Back-to-Back Schedule Puts Quakers in a Quandary

As the women’s basketball team embarks on Ivy play, their biggest strength may also be their biggest weakness. Freshman Alyssa Baron, who just swept all three Player of the Week awards, has been the Quakers strongest asset all season. Baron is the team’s leading scorer with 16.1 points per game, a number which is double that of their second leading scorer junior Jess Knapp (8.0 points per game).

However, despite Baron’s success, which has helped keep the Quakers afloat against a string of tough opponents, McLaughlin may have a problem on his hands as the back-to-back weekends of the Ivy schedule will force less playing time per game for Baron.

Baron has played an average of 33.2 minutes per game this season, including 38 in their last match against Temple and a full 40 against Villanova. However, the Friday-Saturday Ivy schedule will make these sorts of long stretches difficult to maintain.

“I don’t think you can go Ivy 40-40 minutes,” coach Mike McLaughlin said when asked about his strategy for conserving Baron’s playing time. “Our challenge will be to make sure we have ten players every day to be able to play in these back to back games. We’ll get there.”

The Quakers will have to build consistency and intensity throughout their roster – and fast – as the Quakers embark on their first Ivy road trip this weekend when they face Yale on Friday and Brown on Saturday.

With the spread out schedule that has been afforded to the Quakers thus far, they have been able to maintain the same starting lineup for 14 of their last 15 games and have relied on a few key players to go long stretches.

“I think Erin Power falls into that,” McLaughlin said. “We need depth. We need some of our players to step up a little bit.”

Senior guard Power is right behind Baron with an average of 32.9 minutes per game, including 39 minutes against Temple and a full 40 against Virginia.

McLaughlin said that the coaches will be providing more opportunities for players who have gotten less playing time to “step up”, but based on the offensive inconsistency the Quakers have been exhibiting thus far, even with Baron providing constant assistance, Penn’s bench may not be deep enough to overcome this challenge.

This weekend’s matches against Yale and Brown will be the Red and Blue’s first test as they try to redeem themselves from last year’s 1-13 Ivy season.