COLUMN: First half was not what it seemed

From Daniel Tenenblatt's, "A Perfect Ten" From Daniel Tenenblatt's, "A Perfect Ten"Penn's first-half success was more the result of hot three-point shooting than stellar overall play. Fool's Gold. Penn senior Jed Ryan and junior Matt Langel shot a combined 10-of-11 from three-point range in a first half that ended with the Quakers ahead 43-32. But if the Penn faithful in the stands thought their beloved Quakers were playing well, they must have been blinded by the paint on their faces. The Quakers lead came despite only getting points from three players -- Ryan, Langel and Michael Jordan. Penn's two big men, Paul Romanczuk and Geoff Owens, added a grand total of zero points on 0-of-2 combined shooting from the field and 0-for-4 from the line in the first half. Perhaps the most ominous fact was that Penn's halfcourt offense accounted for only one two-point field goal in the entire first half. "We got a little bit of Fool's Gold in the first half when we were making a lot of shots -- it appeared like we were playing better than we were. Making shots has the ability to give you that impression," Dunphy said. "I thought that came back to haunt us in the second half." While it was exciting to watch Penn run up a double-digit lead, there was no way Dunphy could have been pleased with the way his team was playing. In fact, the lead was even more misleading when one accounts for the early jitters of a Florida team whose eight-man rotation features three freshmen and two sophomores. By the time the Gators had gotten comfortable in their first NCAA Tournament action, Penn led 14-3. "To start the game in the first five to eight minutes, I felt our guys were very, very uptight, very, very nervous," Florida coach Billy Donovan said. "We did not play our style of play at all. Our press was a non-factor, we did a very, very poor job getting back in transition." But 1 1/2 minutes later, Owens went to the bench with two fouls and the Gators were finally showing signs of life. The Quakers never led by more than 13 as Florida played them evenly the rest of the half. Still don't see the Fool's Gold? That was all the Gators needed to bring Penn's house of cards tumbling down. The Quakers came out prepared to do exactly the same things in the second half but now Florida was ready. Donovan had seen Penn's guards drive to the basket with seemingly no intention of shooting over Florida's big men. Instead of bringing help on the perimeter to stop Jordan and Langel before they could drive to the basket, Florida brought help inside. The Gators watched the Quakers drive before double-teaming them with their big men and forcing them to kick it out almost immediately. With Romanczuk only able to play seven minutes in the second half because of foul trouble and Owens not able to do much on offense -- partly due to foul trouble of his own -- the Quakers had no inside threats to keep the Gators honest. Jordan would drive past his man, kick it out for the open three-pointer and find the Florida defender still right up on Langel or Ryan. This gave Penn two options -- shoot for three over the defender or back up and take open shots from NBA range. The Quakers tried both tactics, but neither proved successful. Langel and Ryan went from hitting 10-of-11 from behind the arc in the first half to a combined 0-for-5 after the break. The Quakers did not make their first three of the second half until Jordan converted their 10th attempt with 4:25 left in the game. By that point, the score was 60-53 Gators and Owens and Romanczuk had both fouled out. That basket accounted for three of Penn's five points in a 28-5 Florida run that spanned 13 minutes and eight seconds of the second half. The Quakers ultimately went 3-for-15 from downtown in the second half for an even 20 percent. Making matters worse, two of the three conversions came in the last three minutes of the game, with the outcome already largely decided. Falling deeper and deeper into a hole, Penn felt like threes were the only way to come back. But the more the Quakers tried to revisit their long distance success of the first half, the more the Gators capitalized on defense. Inside the three-point line, Penn only took seven shot attempts. While the Quakers were also fouled inside four times, they could only manage three two-point field goals. And like the first half, the halfcourt offense only resulted in one two-point basket -- a Frank Brown jumper off a pass from Jordan -- before the game was decided. Penn's success this season came largely because it was able to achieve a balance between Romanczuk and Owens inside, and Jordan, Langel and Ryan on the perimeter. In most basketball games, the failure of this inside-outside game comes when three-pointers just do not seem to be falling and defenses can collapse on the big men inside. But against Florida, the Quakers suffered from the opposite, as foul trouble and good defense combined to keep Romanczuk and Owens -- who scored a mere three points total -- from getting any rhythm on offense. "Coach wanted us to punch it inside and get the inside-outside game working because we shot so well in the first half from beyond the arc but... in the second half we started playing out of character and started shooting deep threes," Jordan said. While Penn's stellar three-point shooting in the first half did open up a big lead, it really just provided a false sense of security. With no consistent inside threat to worry about, Florida's defenders did not need to stray from Penn's perimeter shooters. Without the open three-pointers that got them through the first half, the Quakers were left with no offense. But by the time they realized what had happened, gold fever had gotten the best of the Quakers and they were on a plane heading home.