VILLANOVA, Pa., Dec. 1 - Well, it's been worse.
Against Villanova on Saturday, the Penn women's basketball team scored 26 points, the third-lowest output in team history.
In a game that will take a place in the record books, the Quakers were handed a 66-26 loss by the sharp-shooting Wildcats (6-1). Penn is now 0-2 in the Big 5.
The story of the game was Villanova's three-point shooting. The Wildcats were an amazing 13-for-27 from behind the arc, and it started early.
Villanova took a quick lead, and midway through the first half, things didn't get any better. Penn (3-4) was down by 19 points, and having scored only four of its own, it was clear that the offense for Penn wasn't flowing.
"We didn't practice well this week at all on our offense," Quakers coach Pat Knapp said, "we can't expect to come on the floor against a quality team and run it in a half-baked fashion."
Penn players were not made available for comment.
At the end of the first half, Villanova had a dominant 36-12 lead. Penn came out for the second half looking to manufacture some offense on a day when shots weren't falling and everything looked like hard work.
"We were not happy with what was going on, and I know the leaders on our team weren't happy either, but we talked about four offenses that we wanted to run," Knapp said of his halftime talk to his team.
All that talk amounted to little for the Quakers. Villanova opened the second half on a 12-0 run.
The offensive struggles for Penn continued. It converted only 11 of its 46 shots, "good" for a .239 clip. Penn committed 19 turnovers and was out-rebounded by Villanova 34-27.
"We need to knock down some jumpers," Knapp said.
The little offense Penn did produce came primarily from forwards Carrie Biemer and Amy Donovan. Each came away with 8 points, accounting for 18 of the Quakers' 26. Junior guard Anca Popovici tied her career high with seven rebounds.
On top of that, there was just no relief from Villanova's shooting accuracy. The Wildcats finished the game with a .517 shooting percentage.
There was speculation regarding what Knapp and the Quakers would do to defend against the three-point game. Penn started the contest playing a man-to-man defense and switched to zone during the second half.
Knapp admitted "our plans were horrible, and that's my fault. We did nothing. If we had started in zone, they could've hit that many threes anyway."
The Wildcats were simply on a roll. Senior Stacie Witman scored 22 points on 5-of-6 from the three-point territory, and junior Lisa Karcic added 17 points.
Villanova hadn't won a game by 40 points since 2002, and the 26 points put up by the Quakers was the fewest against Villanova since 1979.
The Quakers will try to rebound from their loss-and convert more shots--on Wednesday when they take on Lafayette at the Palestra.
