COLUMN: Where have all the blowouts gone?

From Marc Chodock's, "That's What I'm Talking About" Take last year's Ivy League champions, Princeton, for example. In winning 25 games, the Tigers defeated 12 of their opponents by 20 points or more, reaching as high as No. 8 in the Associated Press poll. This season, the Penn men's basketball team (8-3) has shown little consistency in its drive to win the Ivy League championship outright for the first time since 1995 and make it back to the NCAA tournament after a three-year drought. While the Quakers started the season with two convincing performances -- defeating Temple in overtime and losing to Kansas by only five points -- Penn has yet to consistently play at a high level. To receive the votes, the attention and the respect Penn desires, the Quakers are going to have to blow out teams and show they can play 40 quality minutes against teams they don't need to play 40 quality minutes against in order to defeat. Coming into Saturday's game against Colgate (9-8) at the Palestra, the Quakers' average margin of victory against teams ranked in the top 290 of the RPI was a mere 6.25 points. On paper, Saturday's game against Colgate at the Palestra should have been a breeze for the Quakers. At 6'6", Red Raiders starting center Ben Wandtke barely towered over Penn guards Matt Langel and Michael Jordan. While winning the game 68-50, the Quakers made it seem as if they were the clear favorites only in the beginning of the two halves, putting together 12-2 and 12-0 runs, respectively. The remaining 30 minutes of the game were a complete role reversal as the Red Raiders outscored the Quakers 48-44. Unpopular, negative statements such as "playing down to the level of their opponents" or "not playing the full 40 minutes" could be used to describe the Quakers' play on Saturday and for most of this season. Only one of Penn's eight victories has been by more than 20 points -- a list that includes Brown (ranked No. 291 out of 310 in the RPI), Lehigh (No. 303) and Yale (No. 309). A convenient excuse for the Quakers' inability to close out inferior teams could be complacency. Playing in the 28th-ranked league out of 31 Division I college basketball conferences, the Quakers can be satisfied to win at the Ivy League level knowing that a successful Ivy season means an automatic NCAA bid. However, this group of Penn athletes has said that it wants to make its presence known to the rest of the coaches and writers around the country. To move its game to the "next level," Penn will have to learn to dictate the tempo of the game instead of playing off its opponents. The Quakers have to learn to play the whole game with the same intensity and concentration that they exhibited in their runs in the beginning of each half of the Colgate game. A full 40 minutes from the Quakers will mean a larger margin of victory, along with more playing time for the players sitting at the end of the bench. So far this season, the bottom three reserves have spent a total of 30 minutes on the court. In Saturday's game, Penn coach Fran Dunphy didn't go deep into the bench until 2 1/2 minutes were remaining and the Quakers were up by 18. Penn had a 23-point lead with just over 16 minutes left, but the Quakers could not shut the door. Instead the Red Raiders hung around and kept themselves within striking distance for the rest of the game. For Penn to receive the respect it thinks it deserves, it will have to show the rest of the nation that it can play at a high level, no matter the competition.