Quakers bounce back with balanced production vs. Yale

For the second time this season, Yale got ahead early in the game by shutting down Penn's shooters. This time, however, the Quakers were able to rally from an early deficit and pull out a win, 69-61, at the Palestra.

The Elis (9-14, 4-6 Ivy) led most of the way through the first half until Penn freshman Ibby Jaaber drained a bucket from just inside the arc to give the Red and Blue a 20-19 advantage with 4:21 to play.

The Quakers (13-9, 6-3) did not look back. Jaaber and freshman Ryan Pettinella extended the Penn run to 19-3, giving the Red and Blue a 32-22 advantage at the break.

Jaaber logged 20 minutes on the floor -- tying his career high -- and quickly became a crowd favorite. The 6-foot-2 guard skied to block a shot by 6-0 junior Alex Gamboa late in the second half and deflate the Elis' hopes of a comeback run.

"Being ready to go as soon as I get in to try to make an impact on the defensive end first to get me going a little bit," Jaaber said.

Although Jaaber was a perfect 4-for-4 shooting from inside the arc, he could not get a shot to drop in four attempts from downtown.

"I got a couple of good looks going to the basket," Jaaber said. "I kept shooting the open shots but they just didn't fall today."

In general though, good looks were hard to come by for the Quakers.

Yale senior Matt Minoff held Penn's Jeff Schiffner -- who leads the Quakers with 16.1 points per Ivy League game -- scoreless in the first half.

"Matt Minoff took it upon himself to try to take [Schiffner] out of the game," Yale coach James Jones said. "That was our strategy. That's what we tried to do."

The Elis allowed Schiffner only four points three weeks ago when they squeaked past the Quakers, 54-52, in New Haven, Conn. Yale became the first Ivy team ever to deny Schiffner a three-pointer in the both games of the season series.

"They focus a lot of attention on trying to shut Schiff down, and they did a good job again," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "He obviously only got a couple looks at it, and I don't even think they were very clean looks."

Holding Schiffner to just seven points on the night and the Quakers to 3-of-16 shooting from three-point range was not enough for the Elis, who dropped their third straight Ivy contest.

Despite the halftime deficit, Yale kept plugging away in the second half. A layup by freshman Sam Kaplan cut the Penn lead to two, 48-46, with six minutes to play. After the teams traded foul shots, senior Charlie Copp swung the momentum back to the Quakers with his second three-pointer of the night.

"Charlie took it upon himself to say 'I'm going to shoot this thing and make it' and he certainly did," Dunphy said. "I thought that was as big a shot as we had in the game actually. To go from two to five was a very big play for us."

Freshman Mark Zoller converted a three-point play off a layup and then added a short jumper to push the Penn lead to 10 with four minutes left on the clock. Copp and the new-look Zoller led the Quakers with 12 points each.

Along with the pair of triples from Copp, junior Tim Begley hit the only other longball of the game for the Red and Blue. Penn made up for the relative lack of perimeter production -- the Quakers average 8.6 three-pointers per game -- by pounding the ball inside. Of Penn's 69 total points, 30 came in the paint.

"We obviously had some pretty good balance tonight," Dunphy said.

The Quakers were able to notch the win with 38.9 percent accuracy from the field, a full 10 points lower than their league season average.

"You tell me before the game Penn was going to shoot 38 percent and Jeff Schiffner was going to have seven points, and we lose the basketball game, I'd find that hard to believe," Jones said.

Penn trails league-leading Princeton by two games in the loss column following the Tigers' 68-61 win over Brown. The Quakers are the only team so far to defeat Princeton in league play, but will need another team to do so in order to stay in the Ivy title hunt.

Notes: Schiffner was presented with a commemorative ball before the game in recognition of his 1,000 career points at Penn. The senior now has 1,007 in the record books.

This was the 200th meeting between Penn and Yale. The Quakers improved to 135-65 all time against the Elis.

Yale last recorded a victory in the Palestra in 2002, when it defeated Princeton in the first-ever three-way Ivy playoff. The Elis have not defeated Penn in the building since Feb. 15, 1996, when Yale prevailed, 60-58.

The attendance of 6,215 was the largest crowd for an Ivy League game this season at the Palestra.

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