Penn aces pre-Princeton exams

The Penn men's basketball team slammed Dartmouth and Harvard to stay undefeated in the Ivy League. At the Palestra on Friday night, one Dartmouth fan had a sign that said "On our way to the NCAAs." She could still be right if she is referring to the Penn men's basketball team, winner of its last 11 contests after posting home victories over the Big Green and Harvard by scores of 79-67 and 81-56, respectively. But the Quakers did not emerge from the weekend completely unscathed. Tri-captain forward Paul Romanczuk went down in the final minutes of play against Harvard Saturday after running into Geoff Owens while fighting for a rebound. Romanczuk lay on the ground a few minutes before heading to the locker room. The gash over his left eye will require six stitches and will force him to wear protective goggles against Princeton. But entering the weekend, it looked like Penn might have trouble from their toughest Ivy opponent thus far. For the first time in several games, the Quakers (14-3, 6-0 Ivy League) faced a lineup that had the potential to match Penn's scoring balance. Dartmouth (10-10, 6-2), however, knew that little else was similar between the two teams. "[Penn] really has their substitution pattern down, as well as inside-outside balance," Dartmouth coach Dave Faucher said. "They make a couple of threes, and you think you get the answer because you'll stay up on the players and not dig down on the post. But as soon as they see the open space, they go right at you inside." The game started off in that order -- from outside to inside. The Quakers began by jumping out to a 21-10 lead in the first 9:25 of the game. Penn forward Jed Ryan caught fire early, hitting three three-pointers during the run. "[Ryan's shooting] was huge for us in the first half," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "Without that, it wasn't as if we had a smooth, flowing offense." This lack of offensive success beyond Ryan was true during the next 2 1/2 minutes when the Big Green came back quickly. Dartmouth crept back to tie the game 22-22 on a short fadeaway shot by the Ivy League's leading scorer, forward Shaun Gee. Dartmouth later halted another Quakers run when Big Green guard Greg Buth hit a three-point shot from three feet beyond the arc. Buth's bucket sent Dartmouth into halftime trailing just 33-29. "We just couldn't make a basket except for a couple of foul shots in that stretch," Dunphy said. "I would hope that it awakened [Penn] if indeed they were not understanding? how tough this game was going to be. We need to be more consistent in our approach." The Big Green came out of the locker room and picked up right where they left off. On the first possession, Buth tied the game 33-33 after being fouled on a successful three-point shot from the right side of the arc. Buth's four-point play, however, marked the last time Dartmouth would tie the contest. Three minutes later, the Quakers began a 10-2 run when Penn guard Matt Langel cut through the lane for a layup. Dartmouth pulled within eight midway through the second half, but then Penn guard Michael Jordan hit two free throws and Langel followed a minute later with a three-pointer. The Quakers had a 13-point lead at that point and they never looked back as Dartmouth's possessions started to go astray. "We tried to emulate the way Penn passed the ball to its own guys, but we've been turning the ball over too much, and we did it again in this game," Faucher said. Gee led Dartmouth with 21 points. Buth, center Ian McGinnis, and forward Charles Harris also reached double figures with 17, 14 and 13 points, respectively. Big Green guard Flinder Boyd also racked up nine assists. McGinnis, the nation's leading rebounder coming into last weekend, added nine rebounds -- more than three below his average entering the game. "[McGinnis] is a strong kid in there," Romanczuk said. "He got a ton of rebounds tonight, but he knows how to position himself very well under the boards, and he'll get the ball." While McGinnis was the game's high rebounder, Penn held the upper hand when it came to interior scoring. Romanczuk led the Quakers with 18 points and five assists. Langel and backcourt mate Michael Jordan also tallied four and eight assists, respectively. From outside, Ryan made life harder for the Big Green beyond the first few minutes of the contest, going 5-of-9 from beyond the arc to register 16 points overall. Penn guard Frank Brown did not get off the bench in the Dartmouth game for what Dunphy called a "coach's decision." "I was trying to search for the right moment to? put him in, but it just didn't have the feel for it to me," Dunphy said. Dunphy would not elaborate on whether the benching was related to the technical foul Brown picked up in the second half of last Saturday's win at Columbia, as Dunphy benched him for the rest of that game as well. But Brown played 11 minutes on Saturday and scored six points after receiving an ovation when he first entered the game. On Saturday night against the Crimson (9-11, 3-5), the Quakers kept to their "one game at a time" philosophy. This time, Penn's athleticism immediately threw off Harvard's defensive plans. "When we got into early foul trouble, there was a little bit of apprehension as to how aggressive we should be inside," Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. "That put us behind the eight-ball." For the second game in a row, the Quakers hit long-range shots within the first six minutes of the game. Ryan hit a three from the top of the key, and Langel hit two early threes from both sides of the key. Romanczuk and Owens drew four shooting fouls during that span as well, helping Penn build a 10-point lead. The gap grew to 40-20 three minutes before halftime. Although the lead seemed safe at that point, the Crimson grabbed the momentum before the end of the half with a 10-0 run. But before Harvard could cruise into the break, the Quakers responded in timely fashion. After a Jordan miss from the right side, Owens quickly put back the rebound just before the horn to put Penn up both on the scoreboard, 42-30, and in the momentum. Harvard forward Dan Clemente carried as much of the workload as he could handle, leading Crimson scorers with 15 points on 7-of-14 shooting despite being in foul trouble the whole night. Harvard guard Tim Hill added 11 points. For Penn, all five starters reached double figures for the second night in a row. Owens led the Quakers with 16 points and 12 rebounds. Jordan added 10 points and four assists despite going scoreless in the first half. Langel and Romanczuk also distributed the ball well, putting up six and four assists, respectively.