Front & Center Court

Walking into the Palestra, spectators are greeted by the shining bronze faces of the Big Five Hall of Fame plaques. Penn senior co-captains Paul Romanczuk and Jed Ryan may not leave any metal in that case. But they do hope to get some more cloth into the Palestra's rafters before they leave the Quakers' home arena for good. To allow the raising of that championship banner, which would signify an invite to the NCAA tournament, the senior frontcourt duo must first power the Quakers past Brian Earl, Gabe Lewullis and Princeton's back-door offense. This season, Romanczuk and Ryan should emerge as the Ivy League's elite, with the departure of Tigers' frontcourt of Steve Goodrich, James Mastaglio and Mitch Henderson. "I think that everyone sees the opportunity with Princeton graduating three seniors," Romanczuk said. "Right now we've got to focus on these games at the beginning, but looking at the schedule, any of these Ivy games are our big games." That includes even the Ancient Eight opponents that lie outside Old Nassau. Despite the Tigers 71-52 blowout of the Quakers at Jadwin Gymnasium, Penn's other three Ivy losses were by just one, three and six points -- to Yale, Cornell and Princeton respectively. "This year, we don't want any of those 'we should've,' 'we could've,' 'why didn't we?' kind of games," Ryan said. "The kind where at the end the other team makes shots, or we miss shots, or they take the ball. We want this season to be strong from the time we start on Tuesday to the time we finish late in March." Ryan has reason for confidence, given that Penn stands this season as the veteran team in the Ivies, and both he and Romanczuk have excelled against Princeton, even despite the Quakers' continued defeats. Ryan's first career double-double came at Jadwin in 1997, as he scored 16 points and pulled down 10 boards. Romanczuk, meanwhile, sparked a Quakers' second-half comeback in last season's finale at the Palestra with 22 points and 9 rebounds, as he emerged as a dominator of Goodrich on the low-post. Romanczuk, who averaged 14.0 points and 6.3 rebounds per game last season, even racked up eight points and five boards against nationally-ranked Kansas last season at the MCI Center while guarded by then senior All-American Raef LaFrentz. "[I want to] take advantage of playing Kansas in my own gym," Romanczuk said. "It's been our preparation all along, stopping their weapons, and getting to our strengths. We don't want to get wrapped up in a transition game, where they're running up and down the court, we want to stick to our game and a halfcourt offense." Penn's halfcourt offense should prove strong this weekend. With the return of junior center Geoff Owens from the medical condition that sidelined him for all of last season, Romanczuk returns to power forward with Ryan, who averaged 10.1 points and 4.0 boards last season, playing his natural three-spot -- a move that will grant the Quakers much needed size up-front. "We're not going to have as many mismatches [like Romanczuk on LaFrentz]," Owens said. "It's going well, with Jed being a shooter, and Paul has improved his shot so much. We'll be able to do a little more with Paul down there [at the four] as a banger, and keep me out of foul trouble a little bit." In addition to keeping Owens out of foul trouble, Romanczuk should be able to get to the foul line more often from his natural power forward position. "Paul shot more fouls than anyone else in the history of the school last year," said Penn coach Fran Dunphy. "I'd like him to do that again, and to shoot a better percentage from the foul line. He's very adept at that, and he can finish plays as well as anyone we've ever had here." With Romanczuk and Owens playing down low, Ryan will be a wild card for teams to deal with, and Dunphy is happy to have that luxury. "Jed hopefully can get his share of three-point shots up there, and we can get just a steady overall floor game from him," Dunphy said. "He'll need to play some perimeter spot and some post position spot, depending on the situation each game. He's pretty versatile, and I'll love to use that versatility to our advantage." Another advantage for Penn in the past has been the intense noise of the Palestra. Football attendance has been low throughout the fall, but there is no concern about Red and Blue enthusiasm on the hardwood. Everyone involved with the team is quick to dispel any notion of a breakdown in fan support. "I think that we have a core base of fans, and there are some fans who go and say 'wow, we're doing well this year.' I mean, I expect sellouts for the big games, and a good core base of fans for the games that are technically not so big in people's minds," Romanczuk said. "People understand that we're trying to do something special this year, and hopefully they want to be a part of it," Ryan said. If that "something special" starts to develop quickly, Penn could start to garner votes in the national media polls. This may excite the fans, but the Quakers have the maturity and leadership in Romanczuk and Ryan to deal with such success. "After the first couple of weeks if we win, and we're ranked, that's nice," Ryan said. "But we'll still have to win those Ivy League games and win the rest of our games to make it to the tournament. Our goal shouldn't be to be nationally ranked. Our goal should be to win as many games as we can." The quest to win those games begins with the one-two punch of eighth-ranked Kansas and seventh-ranked, Big Five rival Temple. Again, Penn's senior leaders are remaining calm. "You've first got to prepare with Kansas," Romanczuk said. "I mean, as the cliche says, we've got to take it one game at a time, and we're not going to look ahead to Temple yet. Temple's playing some good ball right now, and that's fine, but right now our focus is Kansas." That game-by-game focus will help the Red and Blue to avoid letdown games like last year's 73-70 loss at Cornell, only five days before the season ending game against Princeton. Another reason that neither Romanczuk nor Ryan wants a letdown is that it is, of course, their final season at Penn, and perhaps in basketball. Both are enrolled in Wharton, and they are both having a hard time deciding what to do next year. "I'd like to play basketball, but there's that whole thing of where do you go, how much money do you make," Ryan said. "I mean, I don't want to have to go to Turkey and play in some small Turkish village for a meal every other day, so it depends, I guess." If their last memory of organized basketball is indeed this March, the duo hope to leave a lasting impression, by providing the Palestra faithful with one more championship banner to hang alongside those earned by past Quakers greats.