W. Hoops starts season with a win

The Quakers came back from a 10-point deficit with 10 minutes left in the game. As the buzzer sounded last Friday night to mark the end of the inaugural game of the season for the Penn women's basketball team, a general feeling of shock pervaded the arena. The players on the court stood around for a second, seeming slightly bewildered. Then Penn shooting guard Colleen Kelly raised her hands in the air and gave a shout. The scoreboard told the whole story: Penn 73, St. Francis 67. For the Quakers, it was an incredible win. Having trailed practically the entire game, Penn was forced to overcome a ten-point deficit in the final ten minutes to pull the victory out. It was a comeback that, a year ago, never would have happened. "It's a huge win," senior co-captain Deana Lewis said. "Now we can start out with a lot of confidence." More impressive than the victory, however, was the poise that the team showed in attaining it. Led by junior Michele Maldonado's twenty-two points, the Quakers were able to rebound from a sloppy first half in which they were victimized by the inside play of St. Francis' Jen Defilippo, Carolyn Bull, and Mary Markey, by outrebounding the Red Flash in the second half, 21-16. That stat becomes particularly significant, when one considers that St. Francis' ten-point lead at half time had been built largely by the result of the Red Flash's 13 offensive boards. "In the first half, they had a lot of second shot opportunities," Penn coach Julie Soriero said. "We were out of position a lot of the time. In the second half we did a better job of boxing out and getting to loose balls." For the defending Northeast Conference champion Red Flash, it was a painful loss. The players looked completely bewildered afterwards, as they were left to ponder how a game that they had controlled from start to finish, could be wrenched away from their grasp in the final minutes. Coming in, St. Francis had a simple game plan. Pound it inside and exploit Penn's small front court. For the first thirty minutes, it worked. Foul trouble on Deana Lewis, Penn's most physical player inside, limited her to only 29 minutes of playing time and forced Soriero to go with a smaller lineup that the visitors quickly exploited. The only thing that kept Penn in the game at that point was the outstanding guard play of both freshman point guard Chelsea Hathaway and junior Colleen Kelly. Hathaway's ability to penetrate and dish the ball to the open teammate coupled with Kelly's six steals and clutch three-point shooting, enabled the Quakers to keep the game from getting out of hand before the inside play of Lewis, who provided some clutch baskets down the stretch. And then Maldonado took over, scoring eight of Penn's last 14 points. Down by as much as twelve points midway in the second half, Penn slowly crept its way back into the game. A three by Kelly, who finished the game with 14 points on 4- for-10 shooting from beyond the arch, along with a layup by Maldonado gave the Quakers their first lead at 57-55 with 6:43 left. The two teams exchanged the lead six times in the next four minutes before a Lewis layup put Penn up 69-66 with only 1:46 remaining on the clock. DeFilippo then sank one of two free throws to cut the lead to two. On the ensuing Penn possession, Markey intercepted an errant entry pass to Maldonado from senior co-captain Amy Tarr and the Red Flash had the ball with twenty ticks left on the clock. But a quick steal by Kelly forced St. Francis to foul Hathaway with 16.2 seconds left. The Penn freshman, who played all 40 minutes in her very first collegiate game, coolly stepped up to the line and sank both of her free throws to ensure the victory. Two foul shots by Lewis with two seconds left rounded out the scoring and put the finishing touches on the dramatic comeback. The Quakers had a lot to smile about when all was said and done, but perhaps what was most significant was the remarkable debut of Hathaway. For a team who's greatest weakness a year ago was their perimeter game, her ability to run the offense as efficiently as she did gives the Quakers an added dimension that they sorely need. Her seven rebounds in particular attest to the fact that she is not your average guard. "She did a tremendous job," Kelly said. "She ran the plays well and slowed it down when we needed it."