Quakers rebound with win over Yale

For the second time this season, Yale got ahead early in the game by shutting down Penn's shooters. This time, however, the Quakers were able to rally from an early deficit and pull out a win, 69-61, at the Palestra.

The Elis (9-14, 4-6 Ivy) led most of the way through the first half until freshman Ibby Jaaber drained a bucket from just inside the arc to give Penn a 20-19 advantage with 4:21 to play.

The Quakers (13-9, 6-3) did not look back. Jaaber and freshman Ryan Pettinella extended the Penn run to 19-3, giving the Red and Blue a 32-22 advantage at the break.

Yale senior Matt Minoff held Jeff Schiffner -- who leads the Quakers with 16.1 points per game -- scoreless in the first period.

"Matt Minoff took it upon himself to try to take [Schiffner] out of the game," Yale coach James Jones said. "That was our strategy. That's what we tried to do."

The Elis allowed the 6-foot-6 guard only four points three weeks ago when they squeaked past the Quakers, 54-52, in New Haven, Conn.

"They focus a lot of attention on trying to shut Schiff down, and they did a good job again," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "He obviously only got a couple looks at it, and I don't even think they were very clean looks."

Holding Schiffner to just seven points on the night and the Quakers to 3-of-16 shooting from three-point range was not enough for the Elis, who dropped their third-straight Ivy contest.

Despite the halftime deficit, Yale kept plugging away. A layup by freshman Sam Kaplan cut the Penn lead to two, 48-46, with six minutes to play. After the teams traded foul shots, senior Charlie Copp swung the momentum back to the Quakers with his second three-pointer of the night.

"Charlie took it upon himself to say `I'm going to shoot this thing and make it' and he certainly did," Dunphy said. "I thought that was as big a shot as we had in the game."

Freshman Mark Zoller converted a three-point play off a layup and then added a short jumper to push the Penn lead to 10 with four minutes left on the clock. Copp and the new-look Zoller led the Quakers with 12 points each.

Along with the pair of triples from Copp, junior Tim Begley hit the only other long ball of the game for the Red and Blue. Penn made up for the relative lack of perimeter production -- the Quakers average 8.6 three-pointers per game -- by pounding the ball inside. Of Penn's 69 total points, 30 came in the paint.

"We obviously had some pretty good balance tonight," Dunphy said.

The Quakers were able to notch the win with 38.9 percent accuracy from the field, a full 10 points lower than their season average.

"You tell me before the game Penn was going to shoot 38 percent and Jeff Schiffner was going to have seven points, and we lose the basketball game, I'd find that hard to believe," Jones said.

Penn trails league-leading Princeton by two games in the loss column following the Tigers' 68-61 win over Brown. The Quakers are the only team so far to defeat Princeton in league play, but will need another team to do so in order for Penn to stay in the Ivy title hunt.

Notes: Schiffner was presented with a commemorative ball before the game in recognition of his 1,000 career points at Penn. The senior now has 1,007 in the record books.

Saturday's Ivy League Scores: PENN 69, Yale 61 Harvard 81, Cornell 78 Columbia 73, Dartmouth 58 Princeton 68, Brown 61

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