Quakers get no respect

Most fans still think Ivy League basketball equals Princeton If you happen to be surfing through the channels on Christmas Eve, you might have noticed that ESPN was running a show, The Best of Sportscenter in 1996, highlighting the most exciting sports plays and issues of the past year. There were several shots of the New York Yankees' victory over the Braves then a segment devoted to Michael Johnson's thrilling 200-meter race at the Olympics and then -- from out of nowhere -- scenes of Princeton's shocking 43-41 victory over UCLA in the NCAA tournament. While the show ended at 11 p.m., hours later the pictures of the Tigers jumping on each other in celebration was still gnawing away at me. Curious to see if CBS college basketball analyst Billy Packer's remark about Princeton's win ("We saw a very special team last night coached by a remarkable man") was correct, I decided to go back and research the past seven years since coach Fran Dunphy took over the Penn basketball program. To a Quakers fan's bitter dismay, the numbers proved that even with the Red and Blue's three trips to the NCAA tournament, in the end Princeton had a higher winning percentage (.748 to .654) and had gone to the Big Dance once more than Penn in the '90s. Even more impressive was the way in which the Tigers' had beaten the Bruins. Only one senior played an instrumental role in the win and every other contributing member was an underclassmen. In the final seconds of the game, Princeton upset the defending National Champions on a backdoor pass to freshman Gabe Lewullis (who averaged only 4.4 points the entire season). What was unclear in all the hoopla was why America had fallen in love with Princeton and its long-serving coach, Pete Carril. Three times before Princeton's heroic effort against UCLA, our beloved Quakers had travelled to the Big Dance. And never once during those years did the media swarm around Penn as they did with Princeton. When the Quakers convincingly stuffed Nebraska 90-80 three years ago, the attention Penn received was minimal. The following year the Quakers took Alabama (a team which went all the way to the Final Four) to overtime (85-91), before Jerome Allen mistakenly dribbled the ball off his leg, ending any chance of a Quakers win. In Dunphy's first trip to the tournament in 1993, Penn played UMass extremely tough only to loose in the final minutes (50-54). What all of this proved is that Princeton basketball continues to be viewed as a notch above the rest of the Ivy League, despite the fact the Tigers had not been in the tournament in four years. Furthermore, on paper, Penn and Princeton both had similar rosters that featured a bunch of no-name players who were known more for their academic merits than their athletic achievements. Since 1991 Penn and Princeton had represented the Ivy League in the NCAA Tournament three times each. Yet all anyone could remember (grant it the Tigers trip to the NCAA tournament is the most recent) were the colors of orange and black parading around with glee and Carril shedding tears of joy for his players as the Bruins sat on their bench too stunned to move. Nobody cared that it often took Princeton all day to find an open look at the basket or that there was not one single recognizable face on those Tigers teams, everyone fell in love with "Yoda". If he was not winning in the tourney, they thought, he was at least losing in dramatic fashion. For the rest of the Ivy League, specifically Penn, the hype surrounding Princeton was and is insulting. Since joining Penn, Dunphy has not only proved to be a master at recruiting, but has also turned the Quakers into a perennial challenger for the Ivy League title in the '90s. What boggles the mind is that with the Princeton-UCLA game nearly a year old, Princeton continues to receive an enormous amount of attention from the press. Meanwhile, Dunphy has quietly gone out and grabbed three outstanding freshman who will ensure him an Ivy title, if not in '97 then sometime thereafter. But the fact remains that no matter how many Ivy titles the Quakers pile up, until the day when Penn is able to knock off a Division I giant using the same kind of dramatic flare as Princeton, Dunphy's Quakers' will always play second fiddle to the Tigers of Carril and Carmody.