M. Hoops on a roll after early season woes

The Penn men's basketball team began its regular season with a win and ended it with a win. Actually, Penn ended the regular season with 15 consecutive wins, as it heads into Friday's game against Oklahoma State.

However positive things look now for the Quakers entering the NCAA Tournament with a No. 11 seed -- impressive for an Ivy League team -- the outlook was not very positive in December.

Following a lackluster performance in their 62-37 opening win over Penn State, the Quakers proceeded to drop their next two games to lowly regarded Drexel and Delaware. Penn showed a disturbing dependence on outside shooting and an inability to defend the post.

Penn responded with a 72-58 rout of a talented Villanova team on the First Union Center floor and seemed to recover its winning ways of the previous season -- when the Quakers won their final 12 games before losing in the tourney to California.

However, the Quakers did not respond well to a 20-day layoff. On Dec. 30, Penn lost in overtime to Providence, 74-71.

After that came the low point of the year -- an 80-57 embarrassment at the hands of Colorado. Penn's star forwards Ugonna Onyekwe and Koko Archibong were benched following that defeat in part to save them from early foul trouble but also to send a message to an underachieving team.

Penn coach Fran Dunphy's message was received.

The Quakers played down to their competition but won, 65-55, over American in the first game after Colorado. However, with Archibong back in the starting lineup, Penn played two nearly perfect games, with 38- and 44-point wins over USC and Monmouth, respectively. Those two wins marked a turning point for the Quakers, as they arguably played up to their potential for the first time all season.

They did not stop the rest of the way.

Since the Colorado loss, Penn has only suffered one more defeat -- a 66-48 defeat to now-No. 7 seed Saint Joseph's.

Still entering conference play at 8-5, the Quakers -- who in the preseason were hyped as a team that could possibly garner an at-large bid to the tournament or gain a national ranking -- knew that the only way to get into March Madness again would be to win the conference.

The Quakers won their first four league games against Dartmouth, Harvard, Cornell and Columbia, teams who spent the year in the bottom half of the league standings.

That set up a three-games-in-five-days home stretch which proved to be decisive in the Ivy standings. Penn had to play Princeton, Yale and Brown -- teams that finished third, second and fourth, respectively, in the league.

Onyekwe's dominance inside was one of Penn's keys to success. Clutch outside team shooting also helped the Quakers -- particularly by guards David Klatsky and Jeff Schiffner at the end of Penn's 73-66 comeback win over Brown. Penn swept the three-game set. Onyekwe finished with a combined 60 points and had 35 rebounds that weekend, sparking his run to a second consecutive Ivy League Player of the Year award.

The manner in which Penn won these games set the tone for the Quakers' offense the rest of the season, with Onyekwe demanding double teams inside and Penn's outside shooters taking advantage of the open looks. Schiffner leads the nation in three-point shooting percentage while the Quakers are third as a team.

Penn defeated both Harvard and Dartmouth on the road, setting up rematches with both Yale and Brown in New England. The Quakers won both games, with Brown missing a three-pointer in the final seconds that would have given them the win. Schiffner scored a career-high 26 points to carry Penn over Yale the next night.

Those victories, which gave the Quakers a two-game lead in the Ivies with only three to play, virtually assured Penn a second straight tournament berth. Three wins over Columbia, Cornell and Princeton ensured that Penn would enter the tournament as one of only three teams in the nation unbeaten in conference play.

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