PROVIDENCE, R.I.--For 40 grueling minutes, the women's basketball teams of Penn and Brown stared each other down, working frantically to emerge on top of a duel between two early favorites for the Ivy League crown.
In the end, Brown blinked, and Penn escaped the Pizzitola Sports Center with a gutsy 47-43 victory.
"Our collective will means a lot," Penn coach Patrick Knapp said. "These kids don't believe they can lose."
The Quakers (9-6, 2-0 Ivy League), who had a sizeable fan contingent in the announced crowd of 724, held a tenuous 23-21 lead at halftime. They were able to extend the margin to seven points thanks to a jump shot and free throw by Karen Habrukowich, but Brown (11-6, 3-1 Ivy) clawed back to within a point on a jump shot by freshman guard Anne O'Neal from just inside the arc with 8:17 to play.
A minute and a half later, Habrukowich pushed the lead back out to six points with a three-pointer. With 5:31 to play, Brown junior guard Sarah Hayes got a steal but missed a layup at the other end. But senior center Holly Robertson, who led the Bears with 15 points, got the rebound, hit a layup, then scored again on Brown's next possession to cut the lead to 43-41.
>From there, though, Brown went ice-cold from the floor. The Bears missed their next four shots, but two Penn turnovers in that span kept the score where it was, allowing Robertson to tie the game by hitting two free throws with 1:39 to play.
On Penn's next possession, senior guard Amanda Kammes tried to push the tempo but her cross-court pass was intercepted by Hayes. She took it all the way to the other end of the floor, but once again missed the layup. Robertson and Penn sophomore forward Monica Naltner contested the rebound, resulting in a jump ball, bringing the Brown fans to their feet. But Robertson missed a layup off the inbounds pass which would have given the Bears their first lead since the 15:55 mark of the second half.
"I don't think we were half as aggressive as we should have been, if you compare to the Yale game, defensively," Knapp said. "I think they got too many good looks... but at least we rebounded the misses."
>From there, Fleischer took over. With 22 seconds to go, she took a pass from Kammes in the paint, drove hard to the basket and hit a layup to give Penn the lead back with 22 seconds to go. Brown played for the last shot, and coach Jean Marie Burr called a timeout with 10.9 seconds to go. Off the inbounds pass, Hayes missed a layup, and Fleischer simply overpowered everybody else in the post to get the rebound.
"In the last minute, whether it's Fleisch, Monica, [Katie] Kilker, whoever grabbed the rebounds, they were big rebounds," Knapp said. "We didn't execute well--that's an understatement."
Brown had a foul to give, so forward Andrea Conrad did the honors, and guard Colleen Kelly fouled Naltner on the inbounds pass with three seconds to go. Naltner hit both free throws, and sealed the victory.
Notes: Before the game, players and fans observed a moment of silence for Brown football tri-captain Lawrence Rubida, who died early Saturday morning after battling Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare form of childhood bone cancer, for nine months. The senior offensive lineman, a native of Arlington, Va., was 23 years old.
Penn's 53-40 win at Yale marked the second-lowest number of points allowed in an Ivy League game in program history. The record was set on Feb. 24, 1995, when the Quakers beat Columbia, 66-39, at the Palestra. The previous second-best total came exactly five years to the day before Friday's game--January 28, 2000, when Penn beat the Lions, 79-43. That game was also played at the Palestra.
