W. Hoops' key is defense

Penn hopes its return home will help end a four-game slide. There's good news, and there's bad news. Which do you want first? Good? Well, the Penn women's basketball team finally returns home for its last Ivy League weekend of the season. Bad? They'll be facing Dartmouth and Harvard, the first- and third-place teams in the Ivy League, respectively. The Quakers will be trying to avenge tough losses suffered on the road to the two teams. Those were the first-ever Ivy away games of the season for eight players on the Quakers team. Against the Crimson, Penn fell behind quickly on its way to a lopsided 86-57 loss. The following night in Hanover, N.H., the Big Green made efficient use of its many trips to the charity stripe to capture a 92-70 win. "We sent Dartmouth to the free-throw line 43 times, and they scored 33 points," Penn coach Julie Soriero said. "That's too many trips. That's too many free looks at the basket. "It wasn't that they were being that aggressive about it. I just don't think we were in as solid a defensive position as we needed to be. That's one of the reasons I'm shuffling the lineup." In an effort to get the Quakers started strongly on the defensive end, Soriero will start sophomore walk-on Hadley Perkins in place of senior captain Deana Lewis, and senior Amy Tarr will take freshman Shelly Fogarty's regular spot. Soriero pointed to Perkins' passion for rebounding and Tarr's defensive positioning as reasons for the changes. "As a starter, you have to start out with intensity and emotion," Tarr said. The key to Penn's weekend will be how intense it plays defensively. "The thing we've been stressing all week is defense," Soriero said. But for the Quakers, it is not only intensity that is of importance. "We have to play smarter. We were out-of-sync," forward Michelle Maldonado said. "We just were playing poor defense and? were late anticipating [Dartmouth's] moves. Better defense will limit their foul-shooting opportunities." Today at 7 p.m., Penn will take on the Big Green, who are led by the guard tandem of Sally Annis and Nicci Rinaldi. Annis, the 1993-94 Ivy League Rookie of the Year, is Dartmouth's career leader in three-pointers and is among the top-10 scorers in school history. However, she was held to just seven points in Penn's first meeting with the Big Green, although she did register nine rebounds and five assists from her shooting-guard position. Against the Quakers, Rinaldi also had difficulty scoring, putting up just nine points to go with three assists. Junior Bess Tortolani made up the scoring difference in the first meeting, scoring 22 points for Dartmouth. She shoots well from the outside and also plays strongly in the paint. In the first meeting, Tortolani went to the free-throw line 10 times and converted on nine. The aspect of Dartmouth's game that surprised Penn most, though, was the strong scoring boost it received from its bench. Freshman Courtney Banghart hit 4 of 7 treys on her way to a 21-point night, and backup center Katie O'Connor chipped in 16 points, half on foul shots. "We weren't expecting them to give Dartmouth that much offensive firepower," Soriero said. "I think we need to respond to those kids and be prepared for them a little better than we were last time." The Quakers, however, do understand and expect fireworks from Harvard. "They're just a really good team, and they're playing with a lot of confidence, and they're really on a roll," Soriero said. The Crimson are led by do-everything superstar Allison Feaster, last season's Ivy League Player of the Year. Currently, she is second in Ivy scoring at 21.4 points per game, second in rebounds with 10.4 a contest and second in three-point percentage. "She can shoot threes, she can put the ball on the floor and go, she can post up," Soriero added. "She's going to get points, but we can't let her take over the game." Point guard Jessica Gelman is a perfect compliment to Feaster. She leads the Ivies in assists with 5.7 per game and is among the top free-throw shooters in the conference. "They're a hard team to defend because they spread the floor really well and they shoot the three-point shot really well," Soriero said. The Quakers know it will take a team effort on their part to beat Harvard, but they think it can be done. "They can be broken down, and they can be beaten," Lewis said. "We're going to play better transition defense. That's what we're going to focus on and do better," Maldonado added. "Every single one of us has to show up." Penn knows if it doesn't play strong against the Big Green and the Crimson, it won't be good or bad. It will be ugly.