The blizzard wasn’t the only thing that swept through Philadelphia this weekend.
The Dartmouth and Harvard women’s basketball teams each piled it on early and often, cruising to 51-37 and 66-40 victories, respectively.
The Big Green scored the first nine points after tip-off Friday while the Crimson rolled off a 22-1 opening run the next night.
Slow starts have plagued Penn (1-18, 0-5 Ivy) all season.
“Again, our inability to score early points puts us in a hole,” coach Mike McLaughlin said.
The Quakers were able to overcome their early deficit against the Big Green (8-11, 3-2) and stayed in the contest by clamping down on defense.
But while the teams had similar field goal percentages, the Quakers were doomed by an inability to control the glass — Dartmouth pulled in 22 offensive rebounds.
“Against anyone, that’s gonna be far too many chances for our opponent to have, especially with us shooting a low percentage as a team,” McLaughlin said.
Dartmouth junior Brittney Smith, who entered the contest averaging 10.1 rebounds per game, grabbed eight offensive boards and 14 overall.
Smith once again proved too much to handle, scoring 13 points after tallying 17 and a career-high 28 in the teams’ two meetings last year.
“She’s just such a big presence in the middle of the court and in the lane,” senior forward Caitlin Slover said. “We doubled her, we tried to do whatever we can [but] she’s really athletic so even [after] boxing her out, she still makes great plays.”
Entering the matchup with Harvard (12-7, 3-2), McLaughin emphasized winning the battle down low. And while the Quakers did just that — reeling in 39 rebounds to Harvard’s 36 — the Crimson posed a different challenge.
Led by junior Christine Matera (5-for-8 from three), the red-hot Crimson made ten of their 20 three-point attempts. Meanwhile, Penn was ice cold from deep, missing on all 15 of its tries Saturday to finish 3-for-40 on the weekend.
But after going scoreless for a 10-minute stretch during a 19-point Harvard run, the Quakers responded with a 14-2 streak of their own. Yet the 26-17 margin late in the first half was the closest Penn would get.
The Quakers performance this weekend highlighted their continued struggles in the opening minutes. McLaughlin indicated that the cure to his team’s slow start epidemic is maintaining defensive intensity.
“What I’m trying to work [on] with them,” he said, “is to think when you’re not making shots that you can still play with the same level of intensity on the other end of the court.”
And with large deficits in the second half against both opponents, McLaughlin opted to apply full court pressure.
“When we were down, we pressed them so we can continue to fight on,” the coach said. “That’s my message with these girls when we’re struggling, obviously, to win games; we’ve been battling.”
