West scores 32, leads W. Hoops past Towson

The Quakers won for the fifth time in their last six outings. Penn women's basketball coach Kelly Greenberg got right to the point. "It was an ugly game," was the way she characterized her team's blood-and-guts, 76-67 win over Towson last night. Ugly is probably an apt description for a game in which the two teams combined for 50 turnovers and 47 personal fouls. "Did we have higher expectations? Yes, we should've beat this team by more," Greenberg said. If the Quakers had another coach, they would probably celebrate this game as adequate revenge for last year's 23-point loss to the Tigers in Baltimore. With Greenberg at the helm, however, it's sometimes hard to tell if Penn came out on top. "Towson did a great job," Greenberg said. "They focused on Diana [Caramanico] and took her out of her game, and we panicked for a little while." The Quakers did look worried for the majority of the first half, as the lead changed hands almost as many times as the ball did. With three minutes and change remaining in the half, Penn began a 12-2 run that was capped -- with just under a second remaining -- by a Mandy West three-pointer. "The key to the game was Mandy West," Greenberg said of her senior co-captain. "She didn't play smart all the time, and she knows that, but she was tough." The tough guard poured in a career-high 32 points. She also erased the memory of her less-than-stellar 4-of-9 performance at the free throw line against Villanova with a more West-like 9-of-10 against the Tigers. "I was very happy to come back and start shooting normally from the line again," West said. West's three-pointer to cap the half wasn't the end of the game, however, as the Quakers were still forced to fend off several advances by the Tigers, who came within three at one point late in the second half. "[Towson] took us out of what we like to do, and we figured out a way to win, and I'm happy," Greenberg said. What the Quakers "like to do" is work the ball inside as much as possible to Caramanico, the nation's second-leading scorer. Towson closed that door last night, so how did the Quakers manage to win? "The guards tried to pick up our defense, bother the ball a little bit more, and then we got a few more steals and then we were able to run," West said. "The last couple years we don't win that type of game," Greenberg said. "And I have to keep remembering that, because I have very high expectations. "I told the team in the locker room that we should all be very happy that we won, but we shouldn't be satisfied." Her players weren't. "I tried to play hard the entire night," West said. "But I had a lot of stupid turnovers. They had a trapping defense, and I kept making the same dumb mistakes, and I maybe panicked a few times, and I also maybe pushed the ball a couple of times when I shouldn't have." Caramanico, who, Greenberg said, "was taken out of her game" by Towson, had to work a little harder than usual to get just 18 points, eight points below her average. The Tigers were running a 2-3 zone to keep the Quakers from getting the ball to Caramanico in the post, so she turned her energy toward other things. "I just concentrated on rebounding since I obviously wasn't going to be able to get the ball inside and do anything with it," Caramanico said. Caramanico pulled down an impressive 16 hard-won rebounds, 14 of which came on the defensive end of the floor. In the struggle for yet another rebound, however, Caramanico fell to the ground and received a blow to the head. "The back of my head got stepped on and the front of my head hit the floor," Caramanico said. The Penn junior managed to stay in the game after several groggy seconds, however. Greenberg had faith in her marquee forward's toughness. "She took a hit, but she was fine," Greenberg said. "The last thing I was thinking was to sub for her." Caramanico, while not afraid of physical play, was less than thrilled with the calls that the officials failed to make in the frontcourt. "I guess I was a little frustrated with the officiating underneath," Caramanico said. "I got taken down a couple of times with no call, or the ball went out on me or no foul, and that can't happen." But perhaps the most convincing case against the refs was the lump on Caramanico's forehead. "I have a two-inch egg on my head -- and I traveled?" asked Caramanico in amazement. Greenberg refused to make any specific comments about the referees, but the little she did say wasn't positive. "Hopefully the officiating will get better as the year goes on, that's all I'm going to say," she said. News and Notes Freshman guard Tara Twomey had a career high eight points... Mandy West has scored 30 points twice this season, last night, and at Princeton. In both cases, the team's mascot has been the Tigers.