COLUMN: Taking Control: Quakers assert Ivy superiority

"It's not satisfying at all," Jordan said after last night's 55-46 win at Princeton. Hold on a second, Mike -- hearing an apparent understatement like that is enough to make any celebratory Penn fan drop his or her jaw faster than Spencer Gloger can play himself out of a ball game. It's a statement that might leave those who watched last night's game from the far northwest corner of Jadwin -- the ones chanting "M-V-P! M-V-P!" for Jordan and drowning out a few desperation "Safety School!" cries with a sea of "Ivy Champs! Ivy Champs!" -- wondering if the distance between Upper Balcony 1 and the court was playing tricks on them. But it's just Jordan being Jordan. As those same gleefully -- and rightfully -- smug Penn fans were floating back to campus on I-95 South, Jordan was busy saying things like, "We haven't done anything yet," and "If we go 14-0 and win our last seven, then I'll be satisfied." So let Mike have his fun. After all, this is the same guy who this fall said that the 73-48 win at Jadwin last March -- the game which simultaneously rocketed the Quakers into the NCAA Tournament and made up for the infamous "Heartbreaker at the Palestra" -- was "just another 'W'." We'll leave the politically correct athlete-speak to Mike and his teammates, acknowledging that they can't look past the Harvard/Dartmouth road weekend and that by no means have any trophies been inscribed yet or any ring orders been placed. But while the team has its blinders on and is looking straight ahead at the upcoming tangle with Cornell at the Palestra on Friday, witnesses to last night's game can confidently attest to the following: · For the first time in five years, Penn is undefeated in the Ivy League halfway through the season and stands alone atop the standings after its first battle with Princeton. · For the first time since the Ivy League began naming a Player of the Year in 1974-75 to accompany the Rookie of the Year award that it had been giving since '71, both the POY and the ROY will be from Penn. · Penn is better than Princeton. Period. With a 14-point, five-rebound, six-assist performance in 38 minutes last night, Jordan moved that much closer to copping the hardware he so rightly deserved last year, when the Tigers' Brian Earl took home the honors as a result of voting done before Penn-Princeton II. The Quakers senior is playing his best basketball of the season now. Over the course of Penn's current nine-game winning streak, Jordan has shot 45-of-81 from the floor (55.6 percent) while averaging 15.9 points, 4.4 assists and 4.1 rebounds per game. Freshman forward Ugonna Onyekwe, meanwhile, played an outstanding 37 minutes for the Quakers last night in arguably his best game of the season -- better, even, than the St. Joe's game, where he dumped a powerful 20 points on the Hawks. Onyekwe's impact on last night's win at Jadwin goes beyond mere statistics. While he did score 12 points and grab six rebounds, he did not make a single costly mental error. A stoically calm individual of whom Penn coach Fran Dunphy says, "There's not much frightening him -- I just don't think he ever thinks about [pressure]," Onyekwe has dazzled fans and bewildered opposing coaches with an array of blocked shots and rim-rattling dunks. However, he has also displayed a knack for zoning out at times. In the four-point loss to Temple in January, Onyekwe stepped in front of passes intended for other teammates, misread plays and fired up hurried shots with his feet together. Last night, though, Onyekwe hit shots when it counted. He drained two free throws in front of a sea of crazed Tigers fans waving yard-long orange foam noodles to make it 31-27 with 13:12 to play. A minute-and-a-half later, he left Nate Walton frozen in the paint on a spinning layup which gave Penn a seven-point lead with 11:41 to play. He nailed a clutch 14-footer with six minutes left. Most importantly, though, he played stifling defense. Last year, 6'9" forward Mason Rocca keyed the Princeton comeback at the Palestra with a flurry of hook shots and inside moves. Last night, Rocca -- guarded by Onyekwe -- was scoreless in the first half. He finished 4-for-16 from the floor and scored 16 points in a valiant second-half effort, but Onyekwe's outstretched arms kept Rocca from manhandling the Quakers the way he did last year. After hitting his two clutch free throws, Onyekwe answered on the other end of the court by redirecting a Rocca hook shot. With 1:36 to play and Penn leading by seven, Onyekwe swatted Walton. And with 15 seconds left, he added one final insult to the often-injured Rocca by sending his final shot attempt careening back to the floor. Meanwhile, much-heralded Princeton freshman Gloger -- whose 10 three-pointers in a 34-point performance against Alabama-Birmingham in December had Princetonians whispering things about the best freshman since a guy named Bill Bradley -- made his own personal case for giving the ROY award to Onyekwe, scoring no points in 25 minutes. Although Gloger injured his hand against Harvard on Saturday and missed two games the week before with a sore ankle, he simply did not show up to play last night. "His ankle's still not great, and his hand," Carmody said. "But that's just [an excuse], he was guarded." Barring an always possible snub from the unpredictable Ivy League, Onyekwe is a lock for ROY. He is, however, just one integral part of Penn's stifling defense of late. The Quakers have held Ivy opponents to an average of 46.7 points per game in their torrid 7-0 league start. And Penn's tenacious perimeter D, coupled with the threat of shot blockers Onyekwe and Geoff Owens inside, has held Ivy opponents to 32.6 percent shooting from the field. Almost an hour after Onyekwe closed the game's scoring with a monstrous 360-degree, two-handed slam -- of which Onyekwe said, in typical serious monotone, "I was just going out there trying to do something fun to end the game," -- Carmody was still shaking his head. "The things that [Penn] did we expected. The way they played us we expected," Carmody said. "But we still weren't able to handle them. We worked on exactly the things that they did and yet we still couldn't do anything about it." Quite frankly, the better team won last night. And the better team owns a nine-game winning streak, stands alone atop the Ivy League at 7-0 and controls its own destiny. So, Mike, you can wait until the final buzzer sounds on March 7, knowing that the Ivy League season is not quite over and that stranger things have happened than a blown two-game lead. But for everyone else, for those Penn fans confined to the Upper Balcony or the faction lucky enough to get seats near the East basket, for those who watched the game on TV or strained to listen to the radio, the celebrating began last night.