CHICAGO -- The Penn men's basketball team arrived in Chicago on Friday and found itself surrounded by the remnants of a blizzard which had blanketed the Windy City and its sprawling suburbs with over a foot of snow. The temperature struggled to top 40 degrees even with the sun shining, testing the wills of the fans who arrived at the UIC Pavilion to watch the Quakers take on the Illinois-Chicago Flames.
So it might be appropriate that Penn's shooting was just as frigid.
Converting only 17 of 55 field goal attempts and seven of 25 shots from three-point range, Penn surrendered a lead which they held for the first 32 minutes of the game and fell, 57-47, in front of an announced crowd of 4,173.
It was the fourth consecutive loss for the Red and Blue, whose record now stands at 4-6 with four games remaining before the start of Ivy League play. All six losses have come on the road, and Penn has yet to win a game away from the Palestra this season.
"We felt okay with ourselves for about 15 minutes, although I didn't think we played great basketball," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. He added that UIC "played real hard and decided they were going to win the game and went ahead and did just that."
Penn led by six points just over two minutes into the second half thanks to a three by Tim Begley. But that was the last field goal that the senior guard would make, and only his second basket of the day. The Freehold, N.J., native finished with a team-high 11 points and 11 rebounds.
After Begley's shot, the Flames (7-7) started to claw back. Guards Cedrick Banks and Elliott Poole led the way, with Poole giving the home team its first lead, 39-37, on a driving layup with 7:56 to go. UIC sealed the game from the free-throw line, hitting seven of eight foul shots in the final minute.
When not at the line, however, the Flames shot almost as poorly as Penn. They made only 19 of 48 field goal attempts and four of 12 three-point shots. But the Quakers simply could not get their shots to fall, particularly in the second half, when they made only seven of 29 attempts from the floor.
"Some of that is UIC's defense, some of that is us just not making shots, and then our decision-making was a little suspect as well," Dunphy said. "But I give credit to UIC -- they are a good basketball team and I think Jimmy [Collins, the Flames' head coach] does a good job."
In the final 10 minutes, Penn made only three field goals, all by sophomore forward Mark Zoller. Those were the only points scored on the day by the Blue Bell, Pa., native, who is still recovering from an ankle injury suffered earlier this season.
"He's hanging in there, he's working as hard as he can," Dunphy said of Zoller.
"He's obviously not the quickest guy in America, and he knows that, so he's got to be smarter than the rest of the players out there. But he's hopefully getting there."
Banks led all scorers with 18 points and was at times the only guard on the floor in Collins' four-forward offensive sets. Dunphy called him "a tough nut -- he really did a good job, working extremely hard to get open."
If there was one statistical bright spot for Penn, it was on the boards. The Quakers out-rebounded UIC, 42-29, with an 18-9 advantage on the offensive end.
"Our big guys were doing a terrific job, which allowed me to just get in there and get some easy ones," Begley said.
Collins admitted that his team had to work hard to overcome the disparity.
"The only thing that helped us was the fact that we got out and played some aggressive defense in the last five minutes, and they turned the ball over," he said. "Otherwise, we're going home tonight in bad moods."
Dunphy dismissed the idea that his team's late fade was due to fatigue, even though the starters got very little rest during their games against Illinois-Chicago and San Francisco. Senior guards Begley and Eric Osmundson played a combined 74 minutes each in the two games, while sophomore guard Ibby Jaaber played 73 minutes.
In addition, Penn flew back to Philadelphia after playing at San Francisco, then flew out to Chicago on Friday morning.
"A couple years ago, we went out to Colorado and got spanked pretty good -- that was on a Saturday," Dunphy said, referring to an 80-57 loss to the Buffaloes in the 2002-03 season. "We came back home and beat American U. in a hard-fought game on a Wednesday [66-55], then we went back out to California the following Thursday to play on Saturday," when the Quakers beat Southern California, 99-61.
"I don't think there's any issue with that at all," he said. "It's a basketball game -- these guys are young, they're healthy, they're good looking. Get the job done, that's all."
The Quakers' next game is Wednesday against Rider at the Palestra. It will be their first game on 33rd Street since the Big 5 Classic on Dec. 4 and their first official home game since beating Bucknell on Dec. 1.
