Double trouble: St. Joe's clobbers Penn, 91-45

The Penn women's basketball team fell to 0-23 overall versus the Hawks with the loss last night. It would have taken a godsend for the Penn women's basketball team to defeat cross-town rival St. Joseph's, but the trip to City Line Ave., was one without divine intervention. The result was that the game became the "Nightmare on 54th Street" as Penn suffered one of its worst defeats in its 25-year history. The defending Atlantic-10 and Big 5 champion Hawks scored early and often, jumping out to 23-8 and 43-17 leads in the first half en route to a 91-45 rout of the visiting Quakers (0-2, 0-1 Big 5) at Alumni Fieldhouse. "We just wanted to go out and play Hawk ball tonight, and just establish ourselves in the Big 5 and the city of Philadelphia," said St. Joe's guard Melissa Coursey, the game's high scorer with 30. "We just wanted to have a good game and play our style of basketball." That's what they did right from the opening whistle. St. Joe's (2-1, 1-0) immediately went to work, implementing a full-court press on Penn's inbounds passes within the first five minutes. The press, plus defense in their own halfcourt and Penn's tentativeness with the ball resulted in 21 first-half turnovers by the Quakers. The Hawks committed just seven. Penn coach Julie Soriero bluntly characterized the turnovers, which led to Penn's falling to St. Joe's for the 23rd time in 23 meetings. "Deadly. [Turnovers] killed us," Soriero said. "Somebody's got to step up and really want to play the point guard and get it done." Play at the other end was even more lopsided. The Hawks pulled down 20 offensive rebounds to Penn's three. The result was one of two major factors in the game: many points in the paint for St. Joe's. "What really picked up the game for us was being on the boards," Coursey said. "We crashed the boards, we created things off the boards. We did a tremendous job." "I guess we weren't working hard enough to go to the offensive boards," Penn freshman forward Diana Caramanico said. "Hustling on the boards is really important in a game like this because it gets you a lot of second chances, and we just didn't get them tonight." St. Joe's height and physical play, led by forward Costello's 20 points and nine rebounds, were too much for the Quakers. The other major factor was Coursey's uncanny three-point shooting. She set a team record for most threes made in a single game when she hit her ninth trey with less than 10 minutes to go in the game. Even after making her first few three-point shots, Coursey still found herself wide open almost all the time in the left corner. She took 21 of her 27 shots from downtown. "They had somebody driving the lane," said Caramanico, who had eight points and eight rebounds. "Because of the penetration in the middle, the forwards pinched in, and we weren't able to get out to [Coursey] at the corner." "During every single timeout, we talked about getting out there and making [Corsey] have to put the ball down and dribble," Soriero said. "Saying it and doing it right now with our young team is a little bit more difficult." Conference scheduling precludes a playing the game later in the season. The difference between playing the Hawks now and playing them later might matter because of the Red and Blue's youth. Only Michelle Maldonado and Colleen Kelly, who topped Penn with 21 points last night, have extensive game experience. "With such a young team, I would rather play them later," Soriero said. "They have some experienced and talented players, and we're just too young. When you put in their years of experience and minutes played versus ours, they have much composure -- with a TV game, used to things like that." After losses of 23 points against St. Francis (Pa.) and 46 points last night, one important question remains for Penn: how will the new kids on the block react? "I have a young team, and what I've said to them in every single game, regardless of what the score is, or what's going on, or what the time is, 'Work hard to learn and get better on every possession'," Soriero said. "It's hard when you lose by this much, but I think we're going to bounce back, and see that we're able to compete in North Carolina [next weekend]," Caramanico said. "It think we'll be able to put this behind us pretty easily, especially since we're so young." Penn will be playing in the Holiday Beach Blast hosted by UNC-Wilmington, the Quakers' first-round opponent, on Saturday. The Red and Blue will face either East Tennessee State or Ball State on Sunday.