The Penn women’s basketball visit to Brown didn’t figure on being easy for either team. After all, they spent the past two seasons clawing at each other for the fourth slot in the Ivy League Tournament, with Penn claiming the honor both times.
What they produced Saturday was a classic, a double-overtime win for the Bears that looked easy at the start and easy at the finish but was brilliant and exhausting basketball in between. If this is the sort of thing we can expect for the rest of the season, we’ll have a lot of exciting games to watch, and both Brown and Penn will go to the tournament in March.
For the first 10 minutes, Penn did not resemble the team that nearly beat Princeton a week earlier. In fact, Penn’s possessions in the first five minutes went like this: missed three-pointer, missed three-pointer, missed layup, turnover, missed three, missed three, turnover, missed layup. Brown was up 9-0 before Penn junior guard Mataya Gayle stole the ball and laid it in. When the quarter ended, Brown was up 16-7 — and all of Penn’s points belonged to Gayle.
Gayle continued to have a brilliant game, going full tilt on offense and defense for 49 minutes on the court, posting team highs for assists (four), steals (four) and points (18, on 7-for-18 shooting) as well as seven rebounds.
Penn chipped away at Brown’s lead, bringing it down to four points at the half. Saniah Caldwell got a hot hand on threes, ending up with 16 points on 5-for-11 shooting from deep. Katie Collins added 13 points despite some struggles, and Simone Sawyer provided 10.
But Brown had four players of its own in double figures, and leading the way, predictably, was senior guard Grace Arnolie with 24 points; she also came through with nine rebounds, matching the totals for Brown’s imposing frontcourt duo of Ada Anamekwe, who also had 13 points, and Alyssa Moreland, who had 12. Brown won the game inside, with 55 rebounds to Penn’s 45, and 36 points in the paint to Penn’s 22.
Penn kept up the chase, pulling within a point in the third quarter, then again midway through the fourth quarter, but it wasn’t till Gayle drove the lane for another layup with 22 seconds left in the fourth quarter that the score was tied — at 50-50 — for the first time since 0-0. Both teams missed their chances for a final score, and overtime was on.
The first OT was anybody’s definition of exciting basketball. Olivia Young hit a jumper in the paint to push Brown ahead, and Caldwell answered with a three to give Penn, remarkably, its first lead of the game, 53-52. Arnolie responded with a three of her own, Gabriella Kelley tied things back up with a pair of free throws, Young came through with another clutch jumper, Moreland pushed the lead to four with a layup, but a Gayle three and a foul shot by Penn’s Brooke Suttle tied things up again. Suttle missed her second shot — but Gayle got the rebound, was fouled and sank both shots with less than a minute left, giving the Quakers their biggest lead of the night, 61-59. Moreland responded with a layup, and we had a second overtime to enjoy.
Well, an overtime for Brown to enjoy. As they had in the beginning, the Quakers fired blanks in the final five minutes, scoring just one basket and two foul shots, and having to commit fouls to get the ball back. Brown won comfortably after a nail-biter.
“I thought that everybody played with a lot of composure down the stretch, and that was critical,” Brown coach Monique LeBlanc told ESPN+ after the game.
Brown (10-4, 2-0 Ivy) will travel to Cornell on Saturday and Columbia two days later, while Penn (10-5, 0-2) will host Harvard and Dartmouth. And you can circle March 7 on your calendar: That’s when Brown visits Penn for their last regular-season game.