Sweet revenge

After edgingAfter edgingHarvard Friday,After edgingHarvard Friday,Penn poundedAfter edgingHarvard Friday,Penn poundedstreak-snapperAfter edgingHarvard Friday,Penn poundedstreak-snapperDartmouth by 29 All the preseason talk about the Ivy League men's basketball title being up for grabs this season has turned out to be hot air. The Ancient Eight championship will go to Penn or Princeton this year, just as it always seems to. Dartmouth and Harvard came south this weekend with hopes of knocking off the league's traditional powers and establishing themselves as contenders. Instead, they each went home with two losses. "Is there a solution to the Penn-Princeton situation?" asked Dartmouth coach Dave Faucher after his team lost to the Quakers on Saturday, one night after falling to the Tigers. "I thought I had the answer, and obviously it needs refining." Penn's two victories at the Palestra were as different as they were important. One was extremely close, one was most definitely not. But it was the opponent in each case that was somewhat surprising. The Quakers (14-9, 9-2 Ivy League) thrashed Dartmouth, 80-51, to remain one game behind Princeton in the standings, even though it was the Big Green who beat Penn by one point two weekends ago. And although Penn beat Harvard handily in their earlier meeting, the Crimson (14-10, 6-6) gave the Quakers all they could handle Friday night before literally falling inches short and losing, 66-64. "This is really the second time all season that the screws have been a little bit tighter on our guys," said Crimson coach Frank Sullivan. "And I think we responded quite well to a little bit of adversity in the second half." After a nip-and-tuck game, Penn surged ahead late, taking a 61-53 lead when guard Donald Moxley converted a driving layup with 3:05 remaining. The senior guard finished the game with 19 big points on a night when no other Quaker scored more than 11. "Ira [Bowman] and I had a little bit of a tough time tonight," Penn senior center Tim Krug said. "That happens. And when that happens to your top players, then it's someone else's turn to step up. And Mox just stepped up his game." But when a Quakers win seemed assured, Harvard answered with an 8-0 run that tied the contest with 50.4 seconds left. The key down the stretch for the Crimson was the foul shooting of forward Kyle Snowden, who had 22 points for the game and made four straight free throws down the stretch. That set the stage for perhaps the most unlikely Penn hero. On the Quakers ensuing possession, with the shot clock winding down, Moxley drove the lane. Finding no opening, he passed out to freshman forward Paul Romanczuk, who calmly buried an open jumper from the right side and put Penn up 63-61 with 20.6 seconds left. "There was no question about it," Quakers coach Fran Dunphy said. "He was stepping up and shooting the ball, and it was a tremendous shot for us. We needed it badly." Two pressure free throws by Bowman boosted the Penn lead to four. But Harvard still wasn't done. The Crimson nailed a three from the right wing with 6.6 seconds left. And after Bowman missed one of two free throws, Harvard had a chance. Crimson freshman point guard Tim Hill raced up the left side of the court, dribbled to the right of the foul line, and let the ball fly as the buzzer sounded. But the shot bounced off the front of the rim and fell off, preserving a hard-fought win the for the Quakers. "I got a good look," said Hill, who had nine assists, but made only 2-of-12 shots from the field. "I was getting good looks all night. I just couldn't buy a bucket tonight." Krug and his teammates did not need to worry about any buzzer-beaters the next night against Dartmouth. He and the rest of the starters were on the bench at games' end, watching the final minutes of garbage time produced by the Quakers' 29-point win. Payback was sweet for Penn, Krug said. "It feels a whole lot better than it was the other way around, when they got us. I guess deep down inside we liked to get our revenge. It was a big deal to go up there and lose our first game." At first, Saturday's game looked as if it might provide more late-game thrills. The first 22 minutes of the game were tight. Penn took a 33-26 lead into the locker room at the break. But the Big Green (14-10, 7-5) scored six straight points to open the second half, and the Quakers lead was one with 17:42 to play. "They went their first three possessions, they didn't score, and we answered," Faucher said. "And I said, 'You know what? We're getting our shots. We're going to be alright.' " Wrong. A Romanczuk layup, followed by a steal and coast-to-coast layup by Bowman, pushed the Penn lead to five. Faucher called a 20-second timeout, but it did no good. After a Dartmouth miss, Romanczuk hit a 12-footer from the left baseline. Then Krug blocked a shot -- one of four he had on the night. The Quakers went the other way, and guard Garett Kreitz sank a three from the right wing. Penn led 42-32 with 15:50 left. Full timeout, Big Green. "We didn't play well to start the half," Dunphy said. "But after that we did a good job, and I was very pleased with how we played. With the intensity level, with the concentration level, I thought we played well." But the floodgates had just opened on Dartmouth, and the fun was just starting for the raucous 7,035 Penn fans in attendance. Moments later, after stealing the ball, Bowman dished a no-look pass to a wide-open Krug in the lane. Krug finished the break with a vicious two-handed jam, the crowd erupted, and the rout was officially on. The Quakers added two more dunks in the next few minutes -- one for Bowman, off one of his six steals, and another two-handed stuff for Krug, this one over Big Green 7-footer Brian Gilpin. The lead quickly ballooned out of control. "You answer a run by scoring," Faucher said. "There's holes in the dike, there's no question. But you have to answer offensively, and we didn't do that, and that's when they pulled away."