History is hard to overcome and even harder to make. The Penn women's basketball team has to do both if it wants a win tonight against St. Joseph's.
Twenty-nine times the Hawks have played the Quakers and 29 times Penn has walked away with a loss.
"Obviously Penn women have never dethroned the hawk here, so it's a big day for us," Penn senior guard Amanda Kammes said.
And although the streak has to hang over the Quakers' heads, it is true that this year is different. With its victory over La Salle last week, Penn has a chance to win two Big 5 games in the same season for the first time.
And if ever there were a year when the Hawks were vulnerable, this is the year.
Last year, St. Joe's boasted four seniors who scored over 1,000 points each in their careers, a feat only eight teams have accomplished in NCAA history.
And when those seniors left, they took 80 percent of the Hawks' scoring from last year with them.
The Hawks are young and vulnerable. Their leading scorer, in fact, is a redshirt freshman, forward Erica Pollock, who leads the team in scoring with 11 points per game.
St. Joseph's comes in with an unimpressive 2-5 record, including a loss to crosstown rival Drexel.
Penn, on the other hand, stands at a respectable 2-2, with wins against Northeastern and Big 5 rival La Salle. The Quakers' losses came against a pair of top teams in Colorado and No. 22 Maryland.
"I think the season's going really well," Penn guard Cat Makarewich said. "We were really happy with our first two wins, and although we lost both games in Colorado, I think we pulled a lot of good things out of those."
The tough schedule early in the season should prepare Penn for the challenging road ahead.
"Last weekend was a good experience for us to play a top 20 team in Maryland," Penn senior Karen Habrukowich said. "We played pretty well against them and really held our own, especially in the second half."
The Quakers lost that game, 76-56, but were only outscored 42-39 in the competitive second half.
But the team hopes that future success will quickly erase the memory of their weekend in Colorado.
Penn realizes the importance of the next two weeks in which it will play top teams and Big 5 rivals. After St. Joe's tonight, Penn will take on No. 24 Villanova, Temple and No. 11 Ohio State in the next two weeks.
Those games could leave the Quakers below the .500 mark, or they could give this new-look team huge momentum going into the Ivy League schedule.
Penn has a new coach in Patrick Knapp and lost its best player, Jewel Clark, to graduation. This Quakers team has little connection with the past failures against St. Joe's.
"Our motto is we're gonna make history tomorrow," Habrukowich said. "Definitely with the team we have and the new coaching staff, we can beat St. Joe's tomorrow. I can just feel it."
But Penn, a team that has had problems stopping strong power forwards and centers so far this season, will have to fight hard to keep the 6-foot-1 Pollock in check.
The Quakers will also see an unconventional triangle-and-two defense designed to shut down Penn's hot-shooting guards Habrukowich and Makarewich, who are averaging more than 20 points a game combined this season.
So the responsibility of reversing history and beating St. Joe's will probably fall on Penn's front court.
But if Penn plays its game, and rebounds and defends well, it could have a chance at making some history.
