No matter what sport you’ve been around, you’ve probably heard it said: A W is a W. An ugly win counts just as much in the record books.
But the opposite isn’t necessarily true, and the Penn women’s basketball team recorded a pretty good loss Friday night to an excellent Saint Joseph’s squad, 68-57, at the Palestra.
For context, look back a year and a day to the last time the two teams met: a 77-49 blowout for the Hawks on their way to a 28-win season (and a Big 5 championship). If anything, the Hawks are stronger this year, while the Quakers are trying to compensate for the loss of All-Ivy forward Jordan Obi to graduation and spark plug guard Ese Ogbevire to injury.
This year’s team from Hawk Hill is as good as promised: deadly from outside to open up the floor, sharp with the passes to catch the open player for a backdoor play, with the height and strength to dominate the boards. Saint Joseph’s recorded assists on a remarkable 20 of its 23 baskets. Penn coach Mike McLaughlin has described the Hawks as a top-30 team this year bound for the NCAA Tournament, and nothing that happened Friday night suggested otherwise. It led wire to wire, starting with a three from guard Mackenzie Smith, working that to 12-4 on a Talya Brugler three, eventually building a 39-29 halftime lead on 13-for-30 shooting, including 6-for-11 on threes.
Two Hawks forwards had double-doubles for the night: Brugler with 21 points and 11 rebounds, and Laura Ziegler with 16 and 12 — plus seven assists. (Ziegler, a 6-foot-2 Danish import, noted that she was a point guard until she came to the U.S. for college.)
But Penn never folded and kept things respectably close. A three by freshman guard Sarah Miller pulled the Quakers within six points early in the fourth quarter, but the Hawks responded over the next four-plus minutes with an 11-point run. Penn couldn’t squeeze the gap to single digits for the rest of the game.
Penn freshman forward Katie Collins, in just her fourth college game, was in for the full 40 minutes in a physical contest with bigger, stronger opponents and collected eight points (including a pair of threes). Senior Stina Almqvist played for a few seconds less for team highs of 21 points, nine rebounds and three assists. Point guard Mataya Gayle, scoreless in the first half, kept attacking the basket and came back with 13 points in the second.
McLaughlin noted some lessons for his young team. He’d wanted Collins and Almqvist to try for more threes. He thought the Penn guards could have scrambled for more rebounds on the floor. (The Hawks took the battle of the boards, 43-31.)
“I’m a competitor. They are. We all want to win basketball games,” McLaughlin told reporters afterward. “But I’m satisfied when the team competes. And I’m satisfied in that regard tonight, because our kids competed here on the Palestra floor. Were we good enough? We were not. Were they better? Yes, they were. I can acknowledge all that, but I’m proud of a group that competes regardless of what ends up happening.”
Penn (3-1) plays another Big 5 rival Wednesday with a trip to Villanova. Saint Joseph’s (3-0) has a much longer road trip: on Wednesday to Southern Utah, and two nights later at the University of Utah, which embarrassed the Hawks on Hawk Hill last year in the schools’ first meeting.
Villanova’s clash with Penn will mark its third straight game against Ivy competition. The Wildcats fell at Princeton, 70-61, Wednesday before pulling out a 68-67 win over Columbia at Finneran Pavilion Saturday.