Moxley's OT buzzer beater lifts Quakers

Penn outlasts LaSalle in ugly Big 5 matchup Donald Moxley had only been waiting for the right moment. And with 2.5 seconds remaining in overtime against La Salle Saturday, his time arrived. "I can make that shot," said Moxley of his running layup that gave Penn a 68-66 overtime victory over La Salle Saturday. Tied at 66 with 23.2 seconds remaining, the Quakers inbounded the ball, holding it for the last shot. The play, according to Penn coach Fran Dunphy, was to have swingman Ira Bowman drive, hoping the La Salle defense would collapse on him and leave someone free from the outside. It didn't exactly go as planned. Instead, it was Moxley who took control of the ball and the Quakers' destiny, driving the paint and putting the shot up and in just before the final buzzer sounded. Had the Quakers (6-6) played a more consistent game, Moxley's heroics would not have been necessary. Penn held a 15-point lead earlier in the second half, only to watch it slip away, as they went 13 minutes, 8 seconds without a field goal. "We thought we could win the game from the outset," said Moxley, who finished with a career-high 24 points. "We weren't going to let La Salle take that away from us. We had to come out and play like it was our game and take it back." The Quakers' lack of depth almost cost them the game, as Penn played only seven men. In the game's final minutes, the Quakers were visibly fatigued and had trouble keeping up with La Salle. The Explorers (4-14) switched to a full-court press, hoping to exploit the obvious Penn weakness. "We're not good enough to think we can show up and beat anybody," La Salle coach Speedy Morris told the Explorers during halftime. "In the first half, Penn was tougher and outplayed us. We gave them easy looks at the basket and they were making their shots. In the last 12 minutes of the second half we played very good aggressive defense, keeping them to one shot." Before center Tim Krug took a Bowman pass and laid it in with 33 seconds remaining in overtime, Penn missed 11 straight field-goal attempts. La Salle came back from a nine-point deficit to lead the Quakers by one during that span. The key to La Salle's game during that stretch was point guard Shawn Smith. Though Smith, listed generously at 5-foot-10, scored only two points, well short of his 10.2 season scoring average, he still gave the Quakers fits. Smith defended taller Penn players, including 6-foot-1 guard Garett Kreitz and 6-foot-5 Bowman, superbly, grabbing six steals. On the offensive end, he dished out 11 assists, resulting in 28 Explorers' points. "I can't imagine he only had six steals," Dunphy said. "It seemed like 60. He got a hand on it, went down and made an easy basket. The next time we tried to run something for Garett at the top of the key, and Smith stepped in again, and all of a sudden it's an 8-point game, and we were getting very tentative." That tentativeness came on the heels of a bout with complacency, as the Quakers began to relax, playing not to lose instead of to win. "We got into a comfortable zone, where our players let down a little bit," Moxley said. "We thought we could just hold them and keep the lead we had, but they're a tough bunch. I had a thought in the back of my mind that they were going to make a run." The Quakers, who usually play a man-to-man defense, switched to a 1-3-1 zone in response to the La Salle run. It did not fare well, as the Explorers reeled off several three-point shots. Guard Mike Gizzi was the key to La Salle's outside success, hitting on 5-of-8 from beyond the arc. While the Quakers shot a blistering 7-of-12 from long range in the first half, they faltered slightly in the second. However, it was clutch free-throw shooting, not bombs from beyond the arc, that proved to be the difference in the contest. Though La Salle shot 75 percent from the free-throw line, the Explorers were only 1-for-4 in the overtime period. "It's killing us to miss foul shots," Morris said. "It's all confidence. You've got to make them." The Quakers almost equaled their season-high from the line, shooting 76.9 percent. "We had a tie game," Morris said. "We had to stop them. [Moxley] drives through the lane and gets a shot and makes it. We hadn't made the shots." But all game long, Moxley had. And in Saturday's close contest, that made all the difference.