The Penn women’s basketball team averted disaster Saturday and came from behind to escape from Cornell with a 61-54 win and keep its Ivy Madness hopes alive.
It wasn’t pretty.
A week after losing a heartbreaker at Brown and ceding the Bears the inside lane to the fourth and final spot in the conference tournament, the Quakers committed a whopping 20 turnovers — that’s one every other minute. In the middle two quarters, they hit a woeful 8-for-27 from the field (just under 30%) and the Big Red put together a 16-point streak in the third quarter, holding Penn scoreless for six minutes, to turn an eight-point deficit into an eight-point lead.
Cornell, tied with Dartmouth at the bottom of the league, was closing in on embarrassing one of the Ivy League’s stronger programs and breaking a 13-game losing streak against Penn. But both teams regressed to their means in the fourth quarter, when an 11-2 Penn run turned a six-point Cornell advantage midway through the quarter into a three-point lead for Penn, which didn’t trail again. In the final quarter, Penn shot 62% from the field and 8-for-10 from the foul line, vs. 30% and 2-for-4 for Cornell.
As so often this season, Penn relied on double-figure scoring from junior Stina Almqvist, senior Jordan Obi and freshman Mataya Gayle, the Ivies’ fifth-, sixth- and seventh-leading scorers. This time around it was Almqvist who was most responsible for the Quakers’ early lead (15 points all told, with six rebounds and four blocks!). Gayle struggled early but got hot in the nick of time for a string of baskets in the fourth-quarter comeback (12 points all told, with six assists). But Obi carried the biggest load with a double-double: game highs of 12 rebounds and 18 points on 7-for-15 shooting.
“They really outplayed us in the third, from start to finish there,” Penn coach Mike McLaughlin told ESPN+ after the game. In the fourth quarter, though, “I think Mataya got open a little bit, started getting to the basket, just letting her play within the ball screen — she really did good.”
Between the turnovers and the fouls — 20 for each team — McLaughlin said, “I don’t think the game was the cleanest thing that we’ve seen — Dayna [Cornell coach Dayna Smith] would probably say the same thing. Both teams battled. But we found enough plays in the fourth quarter.”
Cornell gave its home crowd an exciting game — the lead changed hands eight times, with four ties — and reason for hope in the play of two freshmen: 6-footer Rachel Kaus, who scored 15 points on 7-for-13 shooting, and guard Azareya Kilgoe, who had 11 points.
Penn will hope for better days for Cornell next weekend when the Big Red travel to Yale and Brown. The Quakers, meanwhile, will be at home against Dartmouth and Harvard, and both look like must-win games if Penn is to make the tournament two weeks later.