Wildcarts tear into M. Hoops in opener

Host Kentucky pulled away from the quakers in the second half of penn's first game of the season. LEXINGTON, Ky -- The Penn men's basketball team threatened last night, backing No. 12 Kentucky against the ropes midway through the game and sending a hush through the 21,451 in attendance. But through it all, there remained the sense that the Wildcats would not lose, could not lose, in their season opener at Rupp Arena. And sure enough, the Wildcats responded, turning a 38-36 game into a blowout in a matter of minutes en route to a 67-50 win over the Quakers in the first round of the Preseason NIT. Kentucky has been invincible when playing its season opener at Rupp Arena; after weathering the Penn storm, the Cats improved to 19-0 all-time in openers at Rupp. After spending the first half playing catch-up and closing the Wildcats' lead to four at the half, Penn pulled to within two on a Ugonna Onyekwe tip-in of fellow freshman David Klatsky's miss with just under 14 minutes remaining. But Kentucky responded with a 12-1 run over the next three minutes. "I thought we did a pretty good job defensively tonight. We turned it over a few crucial times against the pressure which led to some easy baskets for them," said Penn coach Fran Dunphy, who watched his team commit 17 turnovers while dishing just five assists. "The biggest problem for us was our offense in the second half?. We just didn't get them to go down." While the Quakers definitely had the Kentucky fans in a cold sweat during much of the game, Jamaal Magloire -- Kentucky's senior leader and star center -- claimed that the Cats never felt that they were in danger of letting one slip away against Penn. "We didn't feel threatened at all," said Magloire, who finished with 11 points and blocked three shots. "I mean, if we played hard and brought the game that we should have from the tip off, we thought we were going to wear them down." Still, after falling behind 15-4 just over 6 1/2 minutes into the game, Penn clawed back and stayed even with Kentucky until midway through the second half. But then the Wildcats caught fire, and they could simply do no wrong while running off a 25-8 stretch. With just under eight minutes remaining, Kentucky freshman Marvin Stone made a forceful inside lunge to the hoop. Stone, a McDonald's All-American last season, was met by Penn freshman Koko Archibong in front of the basket. Archibong extended a lanky arm and deflected the shot, but the ball found its way upwards and towards the glass, where it took a crazy bounce and dropped directly into the hoop to make it 58-42. "We got a good flow there in the second half, we started to hustle and get up and down the court," said junior point guard Saul Smith, son of Kentucky coach Tubby Smith. The Wildcats, the winningest college basketball team of all-time (1,749 victories), were in their element at Rupp, taking pregame warmups in front of cheerleaders, two mascots and a dance team called the "Pom Squad" while the UK band lined three sides of the court. The Quakers, on the other hand, faced a multi-sided onslaught inside Rupp Arena. While the PA announcer butchered names of several Penn players, fans went after the Quakers, holding signs like "Kentucky Spanks Penn Nerds" designed to crack the Quakers and earn themselves a second on ESPN during the nationally televised contest. "Their fans are behind them," Penn co-captain Matt Langel said. "Every time it got close in the first half they all stood up and got behind their team." They were particularly brutal to Quakers co-captain and point guard Michael Jordan. After Jordan let fly a wild three-point miss 2 1/2 minutes into the game, the fans were relentless, chanting "Air-Ball! Air-Ball!" every time Jordan touched the ball; the frustrated Jordan finished 0-of-6 from three-point land. Penn committed 10 turnovers in the first half and hit just three of its first 12 shots as Kentucky jumped out to an early lead. Dunphy tried a number of substitutions in attempt to spur the Quakers, but it was the play of Langel, who hit 3-of-4 three pointers in the first half, which evened the score. With 3:23 left in the first half, Langel buried a three over Kentucky sophomore J.P. Blevins to tie it at 21. The teams battled back and forth for the remainder of the half, as the teams headed into the locker room with Kentucky up 32-28. But in the second half, things began to crumble for Penn. Down 38-36, a foreshadowing of what was to come occurred on a wild but fruitless series. The Quakers seemed to have gained momentum on Onyekwe's fifth field goal -- the freshman finished with 14 points and eight rebounds in 19 minutes -- but Kentucky's Smith answered with a three-pointer. Jordan then missed a three, responded by stealing it back from Smith, took it to the other end and was blocked by Kentucky's Stone. But Jordan was not done; he blocked Prince's three-point attempt at the other end and took it coast-to-coast, only to be stuffed by Prince on the other end on what appeared to be a foul. Jordan finished just 2-of-14 from the field and had four turnovers to one assist, but the problems were hardly all his own. Langel hit just one second-half field goal, and Penn overall was 23.5 percent (8-for-34) from the field in the second half. In one stretch, junior guard Lamar Plummer appeared to be going through a shoot-around while trying to find a groove; he missed a three, grabbed his own rebound, missed a three, saw Onyekwe grab the rebound, and then missed another three, all in a span of 18 seconds. The Quakers added to their own demise with poor free throw shooting. Center Geoff Owens, who shot 49.5 percent from the line last year, nailed 3-of-4 from the line as Penn closed the gap in the first half. But after being tomahawked in the head by Magliore while working inside with Penn trailing by six shortly after the break, Owens bricked two free throws. It hardly proved to be a charity stripe as the Quakers went just 4-of-12 from the line in the critical second half. "We have a lot of work to do," Dunphy said, "but I like the group and I think we're going to be alright because this is a great learning experience for your first game. We're going to have to look at it from that vein and hopefully we'll get better." While the Wildcats were able to stretch the lead as high as 19 late in the second half, the Quakers were obviously unconcerned with the amount -- they simply wanted to win. But Dunphy felt that Penn did not play its best game and as a result the Quakers are headed home rather than to Utah for the second round. "The [amount of the loss] is not an issue, I think we wanted to play better than we did, that's the most important thing," Dunphy said. "And I think if we played one of our better games, I think at the end we would've been close and might have had a chance to steal one, but that didn't happen for us." However, Kentucky coach Smith believes that Penn is a team to be reckoned with after watching them challenge his squad for almost 30 minutes. "They've got a very good team -- they're going to win a lot of games this year," Smith said. "They will be back in the NCAAs. I think they're pretty talented."