W. Hoops splits road trip, again

(Penn - 72, Brown - 66) (Penn - 69, Yale - 78)

Six wins in a row may have been a little bit too much to ask from a young women's basketball team that had already been eliminated from the Ivy title race.

Friday night's convincing 72-66 victory over Brown gave the Quakers their second consecutive triumph since Penn coach Kelly Greenberg challenged her team to win its final six contests.

But Saturday night the dream run came to a close as the Red and Blue fell flat on their faces in the opening minutes against Yale.

Down, 22-11, in the opening minutes, the Quakers (10-14, 6-5 Ivy League) dug themselves a hole from which they would be unable to rally in a 78-69 defeat.

"They got a big lead in the first half and that killed us for the rest of the game," Penn junior guard Tara Twomey said.

Yale (14-11, 7-5) amassed its early lead by shooting a blistering 63 percent -- 17 for 27 -- from the field.

While Penn's pressing defense limits its Ivy opposition to around 40 percent shooting per game on the season, the Elis -- much like in last year's game in New Haven where the home team raced out to an early 14-4 advantage before succumbing to Penn, 92-80, in overtime -- had little trouble dealing with the Quakers' pressure.

"Coach told us that Yale would come out strong," Penn sophomore guard Jewel Clark said. "But it was even more difficult, because they were making just about every shot they took."

While the Quakers admit their defense may have been a little suspect at times, they still feel that Lady Luck may have also had a hand in the Elis' first-half barrage.

"Sixty-three percent is a lot," Twomey said. "You can't really say that we weren't playing good defense because they were just getting lucky on a lot of their shots."

While the Elis torched the Penn defense, the Quakers tried their best to match Yale's shooting effort.

Playing out of their offense at times, the Red and Blue fired prematurely on many possessions, en route to a subpar 11 for 32 (34.4 percent) shooting effort in the first half -- well below the Quakers 39.4 percent per game average on the season.

"We were just rushing it in the first half," Clark said. "We got caught up into the fact that Yale was shooting so well.

"We were thinking about keeping up with Yale rather than playing Penn basketball," she said.

It took until 16:32 remaining in the second-half -- with Yale holding a commanding 22-point lead -- for the Quakers to finally start playing Penn basketball.

Storming back from the deficit, Penn was able to chop the Yale lead down to single digits. After a Clark layup with 4:51 left -- the guard finished with a game-high 22 points -- the Quakers trailed by only eight points.

While Penn looked poised for its second straight comeback win at Lee Amphitheater, the Quakers could not get any closer than five points.

"If we had played better in the first half, we could've won that game," Twomey said. "But we just didn't come out with it."

Friday against Brown was a much better game as a whole for the Quakers.

After exchanging the lead with the Bears (5-19, 2-9) 11 times in the opening half, Penn headed into halftime with a 35-31 lead.

Leading Penn's late first-half charge was freshman center Katie Kilker. While the Brown defense double-teamed on Clark -- who finished with a game-high 19-points and tied her career-high with 17 rebounds -- the 6-foot-2 Kilker took advantage of the opportunity to score six points in the final two minutes to give the Red and Blue their early edge.

"When Jewel makes her presence known, it just leaves somebody open," Kilker said. "And I just got open."

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