With sweep, M. Hoops back on top

Despite all the unexpected struggles that the Penn men's basketball team has suffered this season, one thing has progressed as planned for the Quakers. They are 4-0 in the Ivy League and are still the team to beat in the Ancient Eight. Penn (7-11) staved off a challenge from upstart Yale (6-10, 3-2 Ivy) on Friday night at the Palestra to give Fran Dunphy his 200th career win as a head coach. The next night, Penn overcame a poor shooting performance to defeat Brown (7-11, 1-4) by nine points. The Quakers know that they can still play better, but also know that they stand alone with Princeton as the Ivy League's sole undefeated teams. "Wins are wins," Penn guard David Klatsky said. "We've got four of them right now and no losses in the league. So that helps." Penn senior guard Lamar Plummer led all scorers in both contests. He scored 19 in Friday night's 61-51 triumph and dropped 18 against Brown to lead Penn to a 59-50 victory. Plummer scored five points in Penn's decisive 11-0 run against the Bears. That run put the Red and Blue up 10 just before halftime. Before the run, Brown had taken a 17-16 lead. Penn shot just 10-for-37 from the field in the first half, but took the lead for good on the strength of that run. "I don't think there was any specific adjustment [prior to the run]," Dunphy said. "Our plan was always the same -- to go inside first and then hopefully when the ball gets kicked out we can make a few jumpers." Against Yale, Penn's crucial run was sparked by Koko Archibong. At the start of the second half, the Quakers went on an 11-2 spurt, powered by five Archibong points. The sophomore forward also helped to cap the run, as his steal sparked a fast break that ended with a Geoff Owens tap-in of a Plummer miss. Archibong's steal was at the expense of Chris Leanza, Yale's star sophomore guard. Leanza was the only member of the Elis in double figures on Friday night, but failed to make a field goal in the second half. He was hounded all night by the Penn defense, as well as by the fans after a pair of second-half airballs. "They were playing a lot of attention to Chris Leanza," Yale coach James Jones said. "I don't know if that was the game plan, if those guys came out and said, 'Hey, every time No. 22 touches the ball, make sure everybody hoop and holler.' But they paid a lot of attention to him." One of the reasons that the Quakers could pay so much attention to Leanza was that Yale center Neil Yanke sat out the weekend with an ankle injury. While Penn's defense was free to shut down Yale's top gun in the backcourt, the Red and Blue offense put on a sharpshooting display of its own. The Quakers went 8-for-15 on three-pointers against the Elis, and their 53.3 percent clip from downtown was better than their 53.1 percent mark at the foul line on Friday night. Penn's touch from behind the arc did not carry over to Saturday night's game, as the Quakers shot a meager 6-for-28 on threes against Brown. But when the Penn did make three-pointers, they were often daggers to the hearts of the Bears. With 13:43 left and the shot clock at one, Klatsky hit a long bomb to put the Quakers up 14, at that point their largest lead of the night. Six minutes later, an Omari Ware layup cut the Penn lead to 11 and seemed to give Brown life again. The Bears made a defensive stand and forced Plummer into a shot clock-beating attempt from downtown. He drained it and put the game out of reach.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.