M. Hoops gets past Lehigh to end wild break

Geoff Owens had four second-half dunks to lead Penn over Lehigh. BETHLEHEM, Pa. --EQuakers center Geoff Owens scored 16 of his game-high 19 points in the second half, as the Penn men's basketball team overcame an awful first-half performance to edge Lehigh on Saturday night at Stabler Arena, 59-54. The Quakers (5-6) scored just 19 points in the first 20 minutes against the Engineers (5-10) on ice-cold 8-for-30 shooting from the floor. With a 6-for-6 second-half effort by Owens, which included four dunks, Penn bounced back to beat the Engineers for the ninth straight time. The win also closed out a 4-2 winter break for the Quakers, who won the Golden Bear Tournament with victories over Portland State and California. Penn also garnered a victory over Lafayette, but lost a blowout at Kansas on January 4 and a two-point heartbreaker to Villanova at the Palestra on January 9. "It's a little bit of luck sometimes to get the ball coming off the rim," Owens said. "We attacked the press a little bit more in the second half. That got me a lot more easy baskets." In addition to his strong scoring output, Owens hauled in 11 rebounds, including five off the offensive glass. His slam of a Matt Langel miss gave Penn its largest lead of the game at 40-32 with just under seven minutes to play. But the Quakers had trouble finishing off the pesky Engineers, who managed to cut the Penn lead to three points with 17.3 seconds remaining despite shooting 34 percent in the second half. Penn shot a mere 37 percent for the entire game, and struggled mightily at the foul line, connecting on only 51 percent from the charity stripe. "When you get a night when they're not making shots, that's the night you can beat them," Lehigh coach Sal Mentesana said. "There's a lot of little plays you can look back on and say if the ball bounces here and this shot goes in, there's a million of those. But we'd all be happier if rainwater was beer, but it isn't." A number of strange bounces came Michael Jordan's way, as the senior guard pulled down an uncharacteristically high nine boards to go with 17 points and three assists for the evening. Still, the Penn co-captain knew that the Quakers' performance would not have been good enough to beat most opponents. "We were lucky to get out of here," Jordan said. "We didn't do anything to win this game. We made a lot of stupid mistakes, but Owens carried us in the second half." For his part, however, even Owens struggled. The center made only five of his 14 free throws, and has now dipped to 46 percent from the line this year. "Obviously it's a part of my game I try to work on a lot," Owens said. "I was extremely disappointed with how I did tonight. I think it hurt us." To his credit, the Audobon, N.J., native has not let his troubles at the charity stripe or his shin splints affect the rest of his game. For the first time in weeks, Owens did not have his legs taped up, and he soared high in the air to block five Lehigh shots. Owens' presence in the frontcourt proved too tough for Lehigh to handle. Because of him, the Engineers could not work the ball to the inside. But on the outside, no shots were falling for Lehigh. The hosts connected on just 3-of-14 from downtown. "If we could have made a couple of jumpers, maybe it loosens up their defense a little bit, but we really could never do that," Mentesana said. Their strong defensive effort kept the Quakers in the game despite early mistakes that most other opponents on Penn's tough pre-conference schedule would have capitalized on. "We've got Temple on Thursday," Dunphy said. "If we do some of the things that we did tonight, we're in for a long evening." News And Notes Penn has not lost at Stabler Arena since 1996, when the Quakers lost an Ivy League playoff game to Princeton? Andrew Coates will miss the rest of the season after undergoing foot surgery over winter break? Michael Jordan scored his 1,300th career point in the first half and is now 11th on Penn's all-time scoring list. Jordan started the season 20th on that list.