SEASON REVIEW: W. Hoops was led by seniors

It is rather hard to analyze the Penn women's basketball team's season. There are no sweeping generalizations that apply. There are few trends that lasted the entire season. About all you can say is the potentially powerful Quakers (10-16, 6-8 Ivy League) were, at their best, inconsistent. Take, for example, Penn's season-ending series against Columbia and Cornell. The New York duo had swept the Quakers earlier in the season, but in the Palestra, Penn exploded to an 81-43 win over the Lions and a 57-44 win over the Big Red. An earlier win over Princeton meant the oft-inconsistent Quakers ended on a three-game winning streak and slid into fifth place. "[The wins] reaffirmed what we knew all along," senior center and co-captain Katarina Poulsen said. "We knew we had the capability to win, and it was frustrating when we couldn't figure out why we weren't." "It was disappointing because we didn't meet many of our expectations," said senior forward and co-captain Julie Gabriel. "We had moments of brilliance and we could have done extremely well." This is, of course, in stark contrast to the way the season started, with five consecutive losses until a win at home against Delaware December 11 and followed that with two more losses. Most of those losses were to national powers like Virginia and Ohio State, but they were defeats nonetheless. Although the tough competition was designed to prepare the Quakers for the Ivy season, Gabriel said the effects of the tougher competition were lost. "If we had maintained our level of play from the early season, we could have done much better," she said. "Instead, we stepped down to the level of our Ivy competition." As a result, the Quakers were painfully inconsistent in the Ivy League, splitting the season series with Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Columbia and Cornell. The only team Penn didn't beat was league-champion Brown, and the Quakers lost the two contests by a combined three points. And to throw everything into sharp relief, Penn began the Ivy season with a thrashing of Harvard in Cambridge, 93-71, a win Gabriel called the high point of the year. "It was great starting the Ivy season with a win," she said. "We played really well." Unfortunately for Penn, it was not able to continue that play or build on the high level of its early season competition. The Quakers fell into a deep funk broken only by nonconference wins against Temple, Lafayette and Lehigh. That funk began in the very next game, against second-place Dartmouth. The Big Green blew out Penn but the Quakers gained some measure of revenge later in the Palestra. "Dartmouth was such a critical game for us to lose," Poulsen said. "It really hurt us early on. Beating them confirmed a lot for us." Despite the pervasive nature of the Quakers' inconsistency Poulsen was at a loss to explain it. "I've given it a lot of thought," she said. "I really don't know why we were so inconsistent. It's not for lack of trying." If anything was consistent for the Quakers, it was Poulsen and Gabriel. Both finished strong, scoring double-doubles each day. Poulsen scored her 1,000th point -- one of her career-high 30 -- in the last game of her career against Columbia. Poulsen finished with 41 points, nine blocks and 20 rebounds for the weekend. She led the team in scoring with 15.6 ppg and was second in rebounding at 8.2. She is only the fifth Quaker to score 1,000 points and 600 rebounds. Gabriel also ended her career on a high note, scoring 27 points and grabbing 21 rebounds in the two games. She led the team in rebounding (9.0 rpg) and was fourth in scoring with 10.1 ppg. Despite those numbers, which suggest an inside game, Gabriel was dangerous from the outside as well, connecting on 35 percent of her three-pointers. Her 35 trifectas led the team. The key for the Quakers in the offseason will be replacing these two players, the only graduates. To do this, the emphasis will shift to the guards, where all three members of the backcourt rotation -- juniors Katina Banks and Shelly Bowers, and freshman Erica McCauley -- return. Bowers was second in scoring at 11.4 ppg and dished out 118 assists. However, she could at times be a little careless with the ball, turning it over 107 times. Banks missed two free throws that would have won the Brown game in the Palestra, but she generally was solid, averaging 10.8 ppg. McCauley contributed the most of the freshmen, scoring 3.7 ppg. The most pressing concern is replacing the scoring and rebounding of Gabriel and Poulsen. That could be taken care of in part by the return of Natasha Rezek for her senior year. Rezek studied in Russia this year, but was a force in the paint last year. Her 11.7 rebounds ranked 10th in Division I, and she also tossed in 13.9 ppg. "[Natasha's] not due back until May, so we won't know until then," assistant coach Tina Costello said. If she doesn't return though, someone will have to step up. It could be returning starter Shelly Dieterle, who scored 6.6 ppg but played the least minutes of the starters. It could be freshmen Nicki Pozzi or Deana Lewis -- but both have knee problems. Lewis is rehabbing an injury suffered this season, but until that she provided solid inside play off the bench. Pozzi will have her knee scoped to repair a high school injury this spring. "We have a solid nucleus returning," Costello said. "The junior class is very experienced, and we've gotten some quality time from the freshmen, like Erica, Amy [Tarr] and Lewis. Deana, Nicole and Amanda [Coulter] all have to work hard this offseason. The way this team works in the offseason will determine the success of the team next year." There is one footnote to this season. The Quakers finished strong last year, with wins over second-place Harvard and first-place Brown. The question remains: Will this year's strong finish beget another disappointing season? "We always seem to finish strong," Poulsen said. "It's the in-between games that kill us."