PRINCETON, N.J. – The University of Pennsylvania women's basketball team fell to Princeton in an Ivy League semifinal on Friday night at the Tigers' Jadwin Gym, 60-47.
Penn, which entered the tournament as the fourth seed, fell to 17-11 but still has hopes of playing postseason basketball. Princeton, the top seed, improved to 22-5 and will meet the winner of tonight's second semifinal between second-seeded Columbia and third-seeded Harvard in the Ivy League Tournament final tomorrow evening.
Quaker Notemeal
*Senior captain
Kayla Padilla led all Penn scorers with 20 points (7-for-21), including a perfect 4-for-4 at the line.
*Additionally, she drilled two three-pointers, moving her season total to 79, a new program record. She now owns all three records from beyond the arc in program history (single game, single season, and career).
*Senior captain
Mandy McGurk and junior
Jordan Obi each added seven points. Obi also had a team-high eight rebounds.
*Junior
Floor Toonders had a well-rounded effort with five points, six rebounds, two assists, and a block.
How It Happened
A mere seven days after using a strong first half against the Tigers at The Palestra, the Quakers were trailing early by a dominant first quarter by their hosts Friday night at Jadwin.
Princeton scored the game's first 16 points before
Mandy McGurk finished a
Kayla Padilla feed to get the Quakers on the board. Those would be the only points Penn would score in the period, however, and the Tigers took a 19-2 lead after one.
To their credit, the Penn women worked their way back into the game over the next two quarters.
The second quarter was a marked improvement, Penn outscoring Princeton 19-13 and ending things on the biggest up note you could when McGurk banked home a half-court shot to get the Quakers within 11 at the break.
Simone Sawyer then cut the margin to single digits with the opening basket in the second half, and a
Floor Toonders trey quickly made it an eight-point game at 34-26. The Quakers cut another point off the margin just ahead of the third-quarter media timeout, a
Jordan Obi trey making the score 40-33, and then Padilla's record-breaking trey made it a six-point game at 44-38. The teams traded buckets after that and it was still a six-point game after three, 46-40.
The fourth quarter started slowly on both sides, but Princeton opened the margin back to double digits when Julia Cunningham knocked down a baseline jumper with less than seven minutes left. That put the score at 50-40, and Penn head coach
Mike McLaughlin took a timeout. Obi scored on a putback out of the stoppage, but the Tigers answered and then turned a bad pass into a fast-break layup. That made it 54-42 at the final media timeout.
Penn had several chances to cut into the lead after that but were constantly forced into desperate shots late in the shot clock by Princeton's defense. The closest the Quakers got was 58-47 on a Padilla trey in the game's final minute.
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