M. Hoops looks to share crown of Ivy

At the end of yesterday's Penn men's basketball practice, the Quakers starters found themselves defending a squad that spent most of its time dribbling on the perimeter, passing, passing again and trying to find an open man to hit a backdoor layup in a virtually empty Palestra.

Tonight, the Quakers will do the same thing -- in front of almost 9,000 people.

As it has so many times, the Ivy League men's basketball season concludes with tonight's Penn-Princeton game, which will also determine the Ivy League title.

For the first time in recent memory, though, the fates of three Ancient Eight schools are bound up with the outcome of tonight's game.

If Princeton wins, the Tigers will be outright champs for the second year in a row, leaving Penn tied with Yale for second place in the league. However, if the Quakers (23-6, 10-3 Ivy League) beat the Tigers (16-9, 11-2), they will force a three-way tie at the top of the conference.

Such a tie would be the first-ever in league history and would force a playoff to determine which school would get the league's automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.

In this scenario, the Quakers -- by virtue of their 3-1 record against the other two schools -- would be the number one seed and, on Saturday at Lafayette, would play the winner of the game between Princeton and Yale -- which would be played on Thursday at the Palestra.

Penn coach Fran Dunphy, however, isn't thinking about any scenarios except those that will play out in tonight's game.

"What else would I think about?" Dunphy said. "If we don't win [tonight], there's not a lot to think about. We need to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to play in a great basketball game."

The Red and Blue won the season's first showdown between these two traditional Ivy powerhouses, 62-38, at Old Nassau, thanks to a 20-0 first-half run, and cold shooting by the Tigers. The Quakers do not expect that to be the case tonight, though.

"I think we understand that the [Princeton] team that showed up at Jadwin isn't going to be the one that shows up here [tonight]," Penn point guard Andrew Toole said. "They're going to make a lot more shots. They're going to be playing harder from the start of the game, and it's going to be a whole different game."

Since their loss to the Quakers, the Tigers have reeled off six straight wins -- including one over Yale, which put the Tigers back in first place in the league.

"If a few more of [Princeton's] baskets had gone down in the first half [of the first game]," Toole said. "It would've been a completely different game, and we probably wouldn't have won by 24 points."

Indeed, the Tigers hit just 27.5 percent of their field goals in the first game, which helped the Quakers hold Princeton to its lowest point total of the season.

"I think we're pretty confident," Toole said. "But at the same time, we respect Princeton a great deal. They're in first place in the league, they're a great team... they have a lot of guys that can hurt you.

"It's not necessarily one guy every night, it's seven or eight guys that can come in and put in 10, 15 points and really hurt you. So, we're cautious but I think we're confident."

It seems the Quakers have become more than confident since suffering their third Ivy League loss, 83-78, at Yale back on Feb. 8. That loss left the Quakers at 2-3 and in sixth place in the league.

The loss to Yale "was definitely a wake-up call," Toole said. "We either had to start playing the way we could play, or our season would be over really quick."

More than just a wake-up call, that loss put the Quakers in a do-or-die situation. Another loss would have effectively ended their title hopes.

Since then, the Quakers have won eight in a row and have averaged a 19.5-point margin of victory. In only two games -- against Yale at home and at Columbia -- have the Quakers won by fewer than 10 points.

"I think they understood that their backs were against the wall, that we had no margin for error," Dunphy said. "If we were going to have a chance to go to the NCAA tournament, they needed to really appreciate each possession out there."

Toole thinks the Quakers had it in them all along.

"At the beginning of the Ivy season," Toole said. "We kind of thought that we could just walk out there and maybe get wins on our talent or athleticism or whatever, but that's not the case. We learned it the hard way, but it's worked out for us in the end. Tonight's a huge game."

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