Caramanico vital in victory over Elis

With wins over Yale and Brown this past weekend, the Penn women's basketball team broke its record for overall and home winning streaks and moved within just three wins of the record for wins in a season. Neither of the victories were easy, though, as one of them took a clutch performance by junior forward Diana Caramanico to move the Quakers into a position to win. Early in the Yale game on Friday, Penn looked ready to roll over the Elis. However, after falling behind by as much as 14, Yale charged back and by the second half, had the Quakers engaged in a furious, see-saw battle that was not decided until the final seconds. The Quakers, on the strength of Caramanico's four straight free throws in the last 1:16, were able to emerge with a three-point victory over the Elis. "I was fighting with myself in my head," Caramanico said of her four foul shots. "Part of me was saying, 'They're going in,' and the other part was saying, 'Ah, you missed them before,' and the other half was saying, 'But it doesn't matter, these are going in.' I guess the confident side won out." As it so often does, Caramanico's confident side emerged in the second half this weekend. Against Yale, she scored 27 of her 38 points after halftime, and against Brown, 16 of her 20 points came after the break. "I didn't even have any idea at all," Caramanico said of her performance against Yale. "I got a couple layups down low, it was just my teammates passing it to me, I didn't do anything special." Penn coach Kelly Greenberg gave her forward more credit than Caramanico gave herself. "Di was just unbelievable," Greenberg said. "I mean we ran the same offense, and I thought they'd make an adjustment. They didn't, so we said, 'Let's keep running it.'" Early in the first half, Caramanico hit her fourth field goal of the game to break Kirsten Brendel's career Penn record of 696. From now on, every basket Caramanico scores will re-establish the Penn field goal record. Also the nation's second-leading scorer, Caramanico is less than 60 points from Brendel's all-time scoring mark, but she says she is not thinking about it. "People say it, so it's in the back of my head," Caramanico said. "I guess it's nice, to have an honor like that, but it's not anything that I'm focusing on at all, just as long as we win. Scoring isn't that important [to me], it just happens sometimes."