AT COURTSIDE: Quaker second-half defense sparks victory over Leopards

If it wasn't already in dire straits, the Penn women's basketball team was rapidly approaching that point as the second half of last night's game against Lafayette got underway. Thanks to their inside-outside combination of center Chris Sieling and guard Heidi Caruso, the Leopards had scored seemingly at will against a lifeless Penn defense that was outhustled and outplayed at virtually every position -- Lafayette was shooting an excellent 56.3 percent from the field, with Sieling and Caruso scoring a combined 25 points as the Leopards raced to a 38-23 lead going into the intermission. To say the roof then caved in on Lafayette's offense would not be accurate because that implies the Leopards' second-half offensive woes were primarily a result of their own self-destruction. Instead, they were mostly due to Penn's stepped-up play on the defensive end, an improvement that was stimulated by a switch from man-to-man to zone defense, as well as a sizeable increase in the Quakers' intensity throughout the second 20 minutes. During the first half, it looked like deja vu for Penn, as Sieling looked every bit as strong as she did in scoring 25 points to lead Lafayette to a 75-62 win over the Quakers last season. Sieling scored 15 first-half points last night, converting three offensive rebounds into layups and hitting jumpers from as far out as 14 feet. Senior center and co-captain Katarina Poulsen seemed helpless to stop her despite a two-inch height advantage. Meanwhile, Penn was having trouble getting out quickly enough to stop the sharpshooting Caruso, who scored six straight points to increase the Leopard lead to 11. First she hit from 13- and 17-feet out, and then she stole the ball from Penn junior guard Shelly Bowers and eventually converted the turnover into a nifty layup and a 25-14 Lafayette lead. Going into the second half, Penn could have simply rolled over and allowed the favored Leopards to breeze to the victory that seemed inevitable. But the Quakers had too much pride to allow that to happen. And too good a defense. Last Tuesday against Temple, Penn won the game with a 16-0 run to open the contest that saw Temple unable to run anything resembling an offense. And before that, 10 days ago against Harvard, Penn's stifling defense held the Crimson to a paltry 35-percent shooting as the Quakers romped to a 22-point win. But Penn may have topped both those efforts with a performance that saw Lafayette limited to six points in the first 13:32 of the second half. The benefits of the switch to a 2-3 zone Penn coach Julie Soriero installed during the halftime break were immediately apparent -- Seiling scored just five points on 1 for 8 shooting from the field. The other Leopards fared no better than Sieling, as the entire team shot just 21 percent (6 for 28) during the second half. Two steals by junior guard Katina Banks helped chop the Leopard lead to 38-31 just four minutes into the second half. Caruso was having trouble penetrating with the 2-3 swarming around her, and Banks continued to have success stealing the ball on the perimeter. Her fifth steal of the half led to a three-point play by senior co-captain Julie Gabriel that tied the score at 44, the first time the game was tied since the the opening tipoff. "We did a better job of pressuring them when they had the ball," Soriero said. "We challenged them well and forced them into plays they might not have wanted to make." When Gabriel tied the score, almost 14 minutes had gone by, and the shellshocked Leopards had scored a grand total of six points. Lafayette would regroup to score 11 points during the remainder of regulation, but by the time it did the Quakers had too much momentum to be stopped. So what was the key to the dramatic turnaround that occurred in the second half? Was it the switch to the 2-3? Or was it a matter of just playing harder and smarter? "It was both," Soriero said. "When you're trailing by 15 at the end of the half, you obviously need to make some changes. I thought the 2-3 helped us pick up our intensity at the start [of the second half], and that carried over to our play during the rest of the game."