The annual game against Saint Joseph's is always one of the highlights on the Penn women's basketball team's schedule.
Maybe not this year, though.
In the midst of an undefeated Ivy League campaign and fresh off big road wins over Harvard and Dartmouth, the Quakers (11-6, 5-0 Ivy, 1-2 Big 5) will take a break from conference play to welcome the Hawks to the Palestra this evening for both teams' final Big 5 game of the 2003-04 season.
"It's just bad timing," Penn coach Kelly Greenberg said. "We're playing St. Joe's in December or early January, it's the biggest game."
But the scheduling gods dictated otherwise, and as such Greenberg will have to figure out a balance between resting her stars for this coming weekend's key home games against Columbia and Cornell and trying to upend a team which Penn has never beaten in 28 tries.
The Hawks (13-7, 1-1 Big 5) "are the perennial team in the city year in and year out, going way back to the mid-'70s," Greenberg said. "They have the history and the tradition and I certainly have a lot of respect for them."
Greenberg will definitely rest one player, however. Sophomore center Jennifer Fleischer sat out yesterday's practice with a nagging leg injury, but the 6-foot-3 New Hartford, N.Y., native will be ready to go come the weekend.
"She needs to have a certain amount of rest and it's just not worth it -- we need her for Columbia," Greenberg said.
Senior guard Jewel Clark, on the other hand, will certainly see time tonight and is not worried about who else is on the court with her.
"The best thing about us right now is, and I think it will be for the rest of the season, we have a team," she said. "We have 17 people, 15 of whom are dressing right now."
As for the somewhat lopsided history between the two teams, Greenberg tried to emphasize the present and not the past with her team.
"I really didn't talk a lot about their tradition and their history," she said. "They certainly have had our number but they don't have this team's number."
Greenberg singled out three visiting players to watch for. Senior center Stephanie Graff leads the team with 13.4 points and 7.6 rebounds per game. The Hawks' bench is anchored by two Eastern European imports: senior guard and Bosnia native Amra Mehmedic, and senior center Irina Krasnoshiok, who came to Hawk Hill from Moldova.
Greenberg said of the latter two, "They both can really shoot it and they're both really exciting, those players."
But Penn freshman forward Monica Naltner has already held her own against some of the Northeast's best players this season. Last Friday at Harvard, Naltner had to face off against Crimson stars Reka Cserny and Hana Peljto, and hit the jumper to tie the game at 72 points apiece, setting up Katie Kilker's game-winning free throw.
"Why not just go in no holds barred?" she said. "We have nothing to lose."
For Clark, tonight is about reversing history and reaching another landmark in a senior year already full of superlatives.
"You want to take every opportunity to make a stand for yourself," she said. "But we really want to keep building, just keep going in the right direction."
