The Illini women’s basketball team lived and died by the fast break Sunday at the Assembly Hall when it dropped a winnable game to Penn State 67-56 on Senior Day.

Illinois finished with a season-high 12 points off the fast break, but also had 19 turnovers, many from rushed passes.

The Illini’s lone senior, Chelsea Gordon, could only watch from the bench after a torn ACL ended her season Jan. 25 in a game against Indiana.

“It hurts a lot to not win this game,” junior Jenna Smith said. “It sucks that we lost on Senior Night, and I apologize to Chelsea.

But you have to stay positive. You can’t dwell on one game though because you have so many more.”

Smith carried much of the scoring load for the Illini, who donned pink jerseys, shoes and shoelaces for their third annual WBCA “Pink Zone” game to raise money for breast cancer research.

Smith finished with 22 points, 13 rebounds and three blocked shots.

Smith has matched up well against Penn State in the past. When the two teams met in December, she had an equally impressive performance, accumulating 23 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks. Penn State head coach Coquese Washington wasn’t surprised.

“She’s not an all-conference player for her lack of talent,” Washington said. “We game plan to pay a lot of attention to Jenna Smith.

“They do a great job of getting her touches and getting her looks whether it’s man or zone. If she can get her average and we win the game, then we’ll take that.”

Defensively, Illinois held the Big Ten’s second-leading scorer, Tyra Grant, to 16 points – down from her average of 20. The problem was the Illini allowed three other Nittany Lions to score in double figures.

“We relied on a lot of help-side defense,” Law said. “In the first half (Grant) had five points, but in the second half she started attacking more and getting to the line.

Overall, I think we did a pretty good job on her, but it was the other people that we didn’t count on to step up actually stepped up for them.”

Penn State’s bench accounted for 22 points, including 15 from Janessa Wolff in 23 minutes. Illinois’ bench was scoreless.

But Illinois’ defense did give fans a taste of its potential in the first half when it held Penn State to one field goal in almost nine minutes. The Illini went on a 12-2 run to take the lead going into halftime.

“We actually played defense and communicated,” Law said. “We started dictating on defense and we started to get steals. When we stopped doing those things then it started going downhill from there.”

The Illini have two games remaining on the road before the Big Ten Tournament, and they need to capitalize to help their seeding. They sit in the ninth position.