A few games seem to stand out from the rest on this year's schedule for the Penn women's basketball team. Tonight's contest is one of them.
The Villanova Wildcats (5-1) host the Quakers (2-2) at the Pavillion at 7:30 p.m.
Although the Wildcats do not currently enjoy the lofty spot in the polls that was theirs after they ended the then-No. 1 University of Connecticut's 70-game winning streak in the championship game of last year's Big East Tournament, Penn coach Kelly Greenberg still thinks very highly of her opponent.
"It's a very different team, but they are just as good," she said. "In a lot of ways they are better than last year's group."
One of the team's improvements, according to Greenberg, is a new, faster offense, which paid off in the form of a win over the University of New Mexico in the Holiday Inn Mountain View Invitational Tournament -- in front of over 10,500 fans on the Lobos' home floor in Albuquerque, N.M.
"This is the first Villanova team that I have seen in probably my 15 years of coaching that is pushing the ball," she said. "They are not doing their half-court, use-the-whole-shot-clock thing."
Penn senior forward Jewel Clark is not afraid of getting in a shootout.
"That's not a problem, it's just a matter of us doing it," she said. "If that's what Villanova wants to do then it'll be a fast-tempo game because that's not something that we're not used to, it's part of our game."
In preparing the team at practice yesterday, Greenberg chose to emphasize her team's strengths over the opposition's.
"I think the key for us again is to keep worrying about what we're doing, what Penn's doing," she said. "Really being focused and aware with what we're trying to accomplish in tomorrow night's game."
One advantage which Greenberg believes that her team does have is in size.
"We should have the size advantage," she said. "But they do a nice job of crashing the boards and they only let teams get one shot -- they have always been very good at that."
As a Big 5 game, familiarity should not be an issue for the two teams.
Freshman guard Joey Rhoads --who has had a hot hand lately for the Red and Blue with a .529 shooting percentage so far this season -- is particularly familiar with the Wildcats squad, and not just because she grew up in the Philadelphia region.
"I played against a bunch of them in summer league, and [sophomore forward] Kate Dessart Mager, I played on her AAU team," she said. "So I know all of them pretty well."
And if this familiarity breeds some contempt in addition to the respect that Penn has for Villanova, there will be plenty of high-energy basketball on the Main Line tonight.
