Double trouble: Two sets of Tigers visit

Mandy West plays in her final game tonight for W. Hoops For her last practice as a member of the Penn women's basketball team, Mandy West was late. Due to a midterm, the 1998-99 Academic All-Ivy and Academic All-Big Five honoree missed stretching and running some warmup drills with her teammates in preparation for the Quakers' (17-10, 8-5 Ivy League) season finale against Princeton (9-18, 6-7) at the Palestra at 5:30 p.m. West's final Palestra appearance, however, will be about nothing more than pride for the Quakers. Last Friday, Penn entered its final Ivy weekend against Brown and Yale one game behind Dartmouth in the Ivy standings with an outside chance at winning its first-ever title. The Quakers dropped both those games and fell to third in the league standings despite West's valiant efforts, crushing the hopes of a season that had looked bright just weeks before, when the Quakers stood at 6-0 after defeating Harvard to take sole possession of first. Now, West will just be trying to end her two-year Penn career with a win over the Tigers. The senior guard arrived in Philadelphia relatively late in her college career, as she transferred to Penn after spending her freshman and sophomore years at Boston College. "I think it was a great decision," the Quakers second-leading scorer and tri-captain said of her decision to transfer. "I've gotten the best of both worlds, I've had fun with basketball, and I'm walking away with an Ivy League degree. I don't regret my choice at all." First-year Penn coach Kelly Greenberg is delighted to have inherited a player like West. "From day one, she was very receptive to [our coaching staff] and really bought into us," Greenberg said. "And I've always felt very comfortable with Mandy and her humor. I've only been with her a year, and I'm sad." The usually even-keeled West, who broke 1,000 points as a Quaker on Friday night in a loss to Brown, found herself getting a little emotional on the eve of the final game of her collegiate career. "I didn't expect to be sad," she said. "I didn't really expect to be thinking about it that much but, even today, I thought about it." West has made the most of her second and final Ivy League season, though. She has had three 30-point games, the first one against Princeton, in the first game of the Ancient Eight season, when she scored 31 in a 92-82 Quakers win. Her second and third 30-point efforts came this past weekend when she scored a career high 35 at Brown and fell one short of the newly established mark the next night against Yale. "She's playing great right now," Greenberg said. "Saturday night she just flat out took over the game. The AD from Yale came up to me and said that he's never seen a female basketball player like her. I knew he was right. I mean she's just unbelievable." Greenberg hopes that West can take over tonight's rematch against Princeton in the same manner. "This is only my second Princeton game, but I realized in the first one how emotional it is," Greenberg said. "I think they only had one win or something, and it didn't matter. They played harder against us than anyone [had] up to that point. So, I quickly learned what it meant to be Penn-Princeton, that records don't matter, and names don't matter and numbers don't matter. "I think this game is huge for our future and it's huge for Mandy West. All of our underclassmen really have to realize what they have to give [tonight] for Mandy." West's fellow tri-captain, Diana Caramanico, also wants to send West out on a winning note. "This past weekend was really disappointing," Caramanico said. "It sort of left a pit in my stomach, and I'm sure it did for other people on the team as well. I plan on going out on a winning note, especially for Mandy." But what comes after Princeton, after college? "First of all, as a player, I don't know if there's a better shooter out there, and I'm talking in the country," Greenberg said. "I've said it to a few people recently, that if WNBA people aren't looking at her, they're crazy. She'd be a fabulous backup guard on any team. She's in the gym all the time, and she's a great competitor." Greenberg hopes that that competitive edge will be the legacy West leaves with the Quakers. "I hope that? this group of girls will take a large chunk of Mandy West, and I hope that chunk is going to be her fierce competitiveness," Greenberg said. "Even if Mandy was playing against that water bucket, she'd want to beat it." West attributes a great deal of her success this year to the fact that she rediscovered her love of the game after playing for Greenberg and her staff. She also has reconsidered attempting to play professionally. "Last year at this time, if you'd said you'd pay me this much money to play, I would've said no," West said. "I was ready to just sort of take my last year of playing and move on with the next aspect of my life. This year has really changed everything, and it's brought back my love for the game. I'd love to play for a couple of years before going back to school." However enticing she finds the prospects of a pro career, West has concentrated on enjoying the time she has left as an amateur. "My biggest goal this season was to have fun," West said. "That, I've accomplished. These coaches are so much fun to play for, and playing with these guys has been awesome. "I really haven't focused too much on [going pro], especially during the season. I really do hope to play next year, I'm not sure where I'll end up," West said. "I'm not depending on the WNBA, but to go overseas, really to play anywhere, would be great."