Penn thanks Elis, then beats them

Penn recovered from a rough first-half at Brown to sweep two Ivy rivals and move into a tie for first place. NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- In a wild Ivy League weekend in southern New England, the Penn men's basketball team earned two victories, buried the "Yale curse," and found itself back atop the Ancient Eight standings. The Quakers escaped a first-half scare to down Brown 73-57 on Friday before pummeling Yale 71-50 at the John Lee Amphitheater the next day to close out the weekend. But the biggest story of all occurred Friday night, when the lowly Elis earned just their second Ivy win of the season by stunning league-leading Princeton, 60-58, in double overtime. With Penn guard Lamar Plummer at the line and the Quakers holding a 67-53 lead over the Bears, a few radio-wielding fans leapt into the air screaming for joy. As Plummer drained both free throws, the public address announcer at Brown's Pizzitola Center revealed the source of the fans' glee -- Princeton had fallen. "When you're playing, you don't really hear [the score updates being announced]," Quakers tri-captain Jed Ryan said. "But when you get on the foul line and you finally hear that the final score is 60-58, then you're like, 'Wow, shit! Okay, now we're back in it.'" Ryan's three-point shooting in the second half made the difference for Penn (16-4, 8-1 Ivy League) in Providence. The senior forward hit 4-of-4 from beyond the arc as the Quakers -- down 31-29 at the half -- pulled away from the Bears (4-18, 2-8). A 14-0 Brown run, coupled with Penn's 13-for-33 first-half shooting, had the Bears within sniffing distance of their first win over the Quakers in eight years. "We didn't play well and we knew it," said Penn coach Fran Dunphy, who witnessed the Quakers drop a 40-13 lead in a 50-49 loss to Princeton last week. "So we just said let's forget our egos, forget feeling sorry for ourselves and let's go out and play hard and do the things we can do." With 12 minutes to play and the shot clock at two, center Geoff Owens rejected a spinning eight-footer by Kamal Rountree, the Ivy League's second leading scorer. Frank Brown then took a feed at the other end and drained a 14-footer from the left side to make it 47-35 Penn. Six minutes later, Ryan swished another of his trademark treys and the Quakers immediately followed with a steal at halfcourt by Paul Romanczuk. The senior tri-captain threw down a two-handed jam in front of the dancing members of the Penn band for a 20-point lead. The Quakers would never look back. Riding the second-half momentum of the Brown game and the emotions from the Tigers' loss, Penn came storming out of the gates against Yale. The Quakers wasted little time in building a first-half edge over the Elis (4-18, 2-8), a team clearly spent from Friday's win over Princeton. "That's an excuse, if somebody says, 'Hey, you've got a player hurt,' that's not an excuse," said Yale coach Dick Kuchen, not ready to concede that the Princeton win drained his team. "It was probably one of the bigger wins? in the Ivy League because nobody's been able to beat them for 36 games, but it's still an excuse. You should still be able to come back and play the next night." A three-pointer by Plummer at 11:17 capped a 16-4 Penn run and put the Quakers ahead 21-6. But a pair of Penn turnovers and a nearly three-minute dry spell for the Quakers helped the Elis pull within 10. But Penn tri-captain Michael Jordan answered with a three-pointer to push the lead back to 13 and send the Penn-heavy crowd -- which included more than a few "Romanczuk 3:16 T-shirts" -- on its feet. Unbeknownst to Jordan and the crowd, the junior point guard eclipsed the 1,000-point mark for his career with the trey, becoming the 27th Quaker in history to reach that milestone. "I got it? Oh sweet. I had no clue," said Jordan, who finished with 19 points and five assists -- one more assist than the entire Yale team. For Jordan and the Quakers, the focus of the game was clearly not on personal milestones but instead on returning to the top of the Ivy League. "We're still going to have to win out anyway," Jordan said. "We're happy that Princeton lost, so now we can just win straight out and go to the Tournament without a playoff." But with Penn's determined focus on plowing through its Ivy foes, personal milestones were bound to fall. Ryan was unconscious from downtown against the Elis, draining a career-high seven three-pointers en route to a career-high 23 points. Ryan's hot hand took the pressure off Penn's inside players, as Romanczuk and Owens combined for just eight shots from the floor against Yale. "If Jed wasn't going to shoot them well tonight then maybe we would've forced it inside," Dunphy said. "But if he's making those shots, well, what the hell, let's go and just ride him, ride him like a big ol' horse. He did such a great job tonight." The weekend sweep helped the Quakers exorcise the demons of Tuesday's folding against Princeton. "Emotionally, Tuesday night was just one of those things that will remain with us for a long time," Dunphy said. "But there's only one way we can handle it -- to use it as the greatest learning experience any of us ever had. "But I think we've moved on, we've gotten it out of our system." The 21-point drubbing of the Elis gave the Quakers their first season sweep of Yale since 1994-95. "Myself and Jed [Ryan], we talked to the guys in the hotel," Jordan said. "We were like, 'We split every year. This is the year where it's got to stop.' Gabe Hunterton's gone, so the curse of Yale's gone. We came out on top tonight." In Jordan's freshman year, Hunterton hit two free throws after a controversial foul to give Yale a 60-58 win at the Palestra -- the same score by which the Elis beat Princeton Friday. And with that score fresh in their minds, the Quakers rolled to an easy win over Yale. In the final minute, Penn senior Mike Sullivan picked Mark Bratton's pocket at half court and elevated for a two-handed slam to make it 70-46. The Elis sandwiched a Dan Solomito free throw with two garbage-time layups to hit the 50-point mark. But nothing could steal the Quakers' joy at having buried the "Yale curse" and resumed their shared perch above the Ivy League.