Penn doesn't hide its disappointment

The Penn men's basketball tries to make sense of Tuesday night's shocking 50-49 loss to Ivy League leader Princeton. A day may have passed, but the Penn men's basketball team is still hurting. Watching a 27-point lead slip away against your worst enemy would put anyone in a bad mood. For the Quakers, it couldn't get any worse than it did on Tuesday night. "I'm not very emotional when it comes to showing my feelings or anything, but during the game when the buzzer sounded, I wanted to cry," junior tri-captain Michael Jordan said. "But I refused to cry in front of all those people." Senior forward Paul Romanczuk experienced the same feelings as his fellow captain. "I'm still disappointed," he said. "You can't help but to be disappointed at this point in time." · They may be disappointed but the Quakers are now even more focused on their remaining games. Beginning this weekend with games at Brown and Yale and leading up to the highly anticipated Princeton rematch on March 2, each of the seven Ivy contests left on the schedule becomes a must-win. With the Tigers now holding a one-game advantage in the standings, Penn has no room for error. "I believe this team has a lot of fight and a lot of character," Romanczuk said. "We've got to prove ourselves in those eight [remaining] games." · But as the Quakers make their trek through those eight games, which include a Big 5 matchup with Villanova, the bitter memories of Princeton's miracle comeback will still linger. As any of the 8,722 fans at the Palestra could attest to, Tuesday's game was like no other. Not only did the game feature the largest comeback in Ivy League history, but it was also the fourth-largest in NCAA history. "You never think this could happen to you," Jordan said. "We just choked. We blew it in the second half." · Quakers Trivia: Before this week, when was the last time Penn scored fewer than 50 points in one game? (Answer below). · Recently, Romanczuk looked more like a boxer than a basketball player. Romanczuk had a gash over his left eye from a collision with Geoff Owens in the Harvard game. The six stitches the cut earned him will be removed before the Yale game on Saturday. His shiner, however, may take a little more time to go away. · With Penn in desperate need of any type of scoring in the second half and with Jed Ryan not connecting on anything, many people were asking themselves the same question Tuesday night. Where was Frank Brown? Brown, who was the first man off the bench earlier this season, spent only five minutes on the floor. In his only field goal attempt, he buried a three-pointer to increase Penn's first-half lead to 23 points. Recently, Brown -- who scored 17 points in 26 minutes of action against Kansas in the season opener -- has seen his time diminish significantly. He never even took off his warm-up shirt against Dartmouth last Friday. Penn coach Fran Dunphy said that Brown's lack of minutes does not stem from any bad blood between the two. Brown's playing time is instead determined by game-by-game coaching decisions. Against Princeton, Dunphy felt that the defense and ball-handling skill of Mike Sullivan would be more beneficial to the Quakers than Brown's scoring. "[Sullivan] is a little bit better of a defender than Frank and a little bit better of a ball handler than Frank, but I think as we second-guessed ourselves, there were some times that I probably could have had Frank in the game," Dunphy said. "It's just one of those things when you go with your gut reaction." Dunphy added that Brown has recently recovered from a stomach virus that sidelined him earlier this month and that Sullivan has been playing very well in practice. He went on to say that Brown, who earned a technical foul on January 30 for a push during the Columbia game, is "an outstanding person," and that he is not in the coach's doghouse. "When I got out there in the beginning, I hit a three so that boosted my confidence. I like playing in front of a large crowd in a big game against Princeton," Brown said. "I was just ready to go. I wanted to play. I'm just trying to help the team win. Whatever coach decides, I'm with him." · Trivia Answer: December 21, 1996 against the Temple Owls. Penn lost 69-45. · Two members of the Quakers will start showcasing their non-basketball talents next week, as Jordan and Ryan serve as the hosts of a sports show on UTV13. The show, which will focus on sports besides men's basketball and football, will air Monday nights at 8:30 p.m. "We haven't come up with a name yet. It might be Quaker Talk or Jed Ryan and a Little Black Guy or something like that," Jordan said. "It's just to promote the other sports that don't get as much limelight as football and basketball."

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