NEW HAVEN, Conn. – In a span of less than two minutes late in the third quarter Saturday vs. Penn at Lee Amphitheater, the Yale women's basketball team saw each of its top two scorers forced to the bench – one with an apparent injury and one with foul trouble. Normally that would be cause for concern against a Quaker team that has been an Ivy League powerhouse in recent years, winning four titles in the last seven seasons. But the Bulldogs had the depth and the defense to overcome those obstacles Saturday, utilizing a 20-3 advantage in bench scoring and holding Penn to just seven points in the third quarter on their way to a 63-53 win.
Yale (11-6, 4-1 Ivy League) had built up a 13 point cushion by the time sophomore guard
Jenna Clark – the Ivy League leader in assists and Yale's second-leading scorer – hobbled to the bench after taking a fall with 2:49 left. In came first-year guard
Avery Lee, who provided a spark with a pair of offensive rebounds. And Clark was ready to get back in the game at the 1:07 mark, when junior forward
Camilla Emsbo – Yale's top scorer and the second-leading rebounder in the league – picked up her fourth foul and headed to the bench. Senior forward
Alex Cade came in for Emsbo, ending the quarter with a layup for a 51-37 lead.
That sequence typified the types of things that went right on a day where the Bulldogs took the lead on a three-pointer by sophomore guard
Klara Astrom 32 seconds in and never let it go. The contributions came from multiple sources – four different players had at least eight points, led by 13 from Emsbo. Five different players had at least four rebounds, led by five each from Astrom and first-year guard
Christen McCann. Clark's 10 assists highlighted a 21 assist day for the team, establishing a new season high. Clark also chipped in three steals as Yale scored 25 points off turnovers.
A total of 12 Bulldogs saw action as Yale led by as many as 17 points and never let Penn get any closer than within eight in the second half.
Allison Guth, Yale's Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of Women's Basketball, praised the way the Bulldog bench provided an edge Saturday.
"We talked in the pregame about how much being prepared when your time comes matters," said Guth. "It started with [senior guard/forward]
Robin Gallagher and how effective she was coming off the bench. It then trickled down to [sophomore guard]
Elles [van der Maas] and [sophomore forward]
Haley [Sabol] lighting it up from three-point territory. [First-year guard]
Nyla [McGill] got some big rebounds. Everybody did their jobs."
Penn (7-9, 2-2 Ivy League) got 18 points from guard Kayla Padilla, but the majority of those came in the second half with the Bulldogs in control of the game. And that still qualified as a below-average output from the stellar Padilla, who averages 21.3 points per game. Guth credited McCann for doing the bulk of the defensive work to contain her.
"We wanted to limit her opportunities and deny her the ball," said Guth. "We did a tremendous job holding her to three threes, and two were well-contested. Kayla has the opportunity to score 40 a game."
The win, Yale's fourth in a row, enabled the Bulldogs to keep pace near the top of the Ivy standings as the halfway mark of the league season nears. Princeton (5-0) and Columbia (4-0) are the only teams undefeated in league play. Yale now has some separation from the other five teams, all of whom have at least two losses each.
Yale hosts Dartmouth Sunday at 2:00 p.m.
