Penn first-year Katie Collins is already showing she can do everything on the court

“For the first time, I saw that kind of fearlessness in her,” Kukoda told The Next in November. “… They’re known for their intensity and the way that they play, and Katie just didn’t back down. And she gave us such quality minutes and such impactful minutes. And it was kind of that first glimpse of, this kid is going to be really special.”

Almost three years later, Collins recently had a similar moment as a first-year at Penn. Just four games into the season, she played all 40 minutes against a decorated, veteran Saint Joseph’s frontcourt on Nov. 15 and held her own. Though she didn’t have her best shooting night, she put up 8 points, five rebounds and two blocks while only committing two fouls.

“What I was really proud of her [for was] … against that talent, with all that contact around the rim, to be able to stay vertical and play 40 minutes,” Penn head coach Mike McLaughlin told reporters postgame. “To me, that translates. That’s going to keep her at the ability to play 40 every time out. … That’s not easy for anyone, let alone a younger player.”

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Overall, Collins has had a remarkably smooth beginning to her Penn career. As a starter from Day 1, she is averaging 8.2 points, 7.3 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 2.0 blocks and 1.4 steals in 32.1 minutes per game. She is also shooting 37.5% from 3-point range on 2.7 attempts per game.

The 6’1 Collins has given Penn a reliable third scorer behind senior Stina Almqvist and sophomore Mataya Gayle, filling one of the Quakers’ biggest needs. But perhaps even more impressively, she’s done a lot of other things, too, from crashing the glass to defending all over the court.

Unlike at Penn, Collins had to bide her time when she was at Manasquan. She got on Kukoda’s radar as an eighth grader, when she dominated the middle school championship game that Manasquan High School hosted. She was doing so much, Kukoda recalled, that the high school varsity girls and boys players watching the game were “going nuts, like in disbelief.”

But Collins played in only nine games as a high school freshman and came off the bench behind several talented upperclassmen as a sophomore. (Those upperclassmen included two other Ivy Leaguers, Penn junior Georgia Heine and Dartmouth junior Brooke Hollawell.) She became a starter as a junior and averaged 9.9 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game on a team that finished 22-7.

As a senior, Collins upped her production to 11.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 1.7 blocks and 1.6 steals per game, and her team went 26-5. She was Manasquan’s second-leading scorer and rebounder and its leader in blocks and steals. In fact, she had 58% of Manasquan’s total blocks that season.

“Her ability to impact the game in so many ways is just, you cannot replace it on the court,” Kukoda said. “And probably the best thing about her and the way that she plays is that you don’t even necessarily notice all of the things that she’s doing and the impact that she has until kind of you really look at the big picture of the game. She’s not a flashy player. … It’s all the little things that she does that just get put into this dominant performance.”

Collins was recruited mostly by Patriot League and Ivy League schools, and she chose Penn over Bucknell. Last summer, Kukoda said, Collins put in a lot of extra work, hunting her weaknesses to prepare for the college level.

She made a difference right away at Penn, which the Quakers sorely needed. After graduating two key frontcourt players in Jordan Obi and Floor Toonders, they had just two returners who were listed as forwards or centers, and those two players had combined for 61 career minutes entering this season.

Collins started all three games of the Quakers’ foreign tour this summer, which came just a week after she’d arrived on campus. She hasn’t looked back since.

Before the season opener against Merrimack on Nov. 8, Collins was “pretty stressed,” she admitted postgame on ESPN+. Yet she played like a veteran, putting up 9 points, 10 rebounds and six blocks. That effort drew comparisons to Penn alumna Sydney Stipanovich — the Ivy League’s all-time leader in blocked shots, the 2015-16 Ivy League Player of the Year and a three-time Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year.

Collins has continued to stuff the stat sheet all season, including:

• 8 points, eight rebounds, five assists and three steals at Maine on Nov. 10, her first college road game
• 13 points, 11 rebounds and three steals against Siena on Nov. 13
• 18 points, seven rebounds, two assists, two blocks and two steals in 42 minutes in an overtime win over UC Irvine on Nov. 21
• 4 points, eight rebounds and four assists in just 15 minutes against Immaculata on Nov. 26

“I love playing with Katie,” Almqvist told reporters on Nov. 15. “I think she’s a great addition to our team this year. … She’s a freshman, but she’s playing like a pro.”

