With the Penn men's basketball team facing its first 0-2 Ivy League start since 1991-92, the Quakers team of two years ago came to mind for coach Fran Dunphy.
"Two years ago we definitely put ourselves behind the eight ball with a 2-3 start," Dunphy said. "We had a group of really good guys who were able to turn things around and put it behind them."
The 2001-02 team fell behind in the beginning of conference play with losses to Harvard, Columbia and Yale. After the loss to the Elis on Feb. 8, the Quakers had no choice but to win all of their remaining contests to keep alive any hope of an Ancient Eight title.
Led by then-juniors Ugonna Onyekwe, Koko Archibong and Andrew Toole, the Red and Blue finished out the season with a nine-game winning streak, defeating Yale in the championship game of a three-team Ivy playoff to earn a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
This year's Quakers could still mathematically tie for first place in the Ivies if they lost another game. But for all intents and purposes, another loss would likely spell the end of the Quakers' run at a third consecutive title.
"We're in a situation that we need to refocus," Dunphy said. "Only time will tell if this particular group will overcome the adversity that we now face."
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The Quakers actually did start out 0-2 in conference play during the 1989-90 season, Dunphy's first year at the helm. Penn lost at Princeton and at Brown before earning a weekend split against the Elis, eventually finishing third in the Ancient Eight.
However, Dunphy said that he will not take anything specific from his first year with the Quakers to implement with his current team.
"We are going to completely focus on what we have to do this season, which is take each game at a time, starting with this weekend," Dunphy said.
While Dunphy contended that the toughest road weekend of the Ivy campaign is now behind them, he did not underplay the rest of the league schedule.
"Any time you go on the road in this league they're going to be tough games," he said.
Senior captain Jeff Schiffner believes that whatever happens to the Quakers rests on the character of the team now, not methods of motivation from past years.
"We have our backs to the wall a little bit, but we'll see how we respond," Schiffner said after the Brown loss. "That's what character teams are made of and we'll see what we got."
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One thing that the Quakers need to focus on is a more consistent output of scoring, especially as the game approaches the final minutes. In the majority of its games, Penn has gone through long periods with little or no offensive production, compensating these scoring droughts with brief runs.
"It's the nature of the sport to go on runs," Dunphy said. "You just hope that your runs go on longer than theirs."
But Penn's ability to sustain leads this season is lacking when it matters most. While the Quakers have outscored opponents in the first half by over 40, they have been outscored in the second half by four.
"We certainly could be a bit more consistent on things generally, especially toward the end of games," Dunphy said. "Against Brown we made a couple of great runs but then could not prevent them from coming back."
Junior Tim Begley leads the Ivies in three-point accuracy, making 46.2 percent of his shots from behind the arc. Senior center Adam Chubb leads the league in rebounds, averaging 7.4 boards per game.
These rebounds do not always translate into points, however, as Penn frequently comes up empty on half-court sets in which its guards do not get open. A look at the team's 1.1 assist-to-turnover ratio indicates that there is room for improvement on offense.
