Worse than losing game, W. Hoops loses senior Kelly

Penn shooting guard Colleen Kelly is likely to miss three weeks after injuring her knee in Friday's loss to Navy. Once again, the Penn women's basketball team had trouble getting out of the gate. Once again, the Quakers came back from an early deficit and looked like they might pull out a win. But on Friday night, their game against the U.S. Naval Academy took a unusual and unfortunate turn for the worse in the closing seconds. With 47 seconds to go and Penn down by four points, senior captain Colleen Kelly went down on the court after her right leg was rolled up in a tie-up with Navy freshman guard Mandy Stephan. Kelly's exit from the game left the Red and Blue without their best long-range shooter, capping a 70-66 loss to the Midshipmen. No official diagnosis has been made on Kelly's injury, but according to Kelly the injury is to her media-collateral ligament, and she will be sidelined for three weeks. For most of the game, many things seemed to go right for the Quakers (2-4). In what is becoming a common occurrence, Diana Caramanico scored buckets of points from inside the paint. The Midshipmen had trouble containing the 6'2'' forward, who finished with season highs in points (33), blocks (3), and steals (5). Both Penn guards also had career highs on the evening. Kelly had eight assists, and junior Sue Van Stone finished with a personal best six rebounds. The Quakers as a team outshot Navy (6-1) 41 percent to 27 percent in the first half, and totaled 21 percent versus 13 percent from three-point land for the night. It looked bleak for the visitors: an 0-for-12 shooting spree to begin the contest, an inability to stop Penn's inside game, no outside threats and even senior guard Joanne Groth losing a contact lens, forcing a two minute stoppage midway through the first half. Despite those problems, however, Navy found itself down by only four with 7:39 to go. It was time for a strategic change. "We pulled all our big people out of the game," Navy coach Joe Sanchez said. "We felt [Penn] was out-muscling us inside, and felt that the tempo was going their way. We decided we couldn't match their size, so we just wanted to be quicker than they were." The solution: a four-guard set, double-down defense on Caramanico and pure hustle. "We were playing with our best five players that can play solid man-to-man defense," Sanchez said. "We just went after them 94 feet, and forced them to a perimeter game rather than an inside game." The game plan worked. The momentum started to change when Stephan drove straight up the lane for a lay-up, closing Penn's lead to 54-52. The game went back and forth for a while, but Stephan and Groth took over, using speed to drive to the basket for more lay-ups. The Middies followed their penetration by catching fire from the field. Stephan made a long-range shot from left of the key, and senior co-captain Becky Dowling hit a clutch three-pointer from that same area with 1:45 to go, giving Navy a four-point lead. Dowling was Navy's leading scorer with 20 points "The interesting thing towards the end of the game was that we had our best perimeter shooters in the game," Sanchez said. "It worked out that they were our best defensive players but at the same time our best three-point shooters were all in the game." More astounding was Dowling's 17 rebounds and Groth's 15 boards. Navy out-rebounded Penn 50-38 overall, and a remarkable 23-14 on the offensive boards. "We just didn't box out against them," Penn forward Michelle Maldonado said. "We had a six-point lead, and I didn't feel that the lead was enough. We have to box out better." "I think with a seven-point lead, we got a little soft on defense, we gave up too much dribble penetration, sending kids to the free throw line," Penn coach Julie Soriero said. Penn will have a chance to redeem themselves when they play La Salle tomorrow at Philadelphia Textile -- a court playing host to many past Soriero wins. In the meantime, the Quakers have time to digest the lessons learned from Friday. "We were responsible for our loss," Maldonado said. "It's not that [Navy] was better -- we took it away from ourselves."