COLUMN: W. Hoops piques interest with stellar season

I'm going to New York this Saturday. While I will be missing the Penn men's likely Palestra drubbing of an abysmal group of Lions that is currently ranked 251 out of 319 teams in the RPI, there are two things I will see at Levien Gym which I can't pass up. First is the Penn women's team itself. Should they beat Cornell tomorrow night, I will have a chance to see the Quakers win their team-record 17th game of the season, with five games still to go after this weekend. The Red and Blue are of course led by the second focus of amazement -- junior forward Diana Caramanico. The tri-captain and scoring machine from Blue Bell, Pa., currently has 1,648 career points. With nine more points, she will pass Kirsten Brendel for first place on the Penn women's all-time scoring list. But she hesitates to acknowledge that she is on the brink of making history. "It's not that I'm not excited," Caramanico said. "If I said I wasn't excited, it would be sort of an insult to the person whose record it is. It is pretty neat, I guess. It's a nice honor to have if I do it, but I'm really not even thinking about it. "I'm just thinking about going up and coming away with two wins this weekend. Otherwise, scoring records are not going to matter. Nothing's going to matter if we don't stay in first place." That the Quakers are in first place this late in the season is as notable as Caramanico's somewhat reluctant pursuit of the history books. Penn has never posted more than 10 wins in an Ivy League season. The Quakers went 10-4 in 1990-91 and finished in a three-way tie for second place in the Ivy League. But unlike this year, that squad played from behind, never standing in first place after the opening weeks of Ivy play. The '91 Penn team was led by none other than fourth-year center Brendel, who had her best year in Red and Blue as a senior. On January 3, against Bucknell, she scored 41 points, a Penn record that she held until Caramanico matched it this year against Lafayette. That was also the year that Brendel set the Penn records for points in a season with 631 and points in a career with 1,656 -- both marks that Caramanico is threatening more and more with each passing game. But when Brendel broke the career scoring record, her achievement did not receive as much attention as Caramanico currently does. "Caramanico is probably more renowned," 1991 DP sports editor Noam Harel said. "She's nationally known to be a big-time player, and she's led Penn to the top of the Ivy League. With Brendel, they still weren't going to beat Harvard and Dartmouth." And that was despite a good amount of talent that surrounded Brendel at the time. Dionne Anthon, Jen Dorfmeister and Katarina Poulsen, who rank third, ninth and tenth, respectively, all-time in scoring at Penn, were all on the 1991 team with Brendel, while Natasha Rezek (fourth) and Shelly Bowers (sixth) arrived a year later. It's not much different now for the Red and Blue. Mandy West won't pop up on any career statistical lists at Penn, as her career with the Quakers will only be a two-year stint. But her performance last season was the fourth-best scoring campaign in Penn history, and she is currently on a pace to match her total from a year ago and become the 12th woman to score 1,000 points in a Penn uniform. Junior Erin Ladley is fourth on Penn's all-time assists list, and freshman Tara Twomey's 71 assists this season make it seem as if she may soon leave her mark on the Penn record book as well. What is different for the Quakers is that they are winning. With such talent on its side, Penn could be headed for its first-ever Ivy League title. The players and coaches know that they can't go out and drop a game on the road this weekend against two teams that they beat without too much trouble at the Palestra in the first Ivy weekend of the season. "Everyone's saying this could be our best year ever, and it certainly can," Penn coach Kelly Greenberg said. "But we're not settling [down] if we get 17 wins and we break the record. We know now that every single game is very, very important." If every single game was not so important, I might not be going to New York to see Penn and Columbia. If Caramanico were not closing in on so many Penn records in this stellar season, I might not be going. But in such an unprecedented season, both personal and team success have merged, and I am left only to wish that I had a car so I could drive to Ithaca for tomorrow night's game as well.