Brown's 21-0 run lifts Bears to victory

Over the course of a long, competitive season every team has bad games. The goal is to make those bad games come early and in spots where the games don't matter.

The Penn women's basketball team played probably their worst half of basketball on Friday night in a game that they had to win. The end result was a 76-69 loss to Brown at the Palestra.

The loss, combined with the next night's loss to Yale, all but kills Penn's chances at an Ivy League title.

"You can be emotional about our chances if you want," Penn coach Patrick Knapp said.

"But we played poorly today. We played poorly. It wasn't a call here or there or a loose ball here or there, it was everybody; it was all of us."

The game had a far different feel after the first half. The Quakers had one of their strongest halves of the season, scoring 39 points, the most in a first half this season. The opening twenty minutes also included a 10-point, eight-rebound start for junior center Jennifer Fleischer as Penn took a 39-33 lead into the locker room.

But the second half was a radically different story. The Bears switched from a zone to man-to-man defense and the open looks, on the inside and outside that had seemed limitless in the first half simply dried up.

After opening the half with two three-pointers to take a 45-33 lead, the Quakers just fell apart. Over the next 5:43 Brown went on a 21-0 run and put Penn into a 54-45 hole from which it could not recover.

"What let us down most was the thing that kept us afloat the whole year: our defense," Knapp said.

"They had a stretch in the second half defensively where we didn't guard anybody."

Brown's two leading scorers had field days against the lackadaisical Penn defense. Senior center Holly Robertson dominated on the inside and outside racking up 20 points and nine rebounds, including 3-for-4 from beyond the arc. The team's leading scorer -- Sarah Hayes -- scored 23, 12 of them from the free-throw line.

And none of the Quakers could match that performance. In the second half, Penn shot an abysmal 7-for-29 from the field, good for 24.1 percent.

The Brown pressure defense forced the Quakers into mistake after mistake, missed shot after missed shot, and Penn was not able to capitalize on their opportunities to catch up.

"We've got some people who need to step up, be more aggressive with the ball and make better decisions," Knapp said.

"My most experienced players were on the floor and they didn't stand up to the pressure, take care of the ball, and they didn't guard people."

Any number of factors can be blamed for the loss on Friday night, turnovers (Penn had 14), rebounding (they were outrebounded 41-34), poor shooting (35.6 field goal percentage), or poor defense (Brown scored 76 points). But, perhaps Knapp said it best.

"Penn got beat tonight flat out," he said. "We played bad."

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