Showdown tonight at the Palestra

As the 2,889 Penn faithful headed into the Palestra this past Saturday night, each and every one of them held a common belief. No matter what happened on the road, Penn was invincible at home versus the Ivy League. After 34 straight league victories at the Palestra, the streak vanished into thin air as the Quakers were dropped by Dartmouth, 74-70. Seventy-two hours later, the screams of celebration by the Big Green are still ringing loudly in the ears of the Red and Blue (8-10, 4-2 Ivy League). But Penn has no time to wallow in their narrow defeat. Tonight the Quakers have to put the Dartmouth debacle behind them and get ready to rumble with Princeton (16-3, 6-0). According to Quakers freshman Michael Jordan, after the loss to Cornell (61-53), the team determined that every game was a must-win situation. Following last weekend's disappointing outcome, Jordan and his teammates are in the process of regrouping. Mathematically Penn has yet to be eliminated. But for the Quakers to capture a fifth straight Ivy title, Penn will probably need to register two wins against Princeton, and victories on the road at Dartmouth and Harvard. Before Penn can begin thinking about a trip to the Big Dance, the Quakers know that they must come out aggressively against the Tigers and play "heads-up basketball" in the opening minutes of action. "I think again in the first five minutes of the Princeton game we will need to take better care of the ball than we did against Dartmouth," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "We turned the ball over one too many times for my liking and that ultimately led to easy points on the other end." Specifically, Dunphy is referring to the six turnovers in the initial minutes of the contest versus the Big Green which allowed Dartmouth to jump out to a 9-2 lead. While Dunphy sights sloppy play as the explanation for Penn's early deficits, Jordan feels that the Quakers' slow starts come from the Red and Blue's streaky shooters. Referring to this weekend's games, Jordan recalled how "when we came out and hit our first five or six shots the crowd said these guys are hot tonight, but when we miss our first five or six everyone said we lacked intensity." Overall Jordan feels it is just a matter of Penn hitting its shots. The 6-foot guard, who has only watched the monotonous Princeton offense from the stands, knows that his role will be to apply pressure to veteran Tiger Sydney Johnson or sophomore Brian Earl. A senior from Towson, Md., Johnson is averaging nine points per game and is the floor leader for Princeton. Earl, on the other hand, nails 41 percent of his shots from downtown and is leading the Tigers in scoring average (11.7 ppg). Princeton coach Bill Carmody noted that these two players, along with junior center Steve Goodrich, will all have an instrumental role in a Tigers win. As Carmody enjoys his first season as head coach, he commented that he can relate to Dunphy's season of growing pains. Three years ago the Quakers' senior-laden squad schooled Princeton's freshmen, but now the tables have turned. "A few years back when we were playing against Penn's really good team, our junior class was freshmen and we started three freshmen that year," Carmody said. "This year's situation is reversed. I think that we have a veteran team and we just have to go out and play hard." Looking at the game from a different angle, Dunphy is not only hoping that Penn sinks its treys but counting on some clutch performances from his guards. In addition to nailing their three-point attempts, Dunphy expects low-post threat Paul Romanczuk to rebound from his poor shooting performance (1-of-10) against Dartmouth. For the past three days, Carmody has told his team, which sports a 84.2 percent winning percentage, to forget about the Quakers' overall record. "Yes, Penn is a below .500 club," Carmody said. "But they have played in some hostile environments and have grown up pretty quickly. What matters now is that they are 4-2 in the Ivy League and (tonight) will be a big game for us because the Penn-Princeton rivalry has become so big." It would appear that Dunphy and the Quakers could not agree more with Carmody. "This is a big rivalry," Dunphy said. "Princeton is in first place, so it is a good basketball team and we are going to have to play extremely well." It seems that each year the rivalry between Princeton and Penn takes on an added importance. Tonight, Penn will look not only to give Princeton its first league loss, but also to gain back some of the invincibility at home it might have lost over the weekend.