M. HOOPS NOTEBOOK: M. Hoops might play Wolverines

For every Penn fan who is not totally pleased with the men's basketball schedule, here is the scoop for next year: Penn will play 14 Ivy games, as the Quakers do every year. Beyond those league games, the Quakers will take on all Big 5 opponents -- Villanova and Temple at the Spectrum, La Salle at the Palestra and St. Joseph's at Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse. Also, the Quakers will travel to both Lafayette and Lehigh, while hosting Ohio State and Fairleigh Dickinson to complete a home-and-home package that began earlier this year. Beyond these games which were previously scheduled, the Quakers have signed to play in the pre-season NIT tournament with the finals at Madison Square Garden. Also, Penn is looking to find another Christmas tournament to enter. This year, the Quakers won the US West Cellular Air Time Tournament in Seattle, Wash. Last year, Penn lost in the finals of the Lobo Invitational in Albuquerque, N.M. But the biggest name on next season's schedule could be Michigan. "I haven't heard back from them," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "We would like to play them. They're going to get back to us either at the end of this week or next week." · It appears after this weekend's action in New England, junior guard Jerome Allen is finally healthy again. Allen paced the Quakers on both ends of the floor against both Yale and Brown. In all, he scored a team-high 47 points, grabbed nine rebounds, stole the ball eight times and dished out six assists. "He had a great weekend," Dunphy said. "I would imagine he's 100 percent at this point." · The Quakers have now reached the midway point in the Ivy season, and interesting trends have developed. The most obvious, and most notable, is Penn is continuing right where it left off last season -- undefeated in Ivy action. After downing both Yale and Brown this weekend, the Quakers have improved their league leading record to a perfect 7-0, riding a 22-game winning streak in the Ivies, which just happens to be only eight wins behind the Penn record for most consecutive league wins. However, unlike last season when the Quakers won four Ivy contests by less than 10 points, Penn has won every Ivy contest by a double-digit margin this year. "It's nice to get the younger kids into the game," Dunphy said. "We're always trying to get those guys into the game as quickly as possible." The Penn bench sees more action this season than it has in a long time because the Quakers are outscoring their opponents by an average of 12.4 points per game, the largest differential at Penn since 1972. These routine blowouts have allowed Dunphy to use his backups more often. "We want to see them play," senior captain Barry Pierce said. "We try to play as hard as we can. Obviously, if they are playing, it means that we're winning big, so it's good to see these guys play." But even though the Quakers are finding blowouts in the Ivies commonplace, they still are not completely satisfied with their efforts. "We have lapses. I think every team goes through that," Pierce said. "But I think our lapses are such that we can get a team down, and then if they cut it to 20, we can call a timeout and then build it back to 30 again. So it's no big deal." · One of the many impressive Quaker streaks came to an end this weekend. After the 79-59 victory over the Bears Friday night, Penn had kept its opponents under 60 points for five straight games. However, against Yale the following night, the Elis amassed 66 point. "In order to win games, you have to play defense," Pierce said. "If we're going to win our next seven games, that's what it's going to take. Our defense will have to be even better than it was last week. It was OK. It was nothing spectacular. We need to do better." Dunphy is not worried about any defensive statistics just concerning points allowed. "We're not worried about points," Dunphy said. "We're worried about possessions and how we're doing each time. Most times, we have the game in hand. For instance, against Yale, they scored a lot of points late. The points, they don't matter." Or at least as long as they don't add up to be more than the Quakers' total. · Matt Maloney is leading the Quakers from the charity stripe. The junior guard is connecting on more than 90 percent of his shots, on pace to be the second best free-throw shooter for any season in Penn history. Chris Elzey during the 1984-85 season hit 94 percent of his free throws. Also, junior guard Scott Kegler is hitting 48 percent of his three-point attempts. At this pace, he will put his name in the Quaker record books at fourth place, just ahead of Maloney's 44.4 percent from last season.