The Crimson may opt to go zone to avoid the matchup difficulties and force the Quakers to take three-pointers. Penn has taken by far the fewest shots from behind the arc in the Ivy League this season. Against Brown, Penn did not make a single shot more than a foot outside of the paint in the first half.
"We may play a zone against them because they're not a great three-point shooting team," Delaney-Smith said. "So we might change up on them and not worry about matchups. They're a very good team. They're connecting well, but they're struggling. They haven't had an easy win in the league."
If the Crimson does succeed in forcing the Quakers to make from outside, guard Tara Twomey will become their most dangerous player. Twomey is third in the Ivies in three-point shooting percentage. Against Yale she made 4-of-5 including the three-pointer that helped Penn come back from a late five-point deficit and force overtime.
Penn was the only Ivy team that Harvard failed to beat in the 1999-2000 season. The Crimson came up just short in a 78-76 defeat at Lavietes last year, while turnovers towards the end of the first half killed the team in a 79-66 thrashing at the Palestra.
Harvard expects this year to be different. Johnson, for one, is finally showing signs of returning to the level of dominance she displayed in the first Penn defeat last year, immediately before injuring her knee. Against Columbia, Johnson proved herself capable of hitting some difficult inside shots early on, and the Lions chose to foul her the rest of the way.
"Every game I'm getting more and more confident, more and more mobility," Johnson said. "I still pay a lot of attention to [my knee injury] in the training room, but that's fine. That's the way it's going to be."
Freshmen forward Hana Peljto continues to lead the team in both scoring and rebounding, while fellow freshman Trisha Tubridy, who scored a career-high 21 points against Cornell last week, is right behind her statistically.
Live, real-time updates of tonight's game at Penn will be available over the Internet via www.totalcast.com.