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Penn hasn't won since '80 When you think about the glory days of Penn basketball, you think about the '70s. About Chuck Daly and Dick Harter. But most of all, you think about the 1978-79 team, the squad that fought its way to the Final Four before bowing out to Magic Johnson and Michigan State. But as it turns out, that was not the last Quaker squad to win an NCAA Tournament game. On the eve of what could be Penn's first tourney victory in more than a decade, it is the 1979-80 team, one year removed from the Final Four trip, whose spirit the current team looks to rekindle. Vincent Ross was a freshman on the team that defied conventional wisdom in 1979 at the Final Four. But when he returned for his sophomore season, some familiar faces were missing from the Palestra. Ivy Player of the Year Tony Price, who had outdone Magic and Bird to lead all scorers in the previous year's tournament, had graduated. So had first team all-Ivy center Matt White and first team all-Big 5 performer Tim Smith. Price, White and Bobby Willis, another senior starter from the '79 team were all drafted by the NBA. In fact, only one starter, senior captain James Salters, remained. "The Final Four team had four seniors," Ross said. "The returning team had one. We had four freshmen returning and six incoming freshmen, so our expectations weren't as high. For an Ivy League team to reach the Final Four is just an astronomical feat." The season that began in the '70s and ended in the '80s was, in some ways, an appropriate transition between two very different decades of Pennsylvania basketball. The '70s were very much an era of dominance for the Quakers. During that span, they had the third highest winning percentage (79.9 percent) of any team, behind just UCLA and Marquette, and finished in the AP Top 20 seven different times. The '80s were a different story. With the rising cost of an Ivy League education, Penn found it harder to attract scholarship-caliber players at a non-scholarship school. The '80s were good for Quaker basketball, just not that good. "We priced ourselves out of Division I major college basketball," said Bob Weinhauer, who coached the Quakers from 1977 to 1982. "When I first came to Penn in 1972, it probably cost somewhere between $4,000 and $6,000 a year to go to Penn. If a guy was a full need, it cost his family $800 to $1,000 a year. "Now you weigh that against a scholarship at St. Bonaventure. I can go free to St. Bonnie, but I can come to Penn and get an Ivy League education and only have to pay $1,000. I'm going to do that." With so many starters lost to graduation, the 1979-80 squad didn't figure to duplicate the accomplishments of its predecessor. But outside expectations still ran high. "Some of the students on campus," Ross said, "they were expecting a repeat because they didn't realize the full impact of an Ivy team going to the Final Four." But if the student body had exceedingly high expectations, they soon realized this was not the same team they had cheered for a year earlier. The Quakers were blown out in the season-opener December 4 by Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, 88-58. A year earlier, Penn had downed the Demon Deacons by 22 points at the Palestra. In fact, during the 1979 season, the Quakers ran wild through the ACC, beating all three of its conference opponents, including a one-point win over North Carolina in the NCAAs. But the following season, the tables were turned. Penn fell to all four of its ACC opponents that year. "All the ACC teams were gunning for us," Weinhauer said. The Quakers would lose their first four games of the '79-80 campaign, all on the road. For the older players who had tasted so much success in past seasons, losing was an eye opener. "It brought people down to earth," said Ross, now a senior program analyst in New Jersey. "It was a big change for the returning [players]." "It brought me back down," Weinhauer said. "I never went into a game we played that I didn't think we would win. The fact that we were coming after them with one senior and a whole bunch of freshmen didn't bother me. "I remember coming home from the trip 0-3 [the First Union Invite in Charlotte, N.C.]. We were in the baggage claim area and I brought all the players together and said, 'Don't get your heads down. If we keep working hard, we're going to win the Ivy League.' " As it turned out, Weinhauer was either a prophet or he knew something about his team that others did not. True, the 1979-80 squad was a very inexperienced one. And when Fran McCafferty, slated as the starting point guard, went down with an achilles tear before the season, it became even more so. But the team was also a very talented one. Freshman Paul Little was selected as the Ivy League Rookie of the Year that season and later went on to win Player of the Year honors. Three starters on the team (Little, Michael Brown and Ken Hall) were first team all-Ivy picks in later seasons. As the Quakers gained game experience, their confidence grew. In the Ivy opener against Princeton January 5 at the Palestra, Penn was impressive, blowing out their archrivals 58-42. In 1979, both games against the Tigers were one-point overtime wins for the Quakers. Penn ended the Ivy League season 12-2, tied with Princeton for first place. The Quakers could have won the title outright if they hadn't lost to the Tigers on the road February 26. So one week later, Penn and Princeton met for the third time that season on a neutral site in Easton in a one-game playoff for the Ivy title. The winner would advance to the NCAA Tournament. "There was a lot of pressure," Ross said. "I didn't feel too good because we had just lost to them the previous week. If we had lost to them in the first meeting of the season and then beaten them to force a playoff, I would have felt a lot better." The game lived up to its dramatic buildup. Salters made a jumper in the game's final 30 seconds, giving the Quakers a one-point victory. For the third straight year, Penn was Tournament bound. "The year before, we knew we were pretty good," Weinhauer said, "so we certainly presented all kinds of challenges for that team -- not only to win the Ivy League. "With the next group, winning the Ivy League was always a goal of ours. From there, if we can get to the NCAAs, it's a whole new season." Unfortunately for the Quakers, their new season began in less than two days. This left them almost no time to prepare for Washington State, their first round opponent, and a team which, as Weinhauer recalled, Penn knew nothing about. Washington State, coached by George Ravelling and led by Pac 10 Player of the Year Don Collins, was an overwhelming favorite. The Cougars grabbed a first-half lead against Penn at West Lafayette, Indiana. "We just wanted to play hard," Ross said. "I don't think we were as confident because we didn't have a dominant player like Tony Price. We didn't have a guy we could go to in crunch time when we needed a basket. Boonie Salters was a great player, but he's only 5-foot-11. When you have a dominant big man, it's easier to look up to than a guard." But the Quakers battled back, using a half-court trap to shake Washington State's rhythm. After getting a lead of its own, Penn, in the absence of a shot clock, held the ball and pulled out the upset victory, 62-55. "At that time, we probably pulled the biggest upset so far. Maybe the biggest upset in the tournament that year," said Weinhauer, now an assistant with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Although the Quakers would go on to lose to Bill Foster's Duke team in the second round, after what they had accomplished already that season, it didn't matter much. "We were expected to get blown out," Ross said. "We weren't expected to do really well. But I remember the feeling that I had. It was the same feeling that Tony and those guys had. On any day, any given team could win. It was a good day for us." A feeling the present crop of Quakers is trying to develop.

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