Simone Sawyer

Freshmen shoot Penn women’s basketball past La Salle, 74-63

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Penn and La Salle were playing a perfectly good women’s basketball Friday afternoon when the Quakers’ Sarah Miller turned it into a sharpshooting match, leading to a Penn win, 74-63. 

The 5-foot-10 guard from Phoenix scored a bucket in the first quarter, but she really took off in the second with four straight threes, then added a fifth in the third quarter before her first miss of the day. All in all, she went 6-for-7 plus 4-for-4 on foul shots for a game-high 21 points. Fellow freshman Katie Collins also had a 6-for-7 day, though closer to the basket and in less spectacular fashion, finishing with 12 points and 11 rebounds. 

The win was coach Mike McLaughlin’s 250th at Penn.  

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Penn women’s basketball tops Maine, 56-52

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Beautiful though Maine may be, any visitor from warmer places can be forgiven for feeling a chill there. (Palestra Pete himself froze his butt off one Memorial Day weekend long ago.) And the Penn women’s basketball team stepped onto the University of Maine’s court Sunday with cold shooting hands. But after that frigid start, the Quakers overtook the Maine Black Bears for a 56-52 win.
Maine had a 7-0 lead before Swedish-born Penn senior Stina Almqvist (no doubt advantaged in cold climates) put in a left-handed scoop. Another Maine basket reclaimed the seven-point advantage, but soon it was the home team that had the cold hands as Penn started a 10-point run.

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Ivy women’s basketball Media Day highlights

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As the 2024-25 season quickly approaches, the Ivy League hosted its annual women’s basketball Media Day on Thursday. The three-hour event, hosted by Lance Medow, can be viewed on the conference’s YouTube channel.

Prior to the event, the league announced the results of its preseason poll.

Princeton, which has claimed the Ancient Eight title for the last six years, was picked first with 122 out of a possible 128 points and 10 first-place votes.  Columbia, which has tied for the top spot in each of the last two seasons, came in second with 110 points and five first-place votes.

Harvard, which has finished the last two years in third placed, was tabbed for third in 2025, earning 101 points and one first-place spot. 

Penn, the final participant in last year’s Ivy tournament, was picked fourth with 75 votes, while Brown, which finished last year tied with Penn for fourth, was four points back in fifth place.

Sixth place went to Yale, which was as high as third place in 2022, with 48 votes. 

While Cornell and Dartmouth ended last season tied for seventh place, the Big Red got the nod for seventh in this year’s poll with 30 points and the Big Green were eighth with 19 points.  

Below are highlights from this year’s virtual Media Day:

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No. 4 Penn women’s basketball showed how to bake – but not quite pull off – an upset in 59-54 loss to No. 1 Princeton

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NEW YORK – Going into the kickoff for Ivy Madness, it seemed clear what it would take for the Penn women to upset top-ranked Princeton:

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Four Quakeaways from Penn women’s basketball’s loss to No. 25 Princeton

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My friends Steve Silverman and George “Toothless Tiger” Clark did a fine job covering No. 25 Princeton women’s basketball’s win at Penn, so (with apologies to Ian Wenik, the Quakeaways man), here are four Quakeaways from Saturday’s game:

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Columbia women’s basketball bests Penn in Ivy League opener

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Columbia women’s basketball opened its defense of its Ivy hoops title Saturday at home with a solid 79-66 win over Penn.
As if to underline that this isn’t the same Lions team as last year’s, the game’s standout player wasn’t even playing in Manhattan until the fall. Bucknell junior transfer Cecelia Collins had 19 points, five rebounds and seven seriously nifty assists. On a subpar day for senior guard and leading scorer Abbey Hsu (a mere 14 points on 5-for-14 shooting), Collins frustrated the visitors on both ends of the court.

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Penn women’s basketball waltzes past Gwynedd Mercy

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When a good Ivy team plays a Division III team, the question isn’t “Who’s going to win?” It’s “Why bother?”
We’ll answer the first question first, though, in case you were anxious: Penn, 89-34.

Penn and Gwynedd Mercy both entered Sunday’s game with 7-5 records, but the similarities pretty much end there. Gwynedd has a successful D-III program, but it’s a small school, and every one of its players is from the Philly area — Pennsylvania and New Jersey, not even Delaware.

What the two schools have, though, are successful longtime Philly coaches (and former Philly Catholic high school players) who have known each other forever. Mike McLaughlin is in his 15th year at Penn, and before then he had 14 wildly successful years at his D-II alma mater, Holy Family. Keith Mondillo has been Gwynedd’s coach since 1995.

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St. Joseph’s runs away from Penn women’s basketball

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Mataya Gayle notched 14 points on 5-for-16 shooting for Penn in her second collegiate game Tuesday. (Penn Athletics)
Saint Joseph’s gave Penn women’s basketball a reality check Tuesday night at the Palestra. After the Quakers’ comfortable season-opening victory Saturday over Marist, the undefeated Hawks cut them down, 72-48.
The Hawks have run up 20-plus-point margins of victory in each of their first three games (including at Yale). Their top scorers from last year have returned, joined by grad student Chloe Welch and freshman Gabby Casey, two of the five Hawks who hit double figures at Penn. Sophomore forward Laura Ziegler led the way with 18 points and 14 rebounds.
How good are these Hawks offensively? Well, in the first quarter, they hit a third of their shots, including 1-for-3 from three, and the Quakers kept pace. In the second quarter, St. Joe’s hit half of its shots, including 2-for-4 from three (the killer being a buzzer-beater from just inside half-court to leave Penn seven points down). In the third quarter: 57% overall, 40% of threes. In the final quarter, 75% on all shots, including 3-for-4 on threes.

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2023-24 Ivy women’s media day recap and season preview

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With the season a few weeks away, the Ivy League hosted Women’s Basketball Media Day on Monday, the first of two media availabilities this week. The event was hosted over Zoom for media members and is available on the conference’s YouTube channel.

The preseason media poll was released last Thursday with Princeton earning all 16 first-place votes. Last year’s Ivy Tournament winner and regular season co-champions are the sixth unanimous pick in league history and the first since Penn in 2016-2017.

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