Mandy McGurk

Penn women outlast Columbia, 71-67, to stand alone atop Ivy standings

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It might be time to say it out loud: The Penn women are back.
You can’t blame them if they were a bit jittery Saturday as they faced Columbia. The top-ranked team in the Ivies was visiting the Palestra with a roster full of scorers, a gaudy record and a fresh overtime win at Princeton.
Turns out Columbia should have been nervous as well.

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Penn women trounce Brown in Ivy opener

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The question still unanswered at the start of Monday afternoon: whether Brown or Penn belonged in the top tier of Ivy women’s basketball.
Penn provided an emphatic answer quickly, leading from start to finish and scoring 19 straight points in the 25-4 first quarter of a 74-53 home victory, its seventh win in a row.
It’s not just that the Quakers were better than the Brown Bears for the 21st straight time. It’s that they played a commanding game, inside and out, that will challenge anyone else in the Ivies.

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Penn women shut down Stony Brook, 73-53, after career scoring high from McGurk

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This should not have been an easy game for Penn women’s basketball.
This is a challenging year in which the team is trying to regain a spot among the Ivy leaders, projected to repeat in finishing outside the top half of the league. Thursday night’s opponent, Stony Brook, has a winning record and beat the Quakers a year ago.

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Sawyer solidifies standout start as Penn women sail past La Salle, 72-59

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The Penn women put together their most effective game of the year so far Tuesday night at La Salle, building a comfortable lead early and cruising to a 72-59 win.
Freshman guard Simone Sawyer dispelled any doubts that she’s for real. After just getting her feet wet in the Quakers’ first four games, Sawyer got significant time in two games last week in California and scored 18 points in each. Against La Salle, Sawyer led all scorers with 24 points on 9-for-18 shooting and added seven rebounds and four assists.

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Sawyer’s emergence provides silver lining for Penn women in Golden State losses

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The Penn women will head home from California dreaming of better days, having dropped two games during their Thanksgiving break but having demonstrated the standout talent of a star freshman.
The trip was a coming-out party for 5-foot-11 guard Simone Sawyer, who is fulfilling her promise as an electric offensive threat. At San Francisco on Monday, Sawyer came off the bench early and started hitting threes, going 6-for-9, to account for her team-leading 18 points in 33 minutes. So coach Mike McLaughlin started her at Southern California, gave her 30 minutes on the floor and got another team-leading 18 points: 6 of 10 from the floor this time, including 4-for-7 from deep, with three assists and four steals.
It’s also good news that the Quakers (1-5) were competitive against two good teams, USF (3-2) and especially USC (5-0). But they’ll have to be better still to reclaim a spot in the top half of the Ivies.

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Penn women comeback falls short at Northwestern

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The Penn women knew they weren’t traveling to Chicago in mid-November for the weather.
They were at Northwestern, not a national power but a legitimate Big Ten competitor, to test themselves. A win would be a bonus.
The Quakers didn’t get the win. In fact, they never came closer than the zero-zero tie at tipoff on the way to a 63-55 loss. But they made the game close in the fourth quarter — an 11-point run brought them to within three — and they learned some lessons as they try to improve on last year’s fifth-place finish in the Ivies and overall losing record, a rarity for any team that Mike McLaughlin has coached.’

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Padilla shines as Penn women outmatch Marist, 65-61, in season opener

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The Penn women started their season very, very badly Thursday night at Marist, missing 10 of their first 11 shots.
Then Kayla Padilla reminded everyone why she’s the top scorer in the Ivies and a threat whenever the ball is in play. The senior guard sliced through the Marist defenders or shot over them for 31 points, and the Quakers held on to beat the Red Foxes, 65-61.

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2022-23 IHO Women’s Preseason Poll

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It’s still Princeton’s conference until another Ivy proves that it isn’t. Our contributors are united in believing that the Tigers will stay on top in 2022-23, with Megan Griffith’s ascendant Columbia program again placing second.

But there wasn’t consensus on how the rest of the top half of the league will fill out.

Penn could break back into the Ivy League Tournament after missing it for the first time last season, but we expect the Red & Blue to draw stiff competition from Harvard and Yale in their first years under new coaches.

Will #2bidivy happen in the league for only the second time in conference history? It very well could, and the bottom half of the conference is likely to be substantially stronger this season as Brown and Dartmouth return more experienced rosters under coaches that now have a year of Ivy play under their belts.

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Penn women beat Brown behind Lakstigala’s career night

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Senior Mia Lakstigala is a dependable, versatile Penn player — a 6-footer who collects rebounds but also handles the ball and sinks threes. And she did it all well Saturday night for a career-high 21 points plus seven rebounds as the Quakers beat Brown, 67-53, in her second-to-last game at the Palestra.

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