WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With a few hitches, the Penn men's basketball team keeps rolling along.
The Quakers (5-1) extended their impressive early-season run Saturday with a less-than-stellar 61-51 victory over American University (2-3) at Bender Arena.
Everything ran smoothly for the Quakers for much of the game -- they held a 12-point halftime lead, which they extended to 17 with 10:13 left in the second half.
"For a stretch, we played very good basketball and we had a chance to make this easier on ourselves, and hopefully we learned from it," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "In stretches I thought we did everything we could right. We made shots, moved the ball around, and defended well. Then we decided not to play and gave them life."
Instead of delivering a knockout blow, the Quakers failed to score for almost a full six minutes. The Red and Blue scoring drought allowed the Eagles to make a game of it, as they went on a 17-4 run that left them trailing 52-48 with only 1:22 to go.
But after that the Quakers hit ten of their 12 free throw attempts -- while allowing just one Eagles three-pointer --ÿto seal up the win.
"[American] played really hard, especially in the second half," point guard Andy Toole said. "At about the 15 minute mark, they did a good job of taking over the game. But, we weathered the storm and were able to pull it out."
The first half was an altogether different story. The Quakers led, 32-20, on the strength of junior forward Koko Archibong's 16 points on seven-of-nine shooting.
"In the first half, I got a lot of open looks," Archibong said. "[There were] a lot of mid-range shots, and I was able to knock them down."
"Archibong in the first half was just very, very good," American head coach Jeff Jones said. "I wasn't angry with our team's efforts, [Penn] just made plays."
Not all the Quakers made plays Saturday, though. Junior forward Ugonna Onyekwe -- who at times this year has looked unstoppable, and in some games, has carried the Quakers --ÿhad a miserable day.
Except for a brief second half stretch during which he scored on three straight possessions, Onyekwe was nowhere to be found. He missed his other ten field-goal attempts and finished with just eight points, and Dunphy was not happy.
"I thought [American] did a good job on Ugonna," Dunphy said. "Almost as good as the job Ugonna did on Ugonna. For an intelligent guy, he made a lot of unintelligent decisions."
"I'm going to stay on his butt until he gets out of Penn," Dunphy continued. "He's got a lot of talent and he controls a lot of what happens on the floor."
For his part, Jones gave his team little credit for shutting Onyekwe down.
"We certainly had a very healthy respect for [Onyekwe] coming in," Jones said. "We knew what he was capable of, but there wasn't anything special that we did. The other thing is, it just could've been one of those days for him."
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