Foul shooting nearly ruins night for M. Hoops

The Quakers shot just 10-of-24 from the charity stripe last night. The Penn men's basketball team dodged a bullet last night at the Palestra. True, the Quakers never trailed in their 54-46 win over Drexel and the Dragons never got within seven points in the last 28 minutes of the game. But Penn's philanthropy to the Dragons at the charity stripe gave Drexel every opportunity to claw back into the game in the final minutes. The Quakers shot a horrific 35.7 percent from the foul line and hit only 1-of-6 free throws in the last 40 seconds of the game. Luckily for Penn, however, Drexel could not capitalize on the Quakers' mistakes. The Dragons missed their last four shots from the field to allow Penn to preserve its lead, but Quakers coach Fran Dunphy admits his team's deficiencies at the stripe are a cause for concern. "Our foul shooting is so poor right now," Dunphy said. "That's a stat that we need to take care of. We need to step up and make shots." Penn center Geoff Owens -- who shot just 3-of-9 from the line -- was the worst of the Quakers at the stripe, but poor free-throw shooting seemed to have spread like the mid-winter flu, affecting the whole team. Freshman guard David Klatsky, 8-for-8 from the line entering the game, missed his first foul shot of the season last night. Forwards Ugonna Onyekwe and Josh Sanger both missed front ends of one-and-one opportunities. Even senior Matt Langel caught the virus, missing both of his free-throw attempts. "[Langel] makes every foul shot he takes. Tonight he misses two of them." Dunphy said. But as a team, Penn's foul-shooting problems last night were not an aberration -- merely a low point for a team that has had trouble from the line all year. The Quakers are shooting just 61 percent from the stripe this season. And that number falls to just 53 percent if you take away the senior backcourt of Michael Jordan and Langel. Furthermore, half of the six Quakers that get to the line most frequently -- Owens, Onyekwe and Koko Archibong -- are shooting at or below 50 percent for the season. Penn's foul-shooting problems have not been confined to this season, however, as the Quakers shot only 65 percent from the stripe in 1998-99. And for those who do not remember, poor foul shooting contributed to Penn's key losses to Florida and Princeton last season. The Quakers shot 36 percent from the line against the Gators, and one could argue that free-throw shooting was the difference in the two Penn-Princeton matchups in 1999. The Quakers hit just 9-of-19 foul shots against Princeton in blowing a 26-point lead last February, but prevented a late Tigers' run in the March rematch by sinking 8-of-9 from the stripe in the last 3:15 of that game. This season, Penn has not lost a game due to poor foul shooting, but this marks the second time in three games that the Quakers have let a team hang close because they could not convert from the line. Lehigh almost pulled off an upset of Penn earlier this month, fueled in part by 15 missed Penn free throws. The Quakers hit 52 percent of their shots from the charity stripe, and Owens struggled to hit 5-of-14 from the line in Stabler Arena. Last night, seldom-used sophomore Dan Solomito made Penn's first trip to the line and sunk his first attempt. But the sophomore forward missed his second shot, and the rest of the night at the stripe would be more like a nightmare for Penn. Big men Geoff Owens and Josh Sanger both missed front ends of one-and-ones 15 seconds apart late in the first half, and Penn went into the locker room at halftime shooting just 5-of-10 from the line. Things only got worse for the Quakers in the second half, however, reaching an ugly climax in the final 40 seconds. With Penn up by seven, the last few possessions were like a broken record of futility: two missed foul shots by Owens, Drexel shot missed, one of two foul shots missed by Klatsky, Drexel shot missed, two missed foul shots by Langel, Drexel shot missed. Penn escaped with an eight-point victory, but if a few of those shots had fallen for the Dragons, the Quakers could have found themselves three games under .500 for the season.