Dave Zeitlin: Career ends for the modest superstar

LUBBOCK, Texas -- The score was 99-53 in Texas Tech's favor. But that didn't matter. Not for Diana Caramanico. The star forward of the Penn women's basketball team exited Friday night's game with 1:44 remaining. Penn, at the time, was trailing by a staggering 46 points, as the Lady Raiders were well on their way to a 100-57 whitewashing of the Quakers. But in those final two minutes of what was the program's first ever NCAA game, Caramanico was up on her feet, cheering her teammates' every move. She was the only one standing on the bench, perhaps even the entire arena. Everyone knew the game was over. But Caramanico didn't want it to end. "I just wanted to keep playing, I just wanted to give everyone that was on the court a little extra support," an emotional Caramanico said in the post-game press conference, fighting back tears with every word. "I just didn't want my career to be over." In an age of selfishness and me-first attitudes, watching Penn's senior captain at the end of the game was a refreshing sight. And what transpired over those final two minutes -- the final two minutes of her collegiate career -- epitomized exactly what Caramanico was for the Red and Blue -- a modest superstar. In Friday night's game, the senior added two more records to her memorable career. With three takeaways, Caramanico became the all-time steals leader at Penn with 210. The 6'2'' forward now is the career leader for points, rebounds and steals at Penn, and is second all-time in blocks. Not too shabby. And with a 15-point performance in Friday night's contest, Caramanico became the Big 5's all-time scoring leader with 2,415 career points. Penn's leading scorer, the Ivy League's leading scorer, the Big 5's leading scorer. Jeez, all that's missing is the nation. But in the final 1:44 of her final collegiate game, Caramanico wasn't thinking about the records, she wasn't thinking about being the best player in the history of the Penn women's basketball program. All that was running through her mind was that her playing days at Penn were slowly dwindling to a close. The love affair between Caramanico and the Quakers was all but over. Friday night's loss was, quite simply, a bad one. The Quakers were overmatched and outplayed by a superior Texas Tech squad. Penn put a fight in the early part of the game, but everyone in United Spirit Arena knew that the Lady Raiders, the No. 2 seed in the Mideast Region, the 12th-ranked team in the entire nation, were ready to explode. The big run was inevitable. And it came. Penn played its heart out, but the final score tells the story -- Texas Tech was simply a better team. But when Caramanico and her four senior classmates look back on their season, their final season at Penn, they should try to look past their final game. The more important thing was that they got to the game. They got to play in front of 11,000 screaming, hostile, redneck fans. They got to play in perhaps the biggest game of their lives. Out of 316 Division-I schools, only 64 made the NCAA tournament. The Penn Quakers were one of them. They will be the first group of Penn seniors to leave school with an Ivy women's basketball title under their belt. And that is what should be remembered. "We set goals, we met them and then we set new ones," senior Claire Cavanaugh said. "Once we clinched the title, then we set another goal that we would go undefeated. "Then coming down here, the goal was to try and win this game, and that really was the first goal all season that we didn't meet." After the game, Caramanico and fellow senior captain Erin Ladley walked into the press room. Both looked miserable, both were on the verge of tears. They went through the motions, answered a few questions and then slowly trudged out of the room. What hardly anyone noticed, however, was what they were wearing. Not their uniforms or their warm-up jackets. Not a ragged, old sweatsuit. They both proudly donned their 2000-2001 Ivy League Champions T-shirts. Because that, more than anything, epitomized the careers of these two captains. Not the records they set or the final loss they had to endure. They helped bring an Ivy championship to Penn. They were the captains of the first-ever Quakers team that can call themselves Ancient Eight champs. And that is how they should be remembered. "We're not going to look back [just] at this game," Ladley said. "We won the Ivy League." The T-shirt says it all: 2000-2001 Ivy Champs. It has a nice ring to it.

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