For the relatively young and inexperienced Penn basketball team, this season so far has been about shaking off the summer rust and learning how to play with one another.
Tonight against Bucknell, the Quakers (2-2) face their first true benchmark game, and for it to be a meaningful one, the Red and Blue cannot afford to treat it as another tune-up.
The Bison (3-3) have already played Penn's chief rival Princeton, falling to the Tigers in a competitive game, 61-48, on the opening night of the 2004-05 season. On Saturday they will travel to Yale, and on Dec. 18 Bucknell will go to Cornell. So before the Ivy League season starts, Penn will watch Bucknell to see how it measures up to other top Ancient Eight squads.
This year's Bison squad returns all five starters from a team that finished 9-5 in the Patriot League and made the semifinals of its conference tournament last season. What made this record noteworthy was that the Bison had only freshmen and sophomores in the starting lineup.
Penn had success limiting one of Bucknell's two best players in its matchup last season. The Quakers defeated the Bison, 58-49, in Lewisburg, Pa., with the help of 42 second-half points, holding sharpshooting guard Kevin Bettencourt to just five points on 0-for-6 shooting from the field.
However, the Bison's other star, center Chris McNaughton, had a game-high 20 points. Penn will need to shut him down in order to win tonight.
"We didn't do a very good job against McNaughton last year," Penn head coach Fran Dunphy said. "He's a very good player inside."
Dunphy also knows that the Quakers again have to contain Bettencourt to be successful.
"You can't let him up for air, he's an outstanding player," Dunphy said.
Aside from playing good defense and limiting their turnovers, the Quakers also need to play a smart offensive game. In their two victories, the Red and Blue have shot 50.5 percent from the field and have outrebounded their opponents 71-58.
But in their two defeats, the Red and Blue shot only 32.1 percent and were outrebounded 79-52. Dunphy stressed good patient offensive sets and wise shot selection as keys to success against the Bison.
"If you run a good offense, you get good shots and that helps you make good shots," Penn sophomore forward Steve Danley said.
Penn improved slightly in the loss to Wisconsin over its absolutely pitiful 15-for-47 shooting performance against Providence. The Quakers then exploded for a 58.3 shooting percentage against Drexel, including 11-of-14 from beyond the arc.
The team thinks that both extremes are somewhat unrealistic, and hope for a performance more like the one against Quinnipiac, when they shot 43.6 percent.
Danley also said that something that has inhibited good shot selection in the losses has been spacing on offense. This problem is directly related to the Quakers' inexperienced starting lineup.
Unlike the Bison's young but experienced starting five, only one member of Dunphy's starting corps was in starting position at the end of last season -- senior guard Tim Begley.
Until the new Penn starters get fully comfortable playing with each other, the offense cannot fully click.
"We're trying to get used to the way each other are playing," freshman guard Michael Kach said.
"It's just getting used to the court, getting used to playing here," he added. "It's a long off-season."
Penn has already taken four games to shake off the rust and now it is time for the Quakers to show themselves and the rest of the basketball world what type of team they are going to be in the 2004-05 season.
