A FRONT ROW VIEW: Buck Jenkins can't save the Lions now

Had Columbia's all-time leading scorer suited up, instead of sitting on the bench in a suit, there may have been some uncertainty. And had the investment banker sitting a few rows behind the all-time leading scorer been in the lineup, there may have been that healthy bit of doubt. The doubt the fan seeks, perhaps unknowingly, when he goes to a game. The doubt that keeps him on the edge of his seat waiting for that next shot, that next moment, which may turn the tide in the home team's favor and be a memory forever ingrained in his mind. There is nothing wrong with confidence the home team will win, but when that slight threat of losing is gone -- as it has been at the Palestra for a couple of Ivy seasons -- a good deal of the appeal of college basketball goes with it. Penn coach Fran Dunphy's disappointment was his inability to get his reserves in earlier in the game. When you have won 36 straight Ivy League games, apparently that is a big concern. Since Buck Jenkins, now Columbia's interim assistant coach, graduated in 1993 as the school's most prolific scorer, and since teammate Omar Sanders has taken a job with Prudential on Wall Street, Columbia has been woeful. Coach Jack Rohan's squad won its first four Ivy games last season and has lost 18 in a row since. The Columbia streak is starting to rival the football version of the 1980s. Jenkins would gladly have been on the court Saturday. Too bad an eligibility waiver would have been needed to add some attractiveness to the game. The squad Jenkins captained as a senior was clearly Columbia's best of the decade. The Penn dynasty was in its infancy, and the Lions thought they could be the Ivy champs for one year between the inevitable Penn-Princeton torch-passing. Jerome Allen, who is expected to become the first player to win the league's most valuable player award three times, was a sophomore back in 1992-93. The talk was all Allen and Jenkins then. Jenkins, who appeared to have a promising CBA career that never materialized after graduation, has kept in shape. He played in Albuferia, Portugal, from July through November for Imortal, which he called "the worst team in the country." Jenkins got sick because of the food, and the team and Jenkins divorced. "They blamed the American," Jenkins said. "I was averaging about 25 ppg and the first thing they said was, 'The American shoots too much.' They sent me home pretty much." There was an opening for an interim assistant coach at Columbia. So Jenkins is back with the Lions, close enough to the basket to drain a three-pointer yet unable to help. He was in charge of breaking down the films for the Penn game. "I guess somebody might look at the score and say I didn't do a pretty good job," he said. Still, he hopes to shed the interim from his title when Columbia undergoes its assistant coach search after the season. If he stays with the team, as he expects, he will have to do a lot of recruiting. Columbia has not developed a new crop of talent since his class graduated. Without Jenkins on the floor, Allen was unmatched Saturday. Now Penn is two games ahead of an outmatched pack in its quest for a third consecutive league title. And the fan, who is not a sadist, must find a way to enjoy seven more whippings in order to earn the coveted NCAA tournament bid. Adam Rubin is a Wharton senior from Bellmore, N.Y., and former sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian.

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