For all the shots that rimmed out, clanged off the front of the iron and just plain missed altogether, a pair of free throws from Mardy Collins made the difference.
Penn knew going in that any game on North Broad Street was going to be a defensive slugfest. That's just the style of John Chaney's Temple Owls. Those same Owls entered no strangers to the close game, fresh off a 53-52 win over Villanova at the Palestra.
But the story was different on the other end of the court. For the Quakers, this was the new season's first test of how they would respond to the pressure of a close contest.
The Liacouras Center scoreboard said they failed.
This is a scene all too familiar for Penn fans who are still smarting from last-second defeats at the hands of Yale, Brown (twice) and Princeton last season.
Last night, the scenery changed, but the result remained the same.
For more than 37 minutes, the Quakers played their game. Fran Dunphy's polished and finessed Red and Blue executed its game plan with relative ease considering it was matched up against a much larger Owls squad.
Crisp passes and accurate three-point shots put Penn in a position to ice the game with under three minutes to go. Eric Osmundson, who was playing the game of his career, had just dropped in a layup with ease against Collins, giving Penn a 51-46 edge.
Then the wheels fell off.
It's not as if the Quakers didn't have things going their way -- a pair of timeouts, only one player in foul trouble, not to mention an opportune steal from Ibby Jaaber with a minute to go.
But as six possessions yielded zero points, the door was left wide open for Temple -- and they waltzed right in.
It's also not as if we haven't seen this sequence of events play itself out before. For all intents and purposes, Penn came within a handful of possessions of winning last season's Ivy League title; late-game collapses did the Quakers in.
Yale handed Penn its first Ancient Eight loss in 23 games thanks to a pair of Elis free throws and a buzzer-beater that wouldn't fall for Jaaber.
If that weren't enough, Brown did the same thing the next night. The Bears only needed six seconds to score four quick points that sent the game to overtime after Penn had led most of the way. And in the extra session, Brown finished off the Quakers with a barrage of foul shots.
Princeton zapped any hope Penn had of making the NIT by capitalizing on every possession in overtime to win what had been a see-saw battle at the Palestra.
Such is the recent history of the tight game for Penn, and last night was no exception.
For a team that managed the flow of the game and made shots when it had to against a tough Temple defensive machine, a one-point loss is not the outcome most would expect, especially considering that Temple shot a woeful 2-for-17 from behind the arc and just 33 percent from the field.
Chaney even joked with reporters afterwards about stealing the game.
"We didn't finish the game right," he said.
That could be said for both sides, the only difference being that Chaney walks away with career win number 711, and Penn walks back to the Cecil B. Moore subway stop with another close loss.
Why is it that this team struggles to close out tight games? What seems to go wrong in those final few seconds?
"When that heat gets turned up, and it's a pretty long and athletic group that turns the heat up, so we needed a little more poise on the offensive end," Dunphy said about last night. "We needed an extra rebound on either end and we would have gotten out of here with a great victory."
Without a doubt, Temple's height made a difference in cleaning off the glass, but would Penn have been able to capitalize on an extra possession with less than a minute to go?
If the last several close losses are any indication, the answer is no.
The problem stems from not being able to execute a game plan successfully under pressure.
No one in recent memory could do this better than Dave Klatsky, who graduated in 2003 after Penn's trip to the NCAA Tournament. Klatsky defined the term 'go-to guy,' and since he moved on from the Red and Blue, there has been no one to take his place.
There are plenty of capable guards who could take the ball for the last-second shot, and in the coming weeks leading up to the Ivy League season, Penn needs to figure out who that guy is going to be.
Close, but no cigar
Since a pair of two-point wins overSt. John's and Manhattan at the ECAC Holiday Festival last December, Penn has dropped its last seven games decided by six points or fewerDate Opponent Score 1/10/04 at Rider 77-72 (OT) 1/21/04 vs. Temple 73-69 1/30/04 at Yale 54-52 1/31/04 at Brown 92-88 (OT) 2/20/04 vs. Brown 78-74 3/9/04 vs. Princeton 76-70 (OT) Last night at Temple 52-51 Jeff Shafer is a junior Marketing and Management concentrator from Columbia Falls, Mont., and sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is jshafer@wharton.upenn.edu
