City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2025-26 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 4. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season, click here.)

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The first two years of Mataya Gayle’s Penn career have been full of reminders of a history of Quaker greatness. 

“You walk through the halls of the Palestra and you see these big posters of people who have won,” the junior from Woodstock (Ga.) told CoBL, “and alumni will come in and coach Mike [McLaughlin] will introduce us to the girls who’ve won championships, ‘they did this this and this to win, this is what it takes.’”

Having seen what it takes to win the Ivy League from inside and out, Gayle hopes that a Penn squad with a good bit of continuity from last year’s fourth-place finishers is ready to once again compete for a championship, eight years after the Quakers’ last Ivy League title.

“I feel a change in us this year, the intensity level,” she said. “This is the most intense, the most excited I’ve been towards a season, so just very excited to start, very excited to get on the floor with these girls.”

That won’t be an easy task. Princeton has made 12 of the last 15 NCAA Tournaments, while Columbia and Harvard have joined them as mid-major powerhouses under head coaches Megan Griffith and Carrie Moore, respectively. The trio all made the NCAA Tournament a year ago as the Ivy became a three-bid conference for the first time in its history. 

Finishing fourth in the Ivy behind them was Penn, whose 15-13 (6-8 Ivy) record was good enough to sneak into Ivy Madness as the fourth seed, where they only lost to Columbia by six points in the semifinals. 

“They definitely have a [winning] culture,” Gayle said, “whereas our team, we haven’t won in a few years, so we’re rebuilding that culture on our own, which I think takes time. It’s great to compete against them, they play hard, they have that competitiveness and it makes me want to beat them even more.”

The Penn women graduated leading scorer and rebounder Stina Almqvist (17.7 ppg, 7.6 rpg) but return their next 10 leading scorers, from Gayla (12.3 ppg) down through sophomore Gabriella Kelley, who averaged 1.1 ppg in 10 appearances last year. Lizzy Groetsch, who started 13 games last year but averaged fewer than one point per contest, was the Quakers’ only other graduate from the roster.

A 5-foot-7 point guard, Gayle has started in 55 of 56 games in her first two seasons, and enters her junior year as one of the no-doubt leaders of the squad, already within 275 points of 1,000 for her career. Sophomore forward Katie Collins, a 6-1 post out of Manasquan (N.J.), had a stellar freshman campaign of her own, averaging 10.0 ppg and 7.2 rpg with a team-high 46 blocks. Senior guard Simone Sawyer (6.8 ppg, 3.1 rpg), sophomore wing Sarah Miller (5.5 ppg), and point guard Saniah Caldwell (4.6 ppg, 2.5) are all right behind them. 

Collins, Gayle and McLaughlin all singled out junior forward Tina Njike as someone who could be in for potentially a much larger role this season. A native of Salt Lake City, Njike missed her freshman year due to a knee injury; as a sophomore, she appeared in 22 games off the bench, averaging 2.7 ppg and 2.0 rpg in just 6.4 mpg. 

Now fully healthy, the powerful 6-2 forward will likely start at the ‘5’ for the Quakers, allowing Collins to spend more time at her more natural spot at the ‘4.’ 

“We were lacking a bigger post presence last year, in size, so it’ll be really good to play with her and I’ll get to play on the outside a little bit more when she’s in the game,” Collins said. “I’ll probably play both this year, but I think Tina’s definitely best at the ‘5.’”

Having Collins outside should also make the Quakers an improved shooting team; Almqvist was only a 24.3% career 3-point shooter, while Collins hit 33.7% of her 3-point attempts as a freshman. Last year, the Quakers hit 30.2% as a team, led by Miller, who was 37-of-103 (35.9%) from deep.

Also aiding the team’s abilities from deep should be the return of junior guard Ese Ogbevire. A 5-7 wing from Texas, Ogbevire averaged 4.7 ppg in 27 appearances (five starts) as a freshman two years ago but missed all of last season due to a torn ACL, her second in her career.

“That’s my girl, I really love her,” Gayle said. “It sucked when she was out, but just to see her back and how much she’s worked to get through her injury, I’m just so proud of her and I’m so excited to get to play with her these next two years.”

Ogbevire’s joined this year by her sister, Ruke Ogbevire, a freshman 5-7 guard in a similar mold out of the same Fulshear (Tex.) HS. Ruke Ogbevire is one of four freshmen on the roster along with Vestavila Hills (Ala.) wing Sarah Gordon — about whom McLaughlin commented “I think she’ll really help us” — plus a pair of international forwards, 6-3 Russian forward Kate Lipatova (Putnam Science, Conn.) and Greek forward Ari Paraskevopoulou. 

Also likely to see rotation minutes, according to Laughlin, are 5-7 guard Ashna Tambe, who averaged 2.5 ppg in 25 games last year, and 6-0 junior Abby Sharpe, though the Plymouth Whitemarsh grad is currently dealing with a hip injury; 6-0 sophomore Brooke Suttle, whose older sister Kennedy Suttle played for the Quakers from 2018-22, could also break into the mix.

“We’re getting to play with some new people, but I would say that our chemistry is really good right off the bat,” Collins said. “It took us a little while last year to get into it because there were a lot of new parts, but I feel like this year, our chemistry is already pretty strong.”

Whether or not that translates into the ability to challenge the Ivy’s top three will take until January to figure out.