Collins’ versatility as a scorer also stands out early in her career. In Penn’s eight games to date against Division I opponents, Collins is taking 33% of her shots at the rim, 33% from elsewhere inside the arc and 34% from 3-point range. According to Kukoda, Collins has always had good shooting form, and her length allows her to shoot over defenders from any distance.

Collins was named Ivy Rookie of the Week in each of the first two weeks of the season, becoming the first player to do that since Princeton’s Carlie Littlefield in 2017-18. Even Gayle, last season’s Ivy League Rookie of the Year, didn’t win her second Rookie of the Week award until mid-December. Collins added her third such honor on Monday, in the fourth week of the season.

“It is so impressive to see what she’s doing right from the start, especially in the position that she’s playing,” Kukoda said. “It’s not an easy position. It’s a physical position. She’s battling against players who are three, four years older. … It’s a total credit to her and her work ethic. …

“She’s not one who’s going to settle, and she has it in her to kind of push past where she is to get to where she wants to be. And I think that’s one of her greatest qualities.”

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Even against Saint Joseph’s — a game where Collins didn’t have such a gaudy stat line — she was a crucial reason why Penn was able to challenge the Hawks in a 9-point loss. The Hawks start two all-conference forwards in senior Talya Brugler and junior Laura Ziegler, and McLaughlin told reporters afterward that he felt he had to play Almqvist and Collins all 40 minutes as the only forwards on his roster able to handle those matchups.

“It was definitely a challenge,” Collins told reporters afterward about battling with Brugler, who had 21 points and 11 rebounds. “She’s a really good player. It’s great that my coach has confidence to play me that much, and I feel like it’s important to me to do a good job, both on offense and defense, so that I can continue to earn my spot.

“I feel like I learned experience is very important, and just composure was really evident on the other team. So I think that I can take that and … use that moving forward.”

McLaughlin said he had expected Collins to be prepared to contribute as a first-year based on conversations with Kukoda. But expecting her to play the role she did against Saint Joseph’s?

“I’d be lying to say I said that was the plan,” he admitted. “But we needed her. We needed a post-ready player. But I was really impressed, take numbers aside, [with] the way she handled this.”

And for the second time in four games, Collins’ play earned her lofty comparisons — this time to Brugler.

“One thing that Talya has done at a very high level all four years is that her motor is so high, and Collins’ motor’s really high,” Saint Joseph’s head coach Cindy Griffin told reporters postgame. “But I think there’ll be a level of maturity that [Collins will] reach playing for Mike. … She’s very, very talented. And I think that’s a very good comparison, because I think she’s very good.”

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Though Collins has been a revelation early in her career, she is nowhere near her ceiling, which bodes well for Penn this season and beyond. She has struggled with turnovers, averaging 2.2 per game. McLaughlin wants her to be aggressive on offense and consistently look to score rather than deferring. She’ll also likely finish at the rim and in the paint more efficiently as she gets stronger.

Collins is still developing chemistry with Gayle, too, which is critical because they will likely be Penn’s foundation for the next several years. Gayle often looks to drive to the rim and score, McLaughlin said, and Collins tends to flare behind a guard who’s driving. He wants to get them both comfortable with Gayle driving and dropping passes off to Collins for layups, which will then open up Gayle’s scoring as well.

“I’m definitely just getting more comfortable playing with everyone because we’re a very young team,” Collins said after the Saint Joseph’s game. “… Every day at practice, we all just get better, and we learn what each other likes to do off cuts, off ball screens and stuff like that. So I think that each day, we’re all developing in that aspect.”

This early in her development, Collins already has an uncommon composure. That could help her become an uncommon player by the time she graduates.

“She can handle things that I know I couldn’t at 18,” McLaughlin said, “and a lot of kids I’ve coached over my career could not. … She’s a super composed kid, and you don’t see that too often.

“So regardless of where this journey takes this group, I don’t think she’s gonna fear any of it, and I think she’ll embrace it.”

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The Next’s Howard Megdal contributed reporting for this story.