NOTEBOOK: 'Consistency' is key word for Dunphy and Quakers

Miles CohenMiles CohenThe Daily Pennsylvanian All season long, Penn has lacked the ability to come out and play a solid 40 minutes. Whether it has been a slow start, a poor finish or bricks at the charity stripe, the Quakers have experienced it all. With this in mind, Dunphy feels this week is crucial to Penn's chances at another Ivy title. Specifically he wants to see his team have more nights at the foul line like they did against La Salle -- 91.3 percent. To solve the Quakers' woes from the line, Dunphy has sought over 25 different theories concerning how to improve his teams foul shooting troubles. "Knowing how to get to the foul line and then converting is a major issue for us now," Dunphy said. "I think it is a matter of concentration and preparation. We have tried just about every avenue of approach concerning foul shooting." It will be simply a matter of time, the eighth-year Quakers coach went on to conclude. To ensure that this year's green squad does not fall into the same free throw dilemma that plagued the Matt Maloney-Jerome Allen team, Dunphy plans to continue to run his team through a series of foul shooting exercises at each practice. Already the coach's message on the importance of cashing in from the charity stripe appears to be paying off. Only two days after the 61-53 loss to the Big Red, Matt Langel, captain Jamie Lyren and Garett Kreitz arrived 25 minutes before practice and started to work on their own form at the foul line. One Quaker who desperately needs to spend extra time working on free throws is George Mboya. At present the junior transfer student is netting a horrid 31 percent of his foul shots. Dunphy remarked that he plans to keep an eye on Mboya's technique. · The harsh reality for the Red and Blue with the defeat in Ithaca, N.Y., Saturday night is that Penn now needs to play "mistake-free basketball" for rest of the season to have a chance to challenge Princeton. Dunphy sees this year's Ivy League as seven relatively good teams and one very good team. The latter being the Tigers. He feels the seven other teams in the Ancient Eight all have about the same level of talent, with Princeton being the team to beat in '97. "I think there is a lot of even talent in the league," Dunphy said. "And Princeton is far-and-away the best basketball team in the league. The rest of seven teams can either win or lose based on that night's performance." More to the point, there is a general feeling among players that every time Penn steps on the court it must play flawless basketball. "We have to play extremely well every time out in order to win games," Dunphy said. "So we can not make any mistakes at crunch time defensively and we have to make foul shouts." · The word of the day at the Palestra yesterday was "consistency." During the players' shoot-around before practice officially started, all three assistant coaches worked with the guards at their cuts and picks and with the forwards at boxing out. Each coach ran into that code word several times. "We are a team that can beat anybody in our league and lose to anyone in our league," Dunphy said. He went on to say he "absolutely" felt his team was inconsistent. But he backed up that statement by saying, "I do not know if I would call inconsistency as much as reality." · Some interesting statistics to keep in mind when Quakers fans travel to the Palestra this weekend. Freshman Geoff Owens' 16 blocks this season has him nine away from Penn career shot-block leader Tim Krug's rookie mark of 25. There are 10 games remaining in the season for Owens to top that mark. · Also worth mentioning is the three-point shooting of Kreitz who heading into last weekend was shooting 41.2 percent for his career from downtown. If his golden touch continues, the junior from Cresskill, N.J., will finish in third place on Penn's list for all-time three-point field goal percentage. · The most glaring statistic this year is the amount of turnovers committed by Penn. Already the Quakers have surrendered the ball 232 times with 10 games left this season. Compared with the 290 Penn committed all of last year, one can see why Dunphy is so concerned about his team's sloppy play.