AT COURTSIDE: Bowman comes back strong after disappointment

The senior co-captain felt he let his teammates down at Yale, so he turned his game up the next night at Brown PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- While a bit farfetched, it isn't hard to imagine the Ivy League coaches whose names aren't Fran or Dunphy meeting over the summer at a Pocono resort to exchange strategies. And to take further flights of fancy, it isn't harder still to imagine telegrams sent from Harvard coach Frank Sullivan and Brown coach Frank "Happy" Dobbs to their cohorts: IF PENN LOSES ON FRIDAY WATCH OUT FOR BOWMAN STOP HE GOES CRAZY STOP DOBBS This is because Ira, after Penn losses, tends to take his game to another level. After the Big Green loss a week ago, Bowman scored 29 against Sullivan's Crimson. Saturday, it was to the tune of 24 points -- 10 in the second half -- to key Penn's 83-53 blowout of the Bears. In both losses, Bowman had -- for lack of a better phrase -- mental lapses that contributed to the Quakers' downfall. Against Dartmouth, it was the free throw. And against Yale, it was fouling out with 4:30 to play and the game on the line. "I think that I felt like I let my teammates down last night," Bowman said after the Brown win. "In games like that, I need to be in, especially at the end of the game to try to make a difference. I got called on a lot of touch fouls last night. It's something that happens, and I had to come back today and try to play a little bit smarter." In the first half, Bowman gave Brown fans a taste of the Palestra cry "Does Ira scare you yet?" Bowman took the inbounds pass, jogged up court, stutter-stepped at the top of the key and accelerated into the lane. There he encountered Brown's Jason Rowley, who had position in the lane. Bowman leaped into the air, almost over Rowley, elevated above the rim and, where he would have normally flipped his hand over and finger-rolled the ball in, he threw it down with authority and got the foul on Rowley. The Penn fans in attendance went crazy and the Penn bench erupted. And Happy Dobbs? -- so sad. The dunk gave Penn a 22-17 lead with 9 minutes, 38 seconds to play, moments after Tim Krug had left the game with his second foul. At that moment, Brown quickly realized that it had no chance of stopping Ira. The Bears couldn't hope to contain him. When Penn turned up the defense in the second half, the game was finished. Bowman was not by a long shot the only factor in Saturday's win or Friday's loss. Quakers coach Fran Dunphy was quick to point out that it was the defense -- especially Donald Moxley on Brown marksman Brian Lloyd -- that keyed the second-half blowout against the Bears. And it was Yale sophomore Emerson Whitley's 18 points inside that was the key stat from Friday's game. But Bowman was the dominant offensive factor Saturday, for a team that had serious offensive troubles the night before and for whom a loss would have been an utter disaster. "It seems like these guys want to respond," Dunphy said. "They see a difficult situation in front of them, and they know how to respond the next night." Heading up to Brown is always sort of a homecoming for Bowman. After spending two years at Providence, he knows the city and the region. And with a wrestling meet occupying the Pizzatola Center, Penn took its morning shoot-around at Providence's Alumni Hall. "It's a special feeling," said Bowman of his return to Providence. "We practiced back in Alumni Hall, where I spent two years sweating. In the back of my mind, hopefully we'll make another trip back here seeing as how the [NCAA] East Regionals are here. Hopefully this won't be our last time here."

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