Analysls: W. Hoops falters in the paint

St. Joseph's dominated the Quakers inside and Penn could not adjust. Mama said there'd be days like this. In last night's 76-47 loss to St. Joseph's, the Penn women's basketball team couldn't get much of anything to go its way. It was especially difficult for the Quakers to do anything positive under and around the basket. "Really, the only positive that can come out of this [is] to learn from what St. Joe's did well, and why we did not respond to that," Penn coach Kelly Greenberg said. Prior to the game, a confident Greenberg had talked about how the Quakers could not allow themselves to be "lulled to sleep" by the Hawks methodical half-court sets and slow style of play and would instead have to insist on playing their own brand of up-tempo basketball. It wasn't the St. Joe's offense that gave the Quakers fits, however. It was its defense -- specifically, its airtight 2-3 zone. "[St. Joe's] did a terrific job [defensively] early in the game," Greenberg said. "Whenever anyone caught the ball up high, [the Hawks] would sag low and they took it away." Penn not only struggled in dealing with the 2-3 set, the Quakers also struggled to adjust to the Hawks' tough defensive scheme. "Unfortunately some of our girls didn't recognize it, and we just kept trying to get it in there [when] it wasn't there," Greenberg said. The 2-3 also wreaked havoc on the offensive game of Penn's go-to player, reigning Big 5 and Ivy League Player of the Week Diana Caramanico. After averaging 33 points and 10 rebounds per game over the last week, Caramanico was limited to just 12 points and seven boards against St. Joe's. "Early on, even when they weren't 2-3, they always sagged whenever Diana was inside," Greenberg said. "So that's why we were open up high. But we just really weren't looking for it. We have to capitalize, we have to see what they're doing, and take what they're giving us, and we didn't do that." Caramanico also noticed the extra attention she received. "Right from the beginning, I felt a person in front of me, and a person behind me, and I guess I let that affect how I was posting up," the junior tri-captain said. "I wasn't posting strong." When asked whether her teammates were partly at fault for not adjusting well to the Hawks defense, Caramanico was loathe to blame her subpar night on anyone but herself. "As far as getting me the ball, it's not really their responsibility, it's my responsibility to post up and get open," Caramanico said. "I have to work hard to post up and I guess, feeling that there were two people on me, I may have backed down a little bit. "I think I did [post up] a little better towards the end of the first half, but I should have done it from the beginning." Caramanico certainly struggled early, as she failed to score a point until she hit a 15-footer -- the first of only five field goals -- with just under 10 minutes remaining in the first half. As for the double-teaming she saw all night, Caramanico shrugged it off as a mere happenstance of being a major offensive threat. "I definitely had more than my share of defense on me," she said. "But, that's just something that's going to to happen, and I'm going to have to not let it take me out of my game." The Hawks 2-3 set didn't just shut down Caramanico; it halted production along the entire Quakers frontline. Penn took only one shot from inside ten feet during the entire first half. As much as this game was about points in the paint, or the lack thereof, it was also about rebounding. Penn was outrebounded 35-24, and that had a direct effect on the Quakers fast-break offense. "They did a good job keeping us off the boards," Caramanico said. "We especially didn't rebound well defensively, and that's what stopped our breaks. It's really hard to get any sort of real break going when you're inbounding the ball." Greenberg conceded that Penn was sucked into St. Joe's slowdown game. "We [ran] here and there," she said. "But a running team doesn't just do it here and there, they do it for the full 40 minutes." Greenberg also felt that, despite their confidence of the previous day, the Quakers were a bit intimidated. "We got down early against Temple and we stayed in it. This game, maybe because St. Joe's is a lot better program, we maybe thought 'we're done for,' and that just can't happen."