Palestra Pete

Penn women fall to Stony Brook

by

The Penn women improved their play but couldn’t improve their record as an impressive Stony Brook team handed them their sixth straight loss, 75-69, Friday night on Long Island.

In easily their best of three games since their juniors and seniors returned from four-game suspensions, the Quakers (4-7) made comeback after comeback behind Kayla Padilla’s 29 points and an excellent performance — 18 points and eight rebounds — by forward Jordan Obi. Mia Lakstigala added 12 points, seven rebounds and three steals.

Read more

In fifth straight loss, Penn women fall to St. Joseph’s

by

It turns out that getting the gang together again wasn’t enough to solve Penn’s problems. Not even 31 points from Kayla Padilla could do it.

In their second game back after the rolling four-game suspensions of all their juniors and seniors over the season’s first eight games, the Penn women dropped their fifth straight, falling to St. Joseph’s at the Palestra, 83-70. Penn (4-6) has lost three Big 5 games, with one to play next month against Temple.

Read more

No surprise: Penn women lose to Duke

by

We go to college to learn, right? And the Penn women had an intensive seminar Sunday afternoon with the Duke Blue Devils, who coasted to a 77-55 win at the Palestra.

For Duke (8-0), the game had to be a nice break: The undefeated Devils’ previous game was a victory over No. 9 Iowa, and its next is against No. 1 South Carolina. Before then, I suspect the AP writers will hang a number on Duke as well. This is a team that wouldn’t be out of place playing any school in the country. (And you don’t know how it pains me to say anything nice about Duke, but even I have to give the Devils their due.)

If you were hoping for some suspense in this game, it evaporated soon after the opening tip. Penn (4-5) didn’t score a point in the first five minutes, and though Duke also got off to a slow start, the first quarter was a lopsided 22-5. A run in the second and third quarters got Penn to within 11, but that’s as good as things got.

Read more

Penn women fall at Bucknell in last game of suspensions

by

Half a team, half a team, half a team onward! So rode the Penn women into Bucknell, and like the Light Brigade before them, t­hey lost convincingly Friday night, 62-46.

This was the Quakers’ eighth game of the season, and it completed the rolling four-game suspensions that each of the juniors and seniors on the squad had to serve for violating an unspecified university rule. Sitting out this time were five women who have started multiple games this season: Sydnei Caldwell, Mia Lakstigala, Mandy McGurk, Kayla Padilla and Kennedy Suttle. They watched from the bench, and their absence on the floor was obvious.

The eight Quakers who took on a capable Bucknell team struggled in some key ways: shooting just 30% from the floor, including a hopeless 3-for-17 from three-point range; committing 18 turnovers that yielded Bucknell 23 points (while getting just two points from Bucknell turnovers); and failing to stop backdoor passes and drives that gave Bucknell 32 points in the paint.

Read more

Penn women crash and lose to La Salle, 63-49

by

For much of Tuesday night’s game at the Palestra, neither team deserved to win, as Penn and La Salle traded turnovers and sloppy play. But after a successful third quarter, the Quakers put on a clinic in futility and watched the Explorers run away with a 63-49 victory.

How bad was it? Let’s say you were watching online, less than a minute into the fourth quarter, when a Penn miss bounced to Mandy McGurk to the left of the lane and she scored on the putback. Then, let’s say, your power went out, or the toilet overflowed, or your narcolepsy kicked in — and when you saw the game on the screen again, Penn freshman Lizzy Groetsch was driving the lane for another basket.

That happened with 50 seconds left on the clock, and in the intervening eight-plus minutes of game time, Penn had not sunk a single bucket.

Read more

Kayla Padilla shines in homecoming as shorthanded Penn women fall to Memphis in overtime

by

Kayla Padilla’s spectacular 36-point performance was almost enough to complete a Penn sweep of her Los Angeles homecoming, as the Quakers fell to Memphis, 73-68, in overtime Saturday.

Padilla had a cold hand and scored a mere nine points the day before against San Diego in the teams’ opener at the Loyola Marymount Thanksgiving Classic. But Penn won that one, 60-55, on the strength of a resounding 20 points and 10 rebounds by sophomore forward Jordan Obi, Penn’s other Californian, and strong performances by seniors Mia Lakstigala and Kennedy Suttle. Lakstigala just missed a double-double herself, with nine rebounds and 13 points.

The Memphis loss was, among other things, a stark reminder of the price Penn (4-2) is paying for an unspecified infraction of university rules by the team’s upperclassmen. Each of them is serving a rolling four-game suspension over the first eight games of the season. On Friday, seniors Lakstigala, Suttle and Nikola Kovacikova grabbed 20 of Penn’s 33 rebounds; on Saturday, Penn had 38 rebounds — junior Silke Milliman, who sat out the San Diego game, grabbed 11 — but Memphis (6-1) had 53, and Memphis had 46 points in the paint to Penn’s 22.

Read more

Penn women lose well to Villanova after winning ugly at St. Francis Brooklyn

by

A win’s a win, right? And if you win by 17, you must have done well, right?

Then you lose by three at home — a bad night, of course.

But those two games for the Penn women were paradoxically disappointing and worth celebrating. Mike McLaughlin’s team escaped Brooklyn with a 63-46 victory Thursday over St. Francis. Penn failed to play its game with any consistency, and the Terriers gave the Quakers a good shake and would have had a shot at winning if they hadn’t had a preposterously bad night of shooting — 14-for-62 (22.6%).

Then, on Monday, the Quakers — minus their upper-class leaders — faced their first serious challenge in their first Big 5 opponent of the year, played with verve and discipline, and almost won again.

Read more

Penn women trump King’s College

by

What would you consider the most important aspect of the Penn women’s easy win against King’s College, 91-55, on Tuesday night at the Palestra?

Surely not the win itself, though a loss to any Division III squad would have been an embarrassment and a flashing red sign of problems at Penn. King’s has a good team with an excellent shooting guard in Samantha Rajza, who had 20 points on 6-for-13 shooting from beyond the three-point arc. But King’s had no way to compete in the paint, so it lived and died by its three-point shots, putting up 36 of them and sinking 12.

Read more

Penn women open with win at Hartford

by

After 20 months away from the game, you have to expect some rust. The reflexes aren’t as sharp; the eyes don’t take in the court as well, or as quickly. The muscle memory — fingers on the keys, jumping to the stat book — is just a bit off when the middle-aged sportswriter returns.

No rust on the Red and Blue, though. The Penn women went to Connecticut and tore through Hartford, 85-42, as if they’d never put the ball down. (The final score is a bit deceptive; Coach Mike McLaughlin pretty much pulled his starters after three quarters to give his bench game time and keep the total below 100. Hartford won the fourth quarter, 13-7.)

Read more

Penn women shut down Columbia, 51-36

by
So what really mattered in Saturday’s Penn-Columbia women’s game?
Well, winning meant something, and Penn did that quite comfortably, 51-36, at Columbia.
But both teams were already locked into the Ivy League Tournament next weekend; only the seeding would be affected, and the loss makes Columbia (17-10, 8-6 Ivy) the No. 4 seed with the job nobody really wanted, facing Princeton in the first game Friday. Penn (20-7, 10-4) will be the No. 2 seed and face Yale. Columbia also was looking for a measure of revenge for a tight overtime loss in Philadelphia. Two top contenders for Ivy Rookie of the Year had a chance to show their stuff. And Janiya Clemmons, the Lions’ sole senior, had a sendoff in her last home game for Senior Day.

Read more