W. Hoops takes a step back as St. Joe's cruises

The Quakers fell to their Bit 5 rival for the 25th consecutive time. The Penn women's basketball team believed it had everything it needed last night to beat Big 5 opponent St. Joseph's for the first time since the teams' first meeting 26 years ago. The Quakers felt they were tall enough, fast enough and skilled enough to actually stay with the Hawks for a full 40 minutes and finally put the 0-24 streak against their Big 5 rivals behind them. Unfortunately for the Quakers, what they failed to focus on was another intangible -- confidence. This oversight ultimately kept the Red and Blue winless in the series with a disheartening 76-47 defeat at the hands of St. Joe's at the Palestra. "The biggest difference between our programs is the level of confidence and toughness that each one has," Penn coach Kelly Greenberg said. "[St. Joe's] came in here with a lot of it? and we need need to learn from that." The lesson in confidence, taught by the Hawks (5-1, 1-0 Big 5), began early for the Quakers (3-3, 1-2). After the tip off, St. Joe's point guard Angela Zampella got to work right away, racking up four straight assists in the first two minutes to give the Hawks an 8-0 lead. The run was helped along by three Penn turnovers in three straight first-minute possessions, but was finally ended with a Mandy West 15-footer with 17:38 left in the half. Unfortunately for the Quakers, though, the six-point deficit they faced after the West jumper made the score 8-2 was the closest they would come to the Hawks for the whole game. St. Joe's continued widening the gap through periodic scoring runs until the margin reached a game-high 33 points with only 2:25 remaining in the game. What kept the Quakers from ever closing the gap was the Hawks' all-out hustle throughout the game, especially on the boards. Penn was outrebounded by the aggressive Hawks by a total of 35-24 in the game. The loss of so many rebounds took away one of the Quakers' best offensive weapons -- the fast break. "A lot of times a rebound starts our fast breaks," Penn tri-captain Diana Caramanico said. "It's harder for us to get a [fast] break off an inbounds play. What you really need is a rebound." Without the rebounds and their resulting fast breaks, the Quakers faced the problem of having to slow down on both sides of the floor. This played right into the Hawks' plan of a game played at a slow, deliberate pace. Offensively, St. Joe's could make sure that its many set plays could be executed without rushing in a higher-tempo game. "We wanted to run our offense the way that we wanted," Zampella said. "We wanted to get a good shot in every possession." Defensively, the slow pace gave St. Joe's time to focus in on Penn's main scoring threats, Caramanico and West. "Going in, they were our top priority," Zampella said. "We wanted to limit their points, not let other players give them the ball, and force other players into shots that they're maybe not used to." This plan, coupled with the game's uncomfortably slow pace, completely disassembled Penn's offense. Although West could not be completely stopped by the Hawks -- she tied the game high in scoring with 15 points -- she also could not make up for the offensive silence of her teammates. Only three other Quakers managed to score in the entire game, and the remaining seven players could only muster five assists between them. Sophomore forward Julie Epton was Penn's second-leading scorer in the game, racking up 14 points on 5-for-11 shooting. Freshman starter Jennifer Jones contributed six more to the losing effort on 3-of-10 shooting. But most disconcerting for the Quakers, and most pleasing for the Hawks, was that Caramanico -- who was the nation's leading scorer coming into the game with a 28.8 average -- managed only 12 points. The Penn forward faults herself for only connecting on just five of her 15 attempts, most of which were within five feet of the basket. "From the beginning of the game I felt someone in front of me and behind me, and sometimes even to the side of me, all the time," she said. "Maybe that took my game out." The inaccessibility of Caramanico also took the game from most of the other Quakers, who grew frustrated at having their lobs into the paint to their scoring leader batted away by a red jersey. "They took away the middle by clogging it in," Greenberg said. "At times like those when we're not getting the ball inside early we panic. We can't do that." The panic attack on the offensive side led to 15 Penn turnovers, but the defensive side was where it really hurt. With the ball constantly in their possession, and with the Quakers becoming more and more frustrated, St. Joe's couldn't help but find ways to score -- especially with the ball-handling skills of Zampella. By the final buzzer, the Hawks' point guard had logged a double-double, scoring 11 points and an impressive 13 assists -- five more than the combined total of Penn.