W. Hoops heads west to challenge Wyoming

After splitting two Big 5 contestc to open the season, the Quakers begin a western road trip when they face Wyoming. Early yesterday morning, as most Penn students were nestled snugly under the covers, the Penn women's basketball team made its way through the Rocky Mountains on a bus from Denver, Colo., to Laramie, Wyo., after flying in from Philadelphia. Tonight at 9 p.m., the Quakers will take on Wyoming at Arena Auditorium before heading to Colorado Springs, Colo., to play in the Air Force Classic this weekend. Although this is the first-ever meeting between Wyoming and Penn, the teams have several things in common. Each team is trying to right itself after a loss, each team knows little about the other and both the Quakers and the Cowgirls feature offensive standouts in the low post. The Quakers (1-1), who suffered their first loss off the season last week when they let a second-half lead slip away at La Salle, are anxious to get another game under their belts. "We're pretty excited for the game tomorrow," junior forward Diana Caramanico said. "We were a little disappointed about the La Salle game, so this [road trip] is a good chance for us to get out there and move along." The Cowgirls (2-3) are coming off a 10-point loss to Dayton in a preseason tournament held over the Thanksgiving weekend. "This early in the season, we're just trying to get our offense and our defensive sets into place," Wyoming coach Cindy Fisher said. Both teams seem intent on simply "running their game plans," because neither team has done much in terms of scouting the other. "We know that they're big and that they like to play physical," Penn coach Kelly Greenberg said. "I told my team 10 times today, 'The game is going to come down to who's going to out-tough the other team.'" Although the Quakers know little about the Cowgirls, Wyoming knows even less about Penn. "We've got no tape on [the Quakers] from this year," Fisher said. "No one would give up any. All we have to go on is that they have some of the same personnel from last year." This is just the way Greenberg likes it. "People out here don't know us," Greenberg said. "So hopefully we can sneak up on some people and get a few 'W's." One Penn player who will have a hard time sneaking up on anyone this season is Caramanico, who is leading the Red and Blue with 20.5 points and 10.5 rebounds per game. "They have a real nice player in Diana," Fisher said. "We just have to keep her off the boards and try to play tough Wyoming 'D'." Like the Quakers, the Cowgirls are led in scoring and rebounding by a forward, sophomore Carrie Bacon, who has averaged 20.6 points and 8.2 rebounds in five games this year. "[Bacon] can post up, she can shoot from the outside and she can drive," Caramanico said. "Our goal is not to limit [Bacon] to zero, but we have to limit the number of touches and good looks that she gets," Greenberg said. Even though the two forwards are major offensive forces for their respective teams, Greenberg was reluctant to draw comparisons. "She scores a lot of points for them, and she has a lot of offensive weapons," Greenberg said. "But I wouldn't really compare the two, [Bacon] gets a lot of stuff off of isolation." That's where the difference lies. Whereas Bacon has plays designed and scoring opportunities created for her, Caramanico is more of a highly productive cog in the Quakers offense. Neither player is the only weapon in their respective offense, though, as both Penn and the Cowgirls get a lot of production from their shooting guards. "Mandy West is another really good player," Fisher said of the Quakers' senior tri-captain. "It will be interesting to see how she matches up with [Wyoming guard] Shelby Hoffman." "They have a player [in Hoffman] who is a big three-point shooter," Greenberg said. "Shooting twelve threes in a game is like nothing to her." The numbers seem to bear this out. Over the Cowgirls' first five games, Hoffman has taken 41 three-pointers, just over eight per game. What's more, she has only taken 53 shots, which means that 80 percent of her shots are three-pointers. Hoffman is no slouch behind the arc either, as she has hit 36 percent of her threes this season. "[The coaches] haven't really keyed in on one particular guard, except to? step up on her if it's the three-shooter," West said. Just hours after tomorrow night's game, the Quakers will head south to the Air Force Academy, where they will take on Lafayette this Friday. The long western road trip means that the Quakers will have missed four days of class by the time they return to Philadelphia next Sunday. "We just had to take tests or hand stuff in early," Caramanico said. "It's not too bad." Greenberg acknowledged that missing time in the middle of the last weeks of class could be distracting, but she insisted on keeping her team focused. "The number one goal in practice [has been] to make sure they know why we came all this way," Greenberg said. "You don't fly all this way for nothing. We came out to win three games."