The University of Pennsylvania women’s basketball team is set to host Harvard and Dartmouth in a two-game homestand as the Quakers aim for their first Ivy League win of the season. The games will take place at The Palestra in Philadelphia, with Penn facing Harvard on Saturday, January 17, and Dartmouth on Monday, January 19. Both matchups are scheduled for 2 p.m.
Penn enters the weekend with a 10-5 overall record and an 0-2 mark in Ivy League play, following a double-overtime loss to Brown last Saturday in Providence.
The game against Harvard marks the 96th meeting between the two programs. Harvard leads the series 55-40. Penn head coach Mike McLaughlin has a record of 17-15 against the Crimson. Last season, Harvard won both contests against Penn, including a 73-44 victory at The Palestra and a 62-44 win in Cambridge. From 2018 to 2024, the teams split their regular-season series each year, while Penn claimed victories in both postseason meetings during that span.
Harvard is led by junior forward Abigail Wright, who averages 15.1 points and 6.9 rebounds per game. The Crimson lead the Ivy League in offensive rebounding with an average of nearly 16 per game and are second overall in team rebounds. They convert free throws at a rate of 76 percent but rank last among conference teams in field goal percentage and assist-to-turnover ratio.
Monday’s contest against Dartmouth will be the programs’ 92nd meeting; Penn holds a narrow edge with a record of 47-44 all-time and Coach McLaughlin is 26-4 against Dartmouth. Last year, each team won on its opponent’s home court—Dartmouth took the first matchup at The Palestra while Penn won decisively in Hanover.
Dartmouth leads the Ivy League this season with its scoring defense, allowing just under 55 points per game and holding opponents to a shooting percentage of just over 38 percent. Offensively, Dartmouth relies on three-point shooting—averaging seven made threes per game on over thirty percent accuracy—with junior forward Cate Macdonald leading her team with an average of nearly eleven points per contest.
Reflecting on their recent overtime loss to Brown, several Quakers players posted strong individual performances: Junior Mataya Gayle led with eighteen points along with four assists and four steals; sophomore Katie Collins recorded her second double-double in four games; senior Saniah Caldwell scored sixteen points including five three-pointers; senior Simone Sawyer contributed ten points; sophomore Brooke Suttle added across multiple categories from off the bench.
Penn currently leads all Ivy League teams—and ranks sixth nationally—in free throw percentage at just over eighty percent for the season. Collins ranks second among league players both in rebounds per game (8.0) and blocked shots (25), while Sawyer stands second in free throw percentage (.900). Gayle is third among Ivy players for assists per game (4.3) and fourth for steals (1.8).
This year’s squad features five captains—seniors Caldwell, Sawyer, Georgia Heine; junior Gayle; sophomore Collins—matching a program record set previously only twice before.
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