After a harrowing three-game road stretch to start the season, the Penn State women's basketball team finally came home to a victory on Tuesday night.

The Lady Lions (1-3) pushed around mediocre Duquesne (0-2) for a 71-55 win, in front of a sparse Bryce Jordan Center crowd anticipating gravy.

"This is good, any time you get a win is good," senior guard Tanisha Wright said. "You know we started off the season real rough, but we have the opportunity to come back here in front of our own fans and get ourselves excited about the upcoming season."

Wright indicated that the win over Duquesne would work nicely with the upcoming break.

"We'll be able to get some rest and when we come back we'll be able to have a snowball effect and keep the winning going," Wright said.

It was a bittersweet evening for the Lady Lions, relieved to finally have anything other than a zero in the winner's column, but noticeably upset over the absence of coach Rene Portland.

Associate head coach Annie Troyan took over head coaching duties in Portland's stead, and though the hardwood was a little less worn from Portland's trademark foot-stomping, Troyan's team persevered.

Sophomore forward Amanda Brown finally had the breakout performance her coaches and teammates forecasted from the preseason press conferences, leading the Lady Lions in scoring with 18 points.

Brown's 6-of-10 shooting pushed the Lady Lions out to an early lead, a lead insurmountable for the Dukes, but where Brown really got it done was on the foul line -- going 6-of-9 from the charity stripe.

"We're asking her to do a whole lot," Troyan said.

"When we came into this season, we put her into that mindset with [Jess] Strom and T, in that triangle, that these are the three that we need to get the ball to. So, we're going to see improvement each day and I was really pleased with her effort tonight, especially on the free throw line. That was a great improvement and a lot of that is mental, but Amanda did a great job there too."

The second and third sides of that triangle, Wright and Strom, also contributed with double-digit scoring, but Ashli Schwab's rebounding was the bigger story.

Tuesday was Schwab's second consecutive game with big numbers, grabbing 13 rebounds, 11 off the defensive glass -- against Villanova she contributed 20 points in Penn State's losing effort.

Success on the offensive side came easily for the Lady Lions when Duquesne eased off its 2-3 zone defense and attempted to match-up man-to-man.

"We tried to mix and match, but we couldn't really defend them starting the game out man-to-man," Duquesne coach Dan Durkin said.

"Down the stretch we hung tough with them, but I think that was just a momentum thing and how the flow was going."

The Lady Lions continue the hunt for more wins on Thursday against George Mason in State College.