For a team on a 10-game losing streak, it was an awfully ominous start.
Nine seconds into the Penn women’s basketball game against Rider, the Broncs’ Danielle Constantino knocked down a three-pointer.
But the Quakers would score the next 14 en route to the blowout victory and a much-needed respite from the losing skid.
While Rider was clearly an inferior opponent, as any small team that can’t shoot would be, it was a needed win. And as much as Patrick Knapp wants to criticize the team’s defensive effort after the game, it was a needed win.
It was a needed win for a team that had simply forgotten how to win. In the previous 10 games, the losses had come in all shapes and sizes.
There was the never-had-a-chance loss in the 78-34 game at Delaware. There was the heartbreaking loss in overtime to American, the slow-starting losses in Seattle and the slow-finishing loss in the Ivy opener against Princeton.
And while the game was nothing to be proud of, the Quakers remembered how to win just in time for the first Ivy weekend.
Some thoughts from the women’s game
For a freshman, Kelly Scott has shown an impressive bit of confidence since joining the starting lineup in place of the injured Lauren Pears. She stepped up and hit a couple of big shots today including a three-pointer in the opening run. Knapp, who was very reluctant to play freshmen last year, has shown just as much confidence in his freshman guard. Makes Scott’s prep year at Blair Academy look more than worthwhile.
The best moment of the Rider game was seeing senior Henley Hansen score her first points of the season. Hansen, who has been among the last players off the bench during her four years in the program, scored her 17th and 18th career points as she caught the ball on the left baseline and drained a 14-footer like she’d done it hundreds of times before.
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