AT COURTSIDE: Bowman is always a threat to bounce back

The memory of the missed free throw haunted Ira Bowman ever since the last Penn-Dartmouth meeting. After Bowman missed the front end of a one-and-one with three seconds remaining in the last Penn-Dartmouth contest, Penn's 48-game Ivy League winning streak came to an end. Fingers were pointed from the stands. Bowman, the critics said, cost the Quakers the streak, the undefeated season and, maybe, the Ivy League championship. But Ira Bowman always bounces back. He always manages to rebound from a lackluster game to go ballistic in the next. When the Quakers exacted revenge on Dartmouth Saturday night, Bowman once again came back in a performance that was once again simply scintillating. For three weeks now, Bowman -- and the rest of the Quakers -- have responded with force after a loss. After the loss in Hanover, N.H., Ira came bounced back at Harvard the next night, scoring a career-high 29 points. Last weekend, Yale held Bowman to seven points. And when the Elis' Gabe Hunterton drained the go-ahead jumper with two seconds left, the Quakers fell a game behind Princeton in the Ivy standings. Again, Bowman stepped up his play the next night, racking up 24 points against Brown in Providence, R.I. With a pattern beginning to emerge, Penn dropped a Big 5 game to Temple in which Owls guards Huey Futch and Levan Alston held Bowman to a season-low four points. That was when something strange happened. As the Crimson invaded the Palestra on Friday, the Quakers once again struggled -- barely eking out a two-point victory. Ira Bowman had 11 points, but put up only eight shots. Held to only 28 minutes of playing time, Bowman also committed four turnovers -- while only picking off two steals. Foul trouble also plagued Bowman. He committed three of them -- all within the first 21 minutes of the game. For the first time this season, Bowman did not rebound from a poor performance. "He's just not playing what is expected of him at this point?He'd like to do better," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said Friday. "While he may be struggling, I'll take Ira Bowman any day of the week, any year, any time." That day of the week turned out to be Saturday, when had an explosive enough outing to make up for his two previous performances. Bowman had 17 points on 7-for-16 shooting, nailed a key trey, had six assists and six steals -- one short of his season high. For just the second time all season, Bowman displayed the open-court brilliance which became his trademark last season. After an awe-inspiring no-look pass to Tim Krug on a break and a steal and end-to-end sprint finished by a finger roll, chants of "Ira" returned to the Palestra. After missing the crucial free throw in the last game against the Big Green, Bowman made sure Saturday's contest would not come down the final seconds. "As players, as teammates, we don't blame each other for losses -- we take it as a team," Krug said. "But when something like that [missing the game-tying free throw], you take it upon yourself and you feel as if you let your teammates down. So this was real nice for him. He played real well tonight, and we came up with a big win. And I think it probably wipes out some of the pain that loss caused." If anything has been consistent between Bowman's performances in the two Dartmouth games, it was his defense. In Saturday's game, Bowman held the Ivy League's leading scorer, Sea Lonergan, to 11 points. With the bittersweet victory behind them, the Quakers will likely need to win their final three games to at least tie for the title, and a lot of the load will rest on Bowman's shoulders. The missed free throw has been erased from the collective memories of Penn fans, replaced instead by the no-look pass, the coast-to-coast layup and any number of highlight-reel buckets. Ira Bowman always bounces back. And that's not good news for the rest of the Ivy League.