In a season of dominance for Harvard women’s basketball and one of learning for Penn, the surprise Monday in Philadelphia was the tie score after the first quarter.
But the result, in the end, was about what you might have expected: a 73-44 Harvard win.
Rolling into West Philly, the Harvard women had little to prove. They carried just two losses overall, both to top teams, and were getting votes in the Associated Press national rankings. Senior guard Harmoni Turner has ranked among the nation’s leading scorers all season, and Harvard’s defense has been among the nation’s stingiest.
Penn, meanwhile, has had its struggles and challenges as it has worked some promising freshmen into the lineup. It lost its first two Ivy games and wanted to prove itself against a top team. And for the first 10 minutes Monday afternoon, it did that, playing Harvard even.
Then the Crimson’s shots started falling, its defense smothered and harassed the Quakers, and Harvard dominated Penn for the rest of the afternoon at the Palestra.
“In the first quarter it was, like, 13-13, so we needed to step up,” 6-foot-2 Harvard senior Elena Rodriguez told ESPN+ after the game. And when the team hit the locker room at halftime with an eight-point lead, she added, the message was, “Now we need to do the game plan better.”
Rodriguez, who has a history of burning Penn, played the biggest role this time around, scoring 22 points in 24 minutes on 9-for-14 shooting and largely neutralizing Penn’s freshman big, Katie Collins. Harvard dominated the boards – 41 rebounds to Penn’s 30 – and the inside game, scoring 38 points in the paint to Penn’s 21.
Junior guard Saniyah Glenn-Bello collected 14 points for Harvard on 5-for-8 shooting, including 3-for-3 from outside, plus four assists. And Turner turned in a typical day’s work – typical for her, that is: 19 points, eight rebounds and a step up the ladder to fourth place all-time in scoring for Harvard, with likely a dozen or more games to go, barring injury.
For Penn, senior Stina Almqvist and Collins both hit double figures, 14 for Almqvist and 11 for Collins, and each collected a half-dozen rebounds; but the Quakers were simply buried in the second half. After shooting 45% from the field in the first quarter, to the Crimson’s 29%, the Quakers hit just 32% the rest of the way – and just one of their 13 shots from outside the arc. Harvard, meanwhile, shot a scorching 47% after that first quarter.
For Penn (10-6, 1-3 Ivy), the challenges continue Saturday with a trip to first-place Columbia (13-4, 4-0), which defeated Penn by 15 early in the month to open Ivy play. Harvard (14-2, 3-1) returns home to take its second shot at Yale (2-15, 1-3).