With both sides playing to preserve a chance at a spot in Ivy Madness, the Penn women’s basketball team overcame a resurgent Cornell on Saturday in West Philly, 68-63.
“We always like to make things interesting,” Penn senior Stina Almqvist told ESPN+ after her 25 points led the Quakers to the win. “We know we have our backs against the wall. We really want to make the tournament.”
The last time the two teams played was five weeks ago in Ithaca. Cornell’s most dominant player, senior forward Summer Parker-Hall, was out with an injury, and Penn escaped with a five-point victory. This time, Parker-Hall seemed very much recovered, and she bulled her way to a team-high 17 points on 6-for-10 shooting plus five rebounds in just 22 minutes on the court. Cornell had a small edge on rebounds, and with Parker-Hall it had a 34-22 edge in points in the paint.
More generally, Cornell kept pace with Penn by connecting on bread-and-butter layups and midrange jumpers. Sophomore Rachel Kaus came off the bench with a hot hand to hit both of her shots in the first quarter, when the Big Red shot 50% from the field to the Quakers’ 27%. Kaus finished with 12 points on 5-for-9 shooting on the day.
Penn, though, had weapons of its own, and its shooting improved as the day went on – putting the game away with 7-for-9 shooting in the final quarter, including a pair of threes in three tries, plus 10 points from the free-throw line. In a game that was tied 12 times with 18 lead changes, Penn went ahead for good with five minutes left and stretched its lead to as much as 11 points with just a minute left to seal the game.
Almqvist, a week after notching the 1,000th point of her career, was once again the top scorer with 25 points on 6-for-16 shooting from the field and 10 of 12 free throws. She also was one rebound short of a double-double. Sophomore Mataya Gayle had 18 points on 7-for-12 shooting while dishing out five assists, including one for a game-sealing layup by Simone Sawyer.
Cornell (7-17, 3-8 Ivy) has an improbable path to push past Penn and Brown for the fourth slot in the Ivy League Tournament. The way for Penn (14-10, 5-6) is more plausible as it prepares for games against Dartmouth, Harvard and Princeton. Just one win in those three games might be enough to edge Brown (10-14, 4-7).