NEW HAVEN, Conn.
Midway through the second half on Saturday night, the boisterous Yale student section taunted Penn head coach Fran Dunphy with a chant of "Are you nervous?"
And while those same students stormed the floor at the end of the game, Dunphy, his players and the many Penn fans in attendance left the scene in anything but an anxious mood. In the post-game press conference, Dunphy was his usual calm self, quick to praise the Elis and focused on keeping the Red and Blue's ship as steady as his demeanor in front of the microphones.
"You control in life what you can control, and we're going to go on the road again next weekend to play Cornell and Columbia," he said. "Just like Yale wanted to beat us tonight, Cornell and Columbia are going to want to do the same thing."
So often, the Ivy League title race comes down to the last weekend at the very least, if not the final plays of the second Penn-Princeton matchup the following Tuesday.
But while Yale unquestionably had more hustle and energy on Saturday night, Elis coach James Jones acknowledged that there is still an enormous gap between Penn and the rest of the Ancient Eight.
"I don't know about wide open," Jones said when asked what the game did to the title race. "Penn's a very good basketball team -- they have to lose two basketball games and we have to win all the rest of ours to force something."
That won't be easy, as Jones knows full well. His team still has to play Brown twice, and the Bears have far more talent than their 2-6 record belies. On Saturday, Yale will face a Harvard team in Boston that is more than capable of neutralizing Elis big men Dominick Martin and Sam Kaplan.
The Quakers, on the other hand, will not have to play a more tenacious defense or in a more hostile atmosphere than they saw in New Haven, Conn. this weekend.
Edwin Draughan refused to let Penn guard Tim Begley get more than three inches of open space, which is a big reason why Penn's attack was neutralized. And even if Columbia's students turn out in force on Saturday night, noise alone won't be enough to stop Penn's motion offense.
But anything less than Yale's defensive effort won't stop Penn from winning. Brown tried repeatedly to push the tempo on Friday night, but the Quakers responded by blitzing the Bears with a series of fastbreaks that Jason Forte and company simply could not stop.
It happened so many times that SportsCenter made itself a nice little highlight package from Penn's only appearance this season on the YES Network.
A baseball pass from Mark Zoller to Ibby Jaaber, who drove to the basket for a reverse layup. A bounce pass from David Whitehurst to Jaaber for another two points. Zoller heaving the ball again, this time to Steve Danley, whose missed layup was ferociously slam-dunked in by Jaaber.
It was the epitome of the Penn offense, the kind of stuff Quakers fans dream about.
"Everybody gets a touch or two every time around the court and it gives you a sense of camaraderie and teamwork out on the court," Begley said. "Then we start making two or three shots in a row and a five-point lead becomes an 11-point lead."
It wasn't like this early in the season, save for the Drexel game. But as Steve Danley, Jan Fikiel and Ryan Pettinella have seen more time on the floor, their skills have evolved and their touches have become more fluid.
Fikiel's 15-foot jumpers over defenders are no longer greeted with a slight whiff of surprise, while Pettinella's drives to the basket have become almost impossible to stop. And on Friday night, Dunphy asserted that "without Steven [Danley], we don't run as good an offense as we would like."
"He's so smart," Dunphy continued. "He is just a very good reader of what the defense does, and we need to get some of our other guys to be that astute."
Apologies for the stereotype, but this being an Ivy League school I doubt Dunphy has too much to worry about in that respect. For Penn fans, there isn't too much to worry about in general at this point. And if Brown beats Yale tomorrow night, we might just see a coronation at the former King's College on Saturday night.
Jonathan Tannenwald is a junior Urban Studies major from Washington, D.C. His e-mail address is jtannenw@sas.upenn.edu.
