PHILADELPHIA – Happy Thanksgiving! The University of Pennsylvania women's basketball team is traveling south for the holiday, taking part in Florida Gulf Coast University's Homewood Suites Classic at Alico Arena Friday and Saturday.
 
On Friday, Penn takes on the 2023-24 SoCon Champion Chattanooga with a 1 p.m. battle before matching up with the 2023-24 WAC Champion Cal Baptist Saturday at 1 p.m.
 
The Quakers are coming off a record-breaking effort against Immaculata Tuesday night at The Palestra and are looking to keep that momentum going into this weekend.

The two games this weekend will not be streamed, but live stats will be provided through StatBroadcast.
 
GAME 8 – Penn (4-3, 0-0 Ivy) vs. Chattanooga (4-3, 0-0 SoCon)
Friday, Nov. 29, 2024 | 1 p.m.
Alico Arena | Fort Myers, Fla.
Live Stats | Tickets
Penn Game Notes (PDF) | Chattanooga Game Notes (PDF)
 
GAME 9 – Penn (4-3, 0-0 Ivy) vs. Cal Baptist (0-6, 0-0 WAC)
Saturday, Nov. 30, 2024 | 1 p.m.
Alico Arena | Fort Myers, Fla.
Live Stats | Tickets
Penn Game Notes (PDF) | Cal Baptist Notes (PDF)
 
A Thanksgiving Feast
Penn is playing two games in the Sunshine State over the Thanksgiving holiday, taking on Chattanooga Friday at 1 p.m. before going up against Cal Baptist Saturday at 1 p.m. at Florida Gulf Coast's Alico Arena.
 
This tournament caps a three-game week for the Quakers after beating Immaculata, 114-39, Tuesday evening at The Palestra.
 
Friday and Saturday mark the first-ever meetings for the Quakers, Mocs, and Lancers.
 
Record-Breaking Night
Tuesday's victory over Division III Immaculata was historic for several reasons. First, the 114 points scored broke a 35-year-old Penn scoring record. The previous mark of 111 was set back in March 1988 against Columbia.
 
Also, the margin of victory (75) was the Quakers' largest in program history, snapping the previous mark of 65 set back in December 2014 against King's College.
 
In addition, five Quakers—Sarah Miller (16), Mataya Gayle (16), Saniah Caldwell (12), Tina Njike (12), and Stina Almqvist (10)—reached double scoring figures, the first time that many players did so since March 16, 2019.
 
Fabulous Freshmen
Penn has gotten tremendous production out of its freshman class during the first seven games of the 2024-25 season.
 
In fact, freshmen account for 34.3 percent of the team's scoring (172-of-501), the majority.
On Tuesday night against Immaculata, several players had career highs in scoring including Miller (16 points), Gabriella Kelley (9), Brooke Suttle (5), and Reagan Jamison (5).
 
Miller has been terrific since being inserted into the starting lineup first against Villanova. She's averaging 5.9 points per game and 2.4 rebounds, while totaling seven assists and three steals.
 
All About Almqvist
Stina Almqvist has had one incredible start to her senior season after starting the campaign with six straight double-digit scoring games.
 
Almqvist has 14 consecutive games of 10-or-more points dating back to the end of last season.
 
In just six games this year, she is averaging 18.7 points and 8.4 rebounds.
 
In a two-game week last week against Villanova and UC Irvine, Almqvist poured in a game-high 24 points against the Wildcats to go along with eight rebounds. She notched 17 points and nine boards with three assists vs. the Anteaters on Thursday night. From Siena to Villanova, she had three consecutive 20-or-more point games for the Quakers.
 
All Eyes On The First Year
Freshman forward Katie Collins has looked nothing but impressive in her first stretch with the Quakers, playing and starting the first seven games of the year.
She is averaging 8.6 points and 7.6 rebounds so far and leads the Ivy League in blocked shots with 15. Collins had the first down game of her career against Villanova last Wednesday, failing to score a point. But she still had four rebounds, two blocks, and two steals on her stat sheet.
 
She rebounded nicely with an 18-point performance Thursday in overtime against UC Irvine at The Palestra, adding seven boards, two assists, two blocks, and two steals.
 
Collins has already been named Ivy League Rookie of the Week twice this season.
 
Passing The Rock
As a team, the Quakers are averaging 15.9 assists per game this season and Mataya Gayle has been a big part of that stat.
 
The sophomore guard picked up her second eight-assist contest of the year on Thursday against UC Irvine after doing the same against Siena a week prior.
 
Gayle is averaging 3.6 assists per game this season and is currently tied for the team lead and fifth in the Ivy League with Almqvist.
 
Last Time Out
Penn led from the get-go, and aside from a 2-2 tie early in the first quarter, it dominated the rest of the contest to run away with a 114-39 victory over Immaculata on Tuesday night at The Palestra.
 
The Quakers led by as many as 77 points late in the fourth quarter and settled for a 75-point win, the team's largest margin of victory in program history.
 
13 of Penn's 15 players on the roster registered a point with five reaching double figures. Miller (16 points) and Gayle (16) led the way while three players—Miller, Gayle, and Caldwell—had four three-pointers.
 
Penn out-rebounded Immaculata, 65-27, with 23 offensive boards. The Quakers shot 52.9 percent (46-for-87) from the floor and drilled 17 three-pointers (45.9 percent). Penn led in bench points, 60-10.
 
Scouting The Mocs
Chattanooga enters the weekend with a 4-3 overall record and a two-game winning streak. The Mocs are coming off wins against DII King University (Tenn.) and Lipscomb on Monday where they won 66-60.
 
In the win over the Bison earlier this week, Karsen Murphy led the way with a career-high 21 points and shot 51 percent (25-for-49) as a team. All five of the Mocs' three-pointers came from Murphy.
 
