Dartmouth de'ja' vu for M. Hoops

Foul shots once again cost Penn a win over Dartmouth and ended a winning streak. For the second year in a row, Penn had a chance to beat Dartmouth with free throws at the end of the second half. For the second year in a row, the Quakers missed. The Big Green went on to knock off Penn in overtime Saturday night, 74-70, dealing a blow to the Quakers' Ivy title hopes. The loss and a 85-68 win over Harvard on Friday moved Penn to 8-10 overall and 4-2 in the league. The Quakers are now two full games behind Princeton (16-3, 6-0) and a game behind Dartmouth (14-6, 6-2), two teams they must face a combined three more times. Penn's margin for error is now almost nonexistent. But things could have been different. After Big Green center Brian Gilpin hit a short jumper from the left baseline to tie the game at 53-53 with 11.7 seconds left in regulation, the Quakers had a chance. "I was very happy that we were in the position that we were with a couple seconds left to go," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "That was unbelievable that we were at that stage. But we didn't find a way to put it away, and that's disappointing." Sophomore Jed Ryan quickly pushed the ball upcourt and found freshman Michael Jordan, who drove the lane and dished to forward George Mboya under the basket. He was immediately fouled by Dartmouth forward Sea Lonergan with just 2.9 ticks left. "I definitely didn't want them to have a lay-up," Lonergan said. "I wanted them to have to do it from the line." Mboya could not. The sophomore had made only five of 20 free throws on the season, and he missed both of these badly. Mboya did manage to rebound the second miss, but Ryan missed a desperation three-pointer at the buzzer. "I just knew that he had a wide open lay-up if I didn't go for the ball," Lonergan said of Mboya. "So we got lucky there. He missed the two and we had confidence in ourselves in overtime." Ironically, the Quakers found their touch from the foul line this weekend. Until Mboya's misses, they had made 11-of-13 against the Big Green after sinking 17-of-21 against Harvard. Adding a cruel twist, Dartmouth slowly killed Penn in overtime from the line. The Big Green made its first 10 free throws in the extra session. Those, along with an alley-oop dunk by forward Shaun Gee and a Gilpin lay-up, gave Dartmouth a 67-59 lead with 1:03 left. The Quakers got back to within three after Garett Kreitz hit a three-pointer and Ryan converted a three-point play. But on the ensuing play Gee broke free from the Penn defense, received a long inbounds pass and scored a lay-up while being fouled by freshman Matt Langel. The free throw, with 30.6 seconds left, gave the Big Green an insurmountable 71-65 lead. "I just felt that we clearly played hard, and we executed well in the overtime," said Dartmouth coach Dave Faucher, who got his first win in 13 visits to the Palestra. "It's a credit to my guys, and I'm really proud of them. I feel like a million bucks right now." The difference in the game was the Big Green defense. Against Harvard the previous night, Penn shot a red-hot 57 percent from the floor en route to an 85-68 win. The Quakers made 12 of 20 three-pointers, and despite not playing badly, the Crimson lost by 17. "We got our rebounds, our assist-to-turnover ration was adequate, and we got four guys in double figures," Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. "Everything for us sorted out nicely except our defense against the three. It was just a glowing example of how the three-point shot can neutralize a lot of things in the game." Faucher did not want the same thing to happen to him. Kreitz made five of eight threes against Harvard. When he came off the bench to enter Saturday's game, the Dartmouth coaches yelled to make sure the Big Green paid attention to him. "We really wanted to play defense and make a stand," Faucher said . "I think Harvard's a pretty good defensive team, but not many Ivy League teams are going to score 85 points against us the way we play defense." The Quakers wound up making exactly one-third of their shots. Excluding Jordan, who scored a career-high 24 points, and Ryan (18 points), the rest of the Penn squad went 8-of-36 from the floor, including 2-of-11 from the arc. "Any time you shoot a percentage like we did, there's going to be some of us, that we're not making shots, and some of them," Dunphy said. "I thought they did a nice job defending us as well." Dartmouth led for almost all of the first half, taking a 26-21 lead. Six Quakers turnovers in the first 4:05 led to the Big Green's initial eight points. "We were really poor turning the basketball over and gave them three or four easy baskets," Dunphy said. "They didn't even have to work for them. That's as meaningful as the game coming down to the last minute or two." Dartmouth's lead grew as large as eight points early in the second half, but Kreitz hit the first of two free throws to tie the game at 35-35 with 10:25 left. He missed the second, but Mboya grabbed the rebound and put it back to give Penn its first lead since 2-0. The Big Green, however, refused to fade, and the game went to the wire, with the lead changing hands eight more times down the stretch. The end of regulation was remarkably similar to the conclusion of the game at Dartmouth last February, when former Penn star Ira Bowman missed the front end of a one-and-one with three seconds left and the Big Green escaped with a 54-53 win. On Saturday, the score was 53-53 when Mboya had his chance. The loss ended the Quakers' 34-game Ivy win streak at home, while last year's loss stopped Penn's 48-game league winning streak. And the superstitious might note that both Bowman and Mboya wore jersey No. 13. "We had a second chance tonight when we got to overtime," Dunphy said, comparing the two games. "This was probably more disappointing in that we were home and also we had our second chance opportunity."

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