Soisson | Inconsistency plagues Quakers

Remember the time it seemed the fog had lifted?

Penn was 3-1 in Ivy play, coming off a double-overtime loss against Tommy Amaker’s hot Harvard squad. The Quakers were amped for the 223rd installment of the Penn-Princeton rivalry.

It seemed that, once again, all was right atop the Ivy League.

Well, that fog has returned.

Blame it on the road trip. Blame it on playing five games in eight days. Heck, blame it on this publication’s own version of the Sports Illustrated cover curse after profiling senior Tyler Bernardini.

But don’t deny it.

After last Saturday’s tough loss to Harvard — Penn’s first Ivy setback of the season at the time — Jack Eggleston discussed the previous night’s Dartmouth game, which he and Zack Rosen described as the team’s best attempt at a perfect 40 minutes.

“You look around the country at how many teams are putting together 40-minute games when they play well on defense, offense, the whole way through,” Eggleston said. “It’s not going to happen very often.”

Well, two teams came very close this weekend: Cornell and Columbia.

On Friday, the Quakers dug themselves a 16-point hole. Then, Penn strung together a 13-minute series to even the score and built a nice lead of nine points over the next six minutes.

So that’s 19 minutes of good basketball. After enjoying their lead for barely two minutes, the Red and Blue fell apart down the stretch and never put up a fight in overtime.

The following day, with a 35-all halftime score, Penn was on track for an NCAA-tying fourth straight overtime. Though the Quakers weren’t playing their best ball in the first half, at least they hadn’t let the Lions jump out ahead.

But inconsistency — Penn’s annoying neighbor that, like Ned Flanders, just won’t go away — knocked on the doorstep of Columbia’s Levien Gymnasium, and the Quakers answered.

The Lions opened up the second stanza with a 14-2 run. Give Penn eight good minutes for chipping away the deficit to just three, but the final six minutes of regulation were all Columbia.

So yes, it’s tough to play 40 perfect minutes. If a complete game were possible, Columbia wouldn’t have kept it close all half, Cornell would have held their double-digit lead and Kentucky would have shown its prowess from the get-go rather than waiting 17 minutes.

This entire season has been one of spurts and sputters — a 10-minute streak of the good followed by 10 minutes of the bad, a four-game winning streak followed by a four-game skid.

These Quakers are inconsistent, and everybody knows it.

But Penn doesn’t need that perfect game. Still, the players must execute as a cohesive unit.

Junior Rob Belcore’s eight-point output Friday after a slow start to the season and freshman Cameron Gunter’s breakout performance — 12 points, three rebounds and a steal — are null without the 18.1 points per game that Bernardini averaged in the ten games preceding this weekend and the 11.2 points per game Miles Cartwright has managed thus far in his rookie campaign. The two guards averaged 5.5 and 6 points this weekend, respectively.

Besides Penn’s offensive woes, the Quakers played conservative perimeter defense on nights when Cornell drained 12 three-pointers and Columbia’s Noruwa Agho went 4-for-6 from distance.

The Lions added salt to the wound as Max Craig and Mark Cisco overpowered Gunter and Conor Turley, making them look like children in the paint.

There may not be enough time to save an overdue Ivy title, but there’s enough to change a team’s reputation and build a foundation for the future.

MEGAN SOISSON is a sophomore in the School of Nursing from Mechanicsburg, Pa., and is Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Her e-mail address is soisson@theDP.com.

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