Over the last 1:07 of the Penn men's basketball team's 61-51 victory at American University Saturday, the Quakers held off the Eagles by hitting 10 of their final 12 free throw attempts.
This is welcome news for Penn fans, who watched the Quakers struggle mightily at the free throw line last year. The Red and Blue hit just 62 percent of their free throws during the 2000-01 season, and many of the misses came during tight games.
Two examples: On December 7, 2000 the Quakers fell to La Salle, 61-59, extending their season-opening losing streak to five games. In that game, Penn took 21 shots from the charity stripe, but hit only nine.
Just six days later, the Quakers took then-No. 9 Seton Hall down to the wire at Continental Airlines Arena before the Pirates' Samuel Dalembert dunked as the clock ran down to defeat the Quakers, 80-78. Again, the Quakers hit just nine free throws in 20 attempts.
In their 17 losses last season, the Quakers hit just 55 percent of their free throws. In their 12 wins, the Quakers shot 67 percent from the charity stripe. Free-throw shooting was a concern all season, especially for the two big men, forward Ugonna Onyekwe and center Geoff Owens.
Owens and Onyekwe each went to the line far more often than their teammates, as they were the only Quakers to attempt more than 100 free throws. Owens, who graduated, made just 51 percent of his 137 attempts. Onyekwe was a little better, hitting 59 percent of his free throws.
As the American game illustrated, making a significant majority of free throws down the stretch is imperative in holding off the comeback attempts of decidedly inferior teams. If the Quakers had taken last year's lineup to D.C. on Saturday, they very well might have lost. Last year's Quakers wouldn't have hit 81 percent from the free throw line, much less ten of their last 12.
But this isn't last year's team. The Quakers have made 72 percent of their free throws this season and have shot under 60 percent from the line just once -- in last Wednesday's 89-80 win over Drexel. In that game, Onyekwe went one-for-six. Take away that performance against the Dragons, though, and the junior forward is shooting a more respectable 65 percent on the season.
While Onyekwe has fared better from the line this year, it still doesn't appear as though coach Fran Dunphy trusts him there at the end of the game. Onyekwe attempted just two free throws --ÿa ridiculously low number for someone who has to be considered the Quakers' first offensive option. He hit them both, but he was nowhere near the ball at the end of the game.
True, one game doesn't tell the whole story, and it does seem as though Onyekwe has improved his free-throw shooting. But if Penn's coaches think that Onyekwe can't be trusted to have the ball with the clock winding down in a close game for fear he'll be sent to the line, that's a serious -- and unfortunate -- handcuffing of the Quakers' offensive ability.
Top 25?
Are the Quakers' quality wins -- fairly convincing ones over Georgia Tech and Iowa State -- and their close loss to then-No. 2 Illinois enough to put them in the AP or coaches' polls? ESPN's Andy Katz thinks so, as do eight basketball writers.
The Quakers got eight votes in this week's AP poll, and in a story on ESPN.com yesterday, Katz wrote that Penn "is for real," and that the Quakers are "a team to watch, a worthy one who has talent to be trouble throughout the season."
American head coach Jeff Jones thinks Penn could be ranked.
"I would have to say so," Jones said Saturday. "I don't know how to quantify that, but if they're not a top-25 team, they're close."
Katz goes even further. The college-basketball guru postulated a pretty wild scenario -- one that involves the Quakers beating Villanova and St. Joe's this week, and then beating the Hawks again in January -- where Penn could receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament after tying with Brown for the Ivy League Championship, but losing to the Bears in a playoff.
"You're getting a little ahead of yourself," Dunphy told Katz. "We've got a tough week first."
