The Penn women’s basketball team has never won a game in the NCAA Tournament.
This will be its best chance yet to do so.
During Monday’s ESPN selection show, it was revealed that the Ivy League champion Quakers drew a 10 seed and will face seventh-seeded Washington in the first round on Saturday (4 p.m., ESPN2) of the Lexington Regional of the NCAA Tournament.
The seed is the best one that Penn has ever earned. Even better, the game will be played in College Park, Maryland — just a short, two-hour trip away.
“Ten’s a great seed,” Penn coach Mike McLaughlin said from the Palestra where the team gathered to watch the selection show in front of students, family members, fans, the Penn band and cheerleaders. “It’s a culmination of a lot of work this year, a lot of good wins we have.”
The Quakers certainly enjoyed a great season, racking up the most wins in program history (24) and beating arch-rival Princeton twice, including in the final game of the regular season last Tuesday, to win the program’s fourth Ivy League championship — and second in the last three years.
Two years ago, Penn also won at Princeton on the road to win the Ivy title before going to College Park to play in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That Penn team raced out to a big lead vs. Texas before dropping a 79-61 decision.
The opportunity now to return to College Park for another crack at winning in the Big Dance is something the team will savor.
“It’s awesome,” said junior center Sydney Stipanovich, the Ivy League Player of the Year. “We’re excited to go back to Maryland. Hopefully we can get a good crowd out there.”
“Obviously we didn’t care where we were playing,” junior Kasey Chambers said. “But to have a nice short bus ride will be a plus going into it.”
A transfer from Monmouth, Chambers wasn’t part of Penn’s 2013-14 Ivy League championship team. So the point guard, who McLaughlin called the missing piece to this year’s title-winning squad, made sure to relish the moment Monday night for the Palestra party.
She’ll do the same Saturday as the Quakers look to advance to the second round of the tourney after first-round exits in 2001, 2004 and 2014.
“It’s a dream come true, it really is,” Chambers said. “I think the environment’s gonna be great. I know we have so much support coming from the school, from athletics, from the rest of the student body. And our coaches and us, we’re so excited.
“I don’t even know what it’s going to be like but I can just tell it’s going to be awesome.”
Penn is the only City 6 team on the women’s side to make the NCAA Tournament. But interestingly enough, rival Princeton got an at-large berth, earning an 11 seed in a different region.