Princeton.
Penn built and rebuilt a lead of as much as 10 points on 9-for-20 shooting (45%) in the first quarter without committing a turnover, while Yale shot 35%.
After the break, though, the script flipped, and Yale was hitting its shots (60% to Penn’s 42%). Yale went into the locker room just two points behind Penn, and when the Quakers hit just three of 11 shots in the third quarter, the visitors pulled ahead. All told, the score was tied five times, and the lead changed seven times.
As time wound down, Penn defended a slender lead. A Mataya Gayle three gave the Quakers a little breathing room — five points — with just under two minutes left; a McGill layup 20 seconds later cut the lead to three. After misses by both sides, Obi pulled down a rebound, and Penn had the ball — and called a timeout — with 18 seconds left and that three-point lead. The Quakers could hold the ball and force the Bulldogs to foul — and one foul shot would make this a two-possession game.
But the unexpected happened: Obi got the ball for an open shot in the lane, and rather than retreat, she went for the clinching basket — and missed. A Yale rebound — by Clark, of course — and timeout set the scene for Clark and Astrom’s last-second heroics.
The key player for Yale, aside from Clark, was McDonald, the 6-foot-3 senior forward, who converted many of Clark’s assists inside and finished with 19 points on 8-for-13 shooting and 10 rebounds. McGill notchd a double-double as well, with 10 points and 13 rebounds.
For Penn, Almqvist had another strong night, with 20 points, nine rebounds and four steals. Gayle, the freshman point guard, had 18 points and three steals.
Penn (11-9, 3-4 Ivy) will host Princeton (17-3, 7-0) on Saturday afternoon, while Yale (5-15, 2-5) will be on the road at Cornell (7-12, 1-6).