It's been a season to forget for the Quakers, but at least some of their final memories at the Palestra will be positive.
The Quakers' defense, porous against Yale on Friday, clamped down against Brown on Saturday.
After losing 79-70 to the Bulldogs at the Palestra, the Quakers bounced back the next night and beat Brown 56-45.
"You know the help defense we didn't play the other night?" coach Pat Knapp asked. "A couple of people figured it out tonight."
Key among those was Caitlin Slover, who had two steals in the second half.
Penn went on an 11-2 run during the middle of the second half to put away the last-place Bears (2-24, 1-11 Ivy). It was a marked improvement over Penn's 72-59 loss to them on Feb. 15.
"We played better defense - that was the main focus going in," sophomore point guard Sarah Bucar said. "They penetrated so much the last game, and we needed to contain them."
Junior Kelly Scott came up big against Brown, ending the game with 13 points and a timely three-pointer. She got in the line at will, which got the offense going.
"My teammates did a great job of relocating when they came to help," Scott said.
Her 50-percent shooting and strong performances from Anca Popovici and Carrie Biemer helped the Quakers offset a weak performance by Bucar.
Bucar shot just 1-for-8 from the field, but was 1-for-3 from long distance, well above her season mark of .160.
She did end the game with five assists, with a few to Scott split out in the wing.
"Coach definitely wanted me to focus on getting to the middle of the floor and finding my shooters," Bucar said.
The key to the victory, however, was definitely the disruptive Penn defense.
"They kept us out of our offensive execution," Brown coach Jeanie Burr said.
It was an entirely different situation the night before against Yale (8-17, 6-6), whom Penn had upset beat two weeks prior.
On Friday night the Quakers defense was "spread out all over creation" according to Knapp. Yale scored 44 points in the paint, compared to 22 by Penn.
"We scored more than enough to win against Yale," Bucar said. "It was our defense."
At times in the game, Penn was forced to switch into a zone in order to try and stop the Yale inside attack. Even that, however, did not work.
"We couldn't even pack in and collapse on people in the zone," Knapp said. "They're not a three-point shooting team. We told our team that two games in a row."
The Yale press, which Penn handled quite easily in the first half, finally had its effect in the second, when the Bulldogs went on a 10-2 run from which the Quakers never recovered.
"When the game was being decided in the second half, I thought we finally got out there defensively and made them rush things a little more," Yale coach Chris Gobrecht said.
Coach Knapp had called the Brown contest a revenge game. Apparently, he got a little more revenge than he wanted this weekend.
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