This past weekend the women's basketball team traveled to Philadelphia, Pa. and Princeton, N.J. to take on the Penn Quakers and the Princeton Tigers. The weekend road swing produced two more lopsided Ivy losses for the struggling Bears (3-19, 1-7 Ivy), who are currently last in the conference.
Penn 66, Brown 49
In the first game against Penn (6-15, 3-4 Ivy), Sadiea Williams '11 led the team with 15 points and six rebounds, but it was not enough to get the Bears a much-needed win, as the Quakers won comfortably, 66-49.
Bruno started the game going basket for basket with the Quakers. At the 12:37 mark of the first half the game was tied 10-10, but Penn opened up the game with an 18-2 run that extended its lead to 28-12 with just over four minutes left in the half. Penn entered the break leading 31-16.
"After the first half, we wanted to push into the post with (former Herald sports editor) Amy Ehrhart ('09) and go up against number 31 (Carrie Biemer) of Penn," said Head Coach Jean Burr. "Even with Natalie Bonds ('10) and Besty Jacobson ('11) out, we thought we could go right at her and get her in foul trouble."
Brown looked to improve on its 27 percent shooting from the field in the first half, opening up the second by scoring the period's first four points. Brown and Penn exchanged runs as the Bears continued to fight their way back into the game. With three minutes left in the game, Bruno had cut Penn's lead down to eight points. But that was as close as the Bears would get, and the Quakers finished the game on an 11-2 run.
"We had good looks and forced turnovers, but did not capitalize on them. We also did not have as many costly turnovers in the second half, which helped cut the lead," Burr said. "After fighting hard to get the ball, we were just unable to finish the opportunities."
"We did a good job at making adjustments without certain players in the line-up. Had we had the aggressive style of the second half at the start of the game, the result would have been different," Burr said.
Princeton 66, Brown 41
In the second game of the weekend the Bears took on Princeton (9-12, 4-3), falling 66-41.
The loss at Penn left the team still searching for their first Ivy win since beating Yale the opening weekend of conference play, but the Tigers stifled those hopes quickly. The Bears again fell behind early and yielded big first-half runs to the opposition, a problem that has plagued the Bears all season.
The Tigers' strong shooting - 50 percent from the field - gave them a 35-19 lead at the end of 20 minutes. Brown was only able to shoot 20 percent from the field in that half. "We need to really focus on our defense to stop the other team making runs," said Sarah Delk '11. "We tend to shut down when we get into a scoring drought and we've been really trying to focus in on making stops on defense and being patient on offense to prevent those runs."
"At halftime, we really wanted to just step up our game overall, get more people involved in scoring, and make sure to get back on defense. Communication is always a big key for us, so we also wanted to focus on talking well on defense with each other," she said.
The second half proved to be more of the same for Bruno, as the Tigers went on an 11-4 run to start the half. Strong defense from Princeton held the Bears to just six points in the first ten minutes of the half as the Tigers stretched their lead to 50-25.
Princeton ended the game shooting 52 percent from the field, while Brown shot just 22 percent for the game. Delk was one rebound short of a double-double, as she picked up nine rebounds and had a game- and career-high 16 points. Williams contributed eight points and four rebounds.
"It was rewarding to see development of both Williams and Delk. We got a lot of leadership from Sadiea this weekend, while Delk established herself well, opening up other opportunities," Burr said.