Caia Elisaldez (11.4 ppg), Murphy (10.0), and Brooke Anya (8.0) seem to be Chattanooga's three-headed monster over these first seven games of the year. Sigrun Olafsdottir leads the team in rebounding (6.0 rpg) and assists (4.3 apg).
 
Last season, the Mocs went 28-5 and 13-1 in SoCon play to win the conference tournament and fall to (3) NC State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 64-45.
 
Scouting The Lancers
It's been a tough start to the year for Cal Baptist, currently 0-6 to begin the year. However, CBU has played a tough schedule as of late and opening against the likes of Oregon, San Diego State, and Portland.
 
The Lancers last played on Tuesday night against Saint Louis in an 82-70 defeat in Riverside. Like Murphy for Chattanooga, Claudia Fiel also posted a career high with 18 points. Emma Johansson added 11 points and Nhug Bosch Duran chipped in 10 with a pair of three-pointers.
 
CBU is led in scoring this season by Grace Schmidt (14.2 ppg) and also has a team-high 8.2 rebounds per game. Anaiyah Tu'ua is the Lancers' leading ball distributor at 5.8 assists per game while the team is shooting 37.5 percent (141-for-376) from the floor and just 24.2 percent (37-for-153) from beyond-the-arc.
 
Cal Baptist also excelled in 2024-25, finishing with a 28-4 overall record after going 18-2 in WAC play. It won the WAC conference tournament before falling 84-55 to (2) UCLA in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
 
Preseason Prognostications
Things are certainly looking up for the Quakers as the 2024-25 season gets underway this week. Penn was picked to finish fourth in the Ivy League's preseason poll, earning 75 voting points by a panel of 16 media members.
 
Penn returns a pair of key starters from last year in senior Almqvist (second-team All-Ivy) and sophomore Gayle (Ivy Rookie of the Year).
 
Almqvist and Lizzy Groetsch were named the Quakers' captains for the season.
 
Another Year of Madness
Penn completed another successful season in 2023-24 after qualifying for Ivy Madness for the fifth time in six seasons, narrowly falling to top-seeded and eventual champion Princeton, 59-54, in the semifinals.
 
Gayle dropped a team-high 20 points against the Tigers and was subsequently named a member of the Ivy League's All-Tournament team.
 
The Quakers went 15-13 overall and 7-7 in Ancient Eight play by season's end. In addition, Penn finished Big 5 play with a 1-3 record and a fourth-place finish.
 
Fresh Faces
Six student-athletes make up Penn Women's Basketball's Class of 2028 including four guards and two forwards.
 
Guards include Tambe, Miller, Brooke Suttle, and Reagan Jamison.
 
The Quakers have two new forwards in Collins and Gabriella Kelley.
 
Tambe (The Hockaday School), Kelley (SF University HS), and Suttle (Campbell) scored over 1,000 points in their high school careers with Tambe leaving as the program's all-time leading scorer (with over 1,600 points).
 
Impressive First Season
Gayle's rookie campaign was nothing short of impressive as she looks for more of the same in 2024-25, hoping to take that next step.
 
She was one of just three Quakers—and the only freshman—to start all 28 games and finished third on the team in scoring (14.3 ppg), while grabbing 86 rebounds (3.1 rpg). Among Ivy players, she was fifth in three-pointers per game (1.8), eighth in assists (3.1), eighth in steals (1.5) and 10th in points (14.3) as a freshman.
 
Gayle also made her national mark after being named USBWA National Rookie of the Week on Jan. 3 when she dropped 28 points, seven rebounds, three assists, and three steals in a victory over eventual America East champion Maine.
 
20-Win Seasons
Penn is the only team in the Ivy League to surpass the 20-win plateau in seven-straight years under Coach Mike McLaughlin after concluding the 2019-20 campaign. With no play in the Ivy League in 2020-21 due to the pandemic, the 2021-22 season was the first under-.500 season for the Quakers since the 2011-12 season when Penn went 13-15 (Coach McLaughlin's third season at the helm) but bounced back last year with a 17-12 tally.
 
All-Time Wins Leader
Coach McLaughlin is Penn's all-time wins leader, surpassing Lois Ashley's mark of 128 wins in 12 seasons with his 129th win at Dartmouth on March 3, 2017. The head man now sits with an record of 246-162 (.600) at Penn. In addition, McLaughlin earned the 650th win of his career last season against Harvard; that ranks him ninth among active Division I coaches.
 
Winning Streaks
Prior to McLaughlin, Penn had just one winning streak of more than seven games in its entire history (21). However, in the last six seasons, the Quakers have had nine such winning streaks, including an 11-game win streak that the Quakers were on last season until falling at Princeton (55-40) on January 16. It marked the second-longest stretch in program history only to the 21 from 2000-01.
 
Additionally, two seasons ago, the Quakers sported 12 straight wins in The Palestra from December 2022 to mid-February 2023, a program record that eclipsed the 10 set back in the 21-game stretch.
 
Magic Number: 60
The statistic that may most indicate a Penn win or loss? 60 points. Penn has won 153 of its last 167 regular season games when scoring at least 60 points in regulation. Since head coach Mike McLaughlin took over at Penn, the Quakers are 191-216 (.906) when they reach that number (163-18 over the last eight seasons). In comparison, the Quakers are just 50-136 (.288) when they've scored less than 60 points under McLaughlin. The trend continues defensively. Over the last 11 seasons, the Red and Blue are 50-100 (.347) when allowing 60 points or more. But when holding opponents under that number, the Quakers hold a healthy winning record of 188-36 (.836).
 
For the latest on Penn women's basketball, follow @PennWBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.