It would be easy to blame the women's basketball team's two losses this weekend on the numbers.
Eighteen Yale offensive rebounds that led to 18 second-chance points.
Ten missed foul shots against Brown.
A season-high 49 missed shots against Yale.
But in watching these two losses after watching the losses to Harvard and Dartmouth, it became clear that there was one element of the game that when it went well, so too did the Quakers: passing.
In the loss to Harvard -- which featured 18 Penn turnovers -- and the loss to Dartmouth, the Quakers' passes were all over the place. The basketball was sailing over players' heads, at their feet or a foot left or right.
And for a team whose game revolves so much around catch-and-shoot three-pointers from Karen Habrukowich and Cat Makarewich, that cannot happen.
In the first half of Saturday's game against Brown, the problem appeared to be solved. Against the Brown zone, the ball movement was phenomenal. Passes were crisp. And the numbers showed it too.
At the 12-minute mark in the first half, the Quakers and Bears each had six field goals. Penn had six assists, every starter having recorded at least one, while Brown only had one assist.
It was not until the Quakers' eighth field goal that a basket went unassisted. Also in that half, Penn only committed four turnovers, one of which was a 30-second shot clock violation.
But then Brown got out of their zone, Penn got hurried and the passing that had led to the Quakers' highest-scoring first half of the season turned into a replay of the Harvard game.
Penn committed 10 turnovers in the second half on their way to only seven field goals.
"We were prepared for their zone," Penn head coach Patrick Knapp said. "They said, 'the heck with it, we're not playing zone anymore.' So now they pressure the ball, pressure the wings, and we don't make the same decisions."
Against Yale, the plays that defined the flow of the game made the importance of passing even more evident.
With seven seconds left in regulation the Quakers were down 61-58. Habrukowich, who had already made three trifectas and is a 42 percent three-point shooter, for some reason was left wide open for a game-tying three.
Sophomore Monica Naltner hit Habrukowich with a pass right between the pair of fours on the front of her jersey. In one motion, Habrukowich caught the ball, shot and sent the game into overtime.
However, on her next attempt, two minutes into the extra period, Habrukowich took a bounce pass at her knees, like a shortstop fielding a one-hopper. Rather than being able to catch and shoot, she was forced to take an extra second to straighen her body, regroup and shoot, and the shot clanged off the rim.
"It's good getting a perfect pass," Habrukowich said. "But sometimes you've got to deal with not getting a perfect pass and be able to make the shot."
As Habrukowich said, the accuracy of the pass only goes so far, and I can guarantee that not nearly all of the Quakers' 49 missed shots against the Elis can be attributed to passing.
But in a game that's 61-61 at the end of regulation, a foot high or low or left or right can make a huge difference.
And while many important numbers can be found to analyze afterward, the only numbers the Penn players have to be concerned about are the two-digit passing targets on their teammates' uniforms.
Zachary Levine is a sophomore mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and is sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
