W. Hoops hopes to keep its dream alive

It has been almost a year since Katina Banks held the fate of three-time defending Ivy League champion Brown and its Goliath center Martina Jerant in the palm of her hand, and simply let it go. One second remaining, one point down, one-and-one situation. Banks toed the line and cast the rock, but the only thing she sunk was the Penn women's basketball team's hope for a stunning upset. This weekend Banks and the Quakers (4-11, 1-2 Ivy League) will have a chance to redeem themselves at the Palestra as they host Yale (8-7, 2-1) Friday night, and Brown (7-8, 3-0) Saturday, both at 7 p.m. For a Penn team playing its best basketball of the season and fresh from an inspired victory over Princeton last weekend, the prospect of a sweep in this critical series doesn't seem as improbable as it would have only two weeks ago. Despite their impressive league record, the 1994-95 Bears are only a shell of the team that has ruled the Ancient Eight the past three and a half seasons, according to Penn coach Julie Soriero. "There's a lot of parity in the league this year," Soriero said. "Brown is a team we came within a shot of beating last year, and they've lost some of the players that made them so good. It's a wide open Ivy League race." The one constant for the Bears has been Jerant, Brown's strapping 6-foot-5 All-America candidate who earned Ivy League Player of the Year honors two years ago. "Jerant's going to get her points," senior guard Shelly Bowers said. "It's impossible to stop her completely. The key to our post defense is just not to let her take over the game." While the Bears enjoy a size advantage in the frontcourt, Penn's backcourt trio of Bowers, Banks and sophomore point guard Erica McCauley brings much more to the table than the relatively inexperienced Brown guards. Both junior point guard Ellen Lenihan and senior guard Tammy Sanchez have never spent a full season in the Bears' starting lineup, and neither is within a stone's throw of Banks' 37 percent from behind the arc. Penn's guards will need to be even sharper against Yale. The Elis' senior bookend forwards, Mary Kalich (17.3 points per game) and Bari Porter (15.5 ppg, 8.3 rpg), together create an even greater defensive dilemma for the Quakers in the paint than Jerant alone does. The responsibility will fall on Banks, Bowers and McCauley to apply enough perimeter pressure on the Elis' guards to force Kalich and Porter out of the comfort of Yale's normal offensive sets. "We've been working in practice on pressing [Yale's guards] and double-teaming them in the backcourt," Soriero said. "It's a little bit of a gamble." For the Quakers to protect their fragile dream of an Ivy League championship, it is a gamble that must pay off. A loss this weekend at home would shatter more than just Penn's dreams for a singe game, as it did a year ago. This year it's the dream of an entire season.