PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Up by four with 15 seconds to play against Brown, Penn junior Tim Begley thought his team had secured a split in its opening Ivy weekend after losing to Yale the night before.
"You're up four, had a foul to give, you couldn't ask for anything else," he said.
But then the unthinkable happened.
After two Jeff Schiffner free throws gave the Quakers a four-point lead, Brown forward Jaime Kilburn was fouled by freshman Mark Zoller as he tipped in a rebound off a missed three-pointer.
With his team still down, 75-73, and only three seconds left, Kilburn intentionally missed his free-throw attempt. The ball was tipped back by a swarm of players, and fell right into the hands of Brown senior Mike Martin, standing just inside the foul line. Martin put up a fadeaway shot as the buzzer sounded.
The ball swished through, the crowd at the Pizzitola Center erupted and the stunned Quakers realized that the game was going into an extra session.
"In that situation, you've got to make a play or else you're going home and lose the game," Martin said. "I had a feeling it was in, I had a good feeling."
Riding the momentum from the buzzer-beating shot, the Bears dominated the overtime period, and went on to defeat the Quakers, 92-88.
"In overtime I think we got all our swagger back," Brown junior guard Jason Forte said. "It was like if we can come back from that we can definitely win the overtime."
Kilburn and Forte provided all of Brown's offense in the extra session, scoring seven and 10 points, respectively.
The Quakers (7-8, 0-2 Ivy) only managed to hit 2-of-6 free throws in overtime, eventually succumbing to the Bears' potent offense .
"You've got to give [Brown] credit, they came out in overtime and made some big plays," Penn senior Jeff Schiffner said. "We could have done some different things, made it easier on ourselves."
In a game similar to last year's Brown game at the Palestra -- in which Penn came back to win from a five-point deficit with under four minutes to play -- the Quakers looked like they had the game in hand
Down 69-62 with just under five minutes to play, the Red and Blue went on an 11-0 run, taking the lead on a four-point play when Begley hit a three-pointer and was fouled. The Quakers stretched their lead to four before Brown's remarkable comeback.
While the teams exchanged leads 11 times in the first half, the second half was marked by brief offensive spurts, as the Quakers were able to use runs to catch up to Brown, only to fall behind again.
The Bears (7-10, 3-1 Ivy) took their biggest lead of the game, 58-49, with 11:14 to play, but a 10-0 run brought Penn to within one.
The Quakers would tie the game on a three by senior guard Charlie Copp, only to allow a 7-0 run by Brown, as the Bears rebuilt their lead to seven at the 4:45 mark.
"We do a good job for a while and then the opposition has their run," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "It has plagued us all year ... but obviously down the stretch, I thought [we played] as good as we could play."
Although the Quakers outrebounded Brown, 46-34, they could not handle Kilburn's interior presence down the stretch. The 6-foot-5 senior scored 18 of his game-high 26 points in the second half, while bringing down 12 rebounds. Forte added 23 points for the Bears.
All five Penn starters finished in double digits, but the reserves only contributed six points to Penn's final line. Begley led the team with 25 points and six assists.
Unlike the Yale game, the Quakers were able to set up Schiffner with more open shots. The senior finished with 17 points and nine rebounds, but still only shot 4-of-12 from the field.
"I think we tried to set some screens for him, he made plays on his own tonight too," Begley said. "He's got to get the ball more for us to win the game."
The loss marked the first time under Dunphy that the Quakers were swept in the opening weekend of the Ivy season. The Quakers were defeated twice in the beginning of the 1981-82 Ivy season by the same teams -- Yale and Brown -- before bouncing back with a 12-0 run through the rest of the Ancient Eight to secure an Ivy title.
In response to Penn's current position in the cellar of the Ivy League, Begley offered the obvious answer to how his team can turn things around.
"Win the next 12," he said.
