AT COURTSIDE: St. Joe's shooters snub rally

Penn trailed by five points midway through the second half of last night's Big Five contest when Quakers guard Ira Bowman intercepted a pass from St. Joe's guard Rashid Bey near halfcourt. Bowman's breakaway resulted in a typically spectacular two-handed power slam that reduced Penn's deficit to three, 55-52, with 11 minutes, 12 seconds left to play. If the Quakers were going to surge ahead and defeat the Hawks, this was the time. They had trimmed the St. Joe's lead from 10 to three in under three minutes, and Bowman's dunk kick-started the vocal Penn contingent at the Spectrum. A Quakers comeback seemed possible. But Bey, Mark Bass and Terrell Myers wouldn't have any of that. Down the stretch, the trio of Hawks guards put on a shooting clinic that shot down Penn's hopes. Hawks coach Phil Martelli had warned his players that Penn would not go away easily. They learned that lesson well. "We knew they were going to stick around," Bass said. "We figured the last team to make a run would win the game." Instead of being rattled by the Quakers' run, St. Joe's responded with a burst of its own. Just over two minutes after Bowman brought Penn to within three, the Hawks' lead was up to 10 again. St. Joe's backup center Nemanja Petrovic hit one free thrown to put the Hawks up by 4. Then, after a foul on Quakers center Tim Krug, Myers received a pass from Bey and buried a three-point shot from the left corner. Penn coach Fran Dunphy blamed himself for Myers' shot. With the shot clock running down on that possession, the Quakers tried to trap St. Joe's. But Penn wasn't ready to play that particular defense, according to Dunphy, resulting in a good look for Myers. "We took a chance," Dunphy said. "It just didn't work." After an unsuccessful trip down the floor by the Quakers, the Hawks responded with another three, this one by Bey from the top of the key, that pushed the score to 62-52 with 9:09 left. "So we went from four to ten rather quickly," Dunphy said. "I thought that was the key." The St. Joe's lead never again dipped below eight points. Any time Penn appeared to have a chance of getting back in the game, the Hawks would knock down another shot. Bey hit a 16-footer to put the Hawks ahead 64-54 after a Krug layup cut the lead to eight. Bass nailed a 15-footer with 6:33 left that swelled the lead to 15 and later hit two more threes that iced the game for St. Joe's. All in all, the troika of Myers, Bass and Bey shot 10-of-15 in the second half, including 5-of-8 from three-point range. They accounted for 28 of the Hawks 46 points in the final 20 minutes. And of those 28, a game-deciding 19 came down the stretch, after Bowman's dunk. "We had to bear down and try to win the game at the end, which we did," Bass said. "We made the extra passes when we needed, and guys were hitting the big shots."