M. Basketball: Ilario Huober: Penn looks inside when shooting goes cold

David Whitehurst came down with a hard-fought offensive rebound and kicked it out to Ibrahim Jaaber on the perimeter. Then, as we've seen him do so many times before, the shifty guard took a jab step, reset his feet behind the arc, and let loose a three-point shot. As that ball traveled through the air, you can bet that every single Red and Blue fan in the packed Palestra was thinking the same thing. Please, for the love of God, let this be the one. Until that point - with 6:53 remaining in the game, or just about 7/8 of the game, Penn's three-point attack had been absolutely futile. The Quakers had taken fully 18 treys, none of which had found the bottom of the net. That's right, 0-for-18. That's zero percent. So while Jaaber's shot sailed toward the basket with Penn losing to No. 3 Villanova by 18 and the game starting to slip away, one could only hope against hope that somehow it would connect. And the basketball gods decided to have a little bit of fun. Just when the ball looked like it would rattle home, it popped out of the basket and ricocheted off the backboard before finally rolling in. The Palestra erupted in applause - some sarcastic, some relieved and some still hopeful that the newly-trimmed 15-point deficit could somehow be overcome. Hey, if the Quakers could sink a three-pointer last night, pigs could most definitely take to the air. The Red and Blue did make that run. Keyed by the Jaaber three, the team scored 11 unanswered to cut the lead to just four before a few costly turnovers, a clutch jumper by Randy Foye and solid Villanova foul shooting combined to put the game out of reach. During that time, Penn attempted one more long-range shot - a miss, fittingly. That pushed the total to an even 1-for-20, a five percent shooting night from beyond the arc. Even from inside 20 feet, the Quakers struggled shooting the ball. They posted an ugly 33.9 field goal percentage for the game, and almost all of those makes came from inside the paint. If that weren't dismal enough, how about those uncontested shots from 13 feet out? Penn went 3-7 from the free throw line in the first half, missing the front end of two one-and-ones and failing to capitalize on a bevy of 'Nova fouls that put them in the bonus early. One particular play epitomized rather nicely the difficulty that Penn had hitting a jump shot. In the beginning of the first half, the ball found a wide open Tommy McMahon in the corner. The freshman, who has yet to display in a game what he is rumored to be capable of from three-point land, took what looked like an awkward shot. The release wasn't the only thing that proved awkward, as the ball glanced embarrassingly off the side of the backboard. We knew coming in that this wasn't the best shooting Quakers squad ever assembled. Still, we didn't think they were this bad - not 1-for-20 bad. For answers to that riddle, the Quakers are looking in Villanova's direction. "Sometimes, what appears to the naked eye as a wide open jump shot is rushed, it's got a hand in your face a little bit more than normal," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. It's easy to look at the shooting - from long range, from the line, from anywhere - and think that Penn must be kicking itself for losing this game. The Quakers took 62 shots compared to the Wildcats' 45. If two or three of those 19 three-point misses were to instead find nylon, if one more of those front ends had been made, Penn would now be celebrating a huge victory over the No. 3 team in the land. Instead, this one goes down as yet another bitter near-miss. Still, Jaaber warns against oversimplifying the possible outcome of the game. "I think if we shoot better, it would be a closer game," the junior said. "But if we shoot better, it would be a different game as well. They'll play things differently, so you don't say that we would have won the game if we shot better, but we would have had a better opportunity to win the game." So how did a team that couldn't buy a bucket come all the way back from a 21-point deficit to scare the living daylights out of the Wildcats? They threw the jump shot out the window. Anyone watching last night saw a transformation during that time, a visible commitment to attacking the basket. Although it was the Jabber three that kicked off the ferocious charge, the Quakers made their living with dribble penetration. By now, Penn's familiar approach - passing it around the perimeter until an opening arises to dump the ball down low - has become a mainstay. This time, however, when the ball would come to a Friedrich Ebede or a Brian Grandieri, he would put it on the floor to take his man off the dribble. With the help of some good decisions and nifty inside passing, the strategy worked. Rather than lofting shots with Villanova hands in their faces, the Penn players finished possessions with easy lay-ins. "We did start to take it to the basket a little bit more, and tried to get in some gaps," Dunphy said. "Those things just had to start a little bit earlier." Between the 12:28 mark - when the Wildcats pushed their lead to 21, the biggest of the night - and the 1:56 mark of the second half, Penn outscored Villanova 22-to-5. During that roughly ten-minute span, the Red and Blue scored six lay-ups: three for Ebede, two for Grandieri, and one for Mark Zoller. Five more points came from the charity stripe. That leaves just five points to have come from the outside, and Jaaber's two jumpers account for those. The Quakers ended the game holding a 30-16 edge in points in the paint, mostly because of the change in philosophy. Those ten minutes saw this team play its best basketball of the season. They showed they can be competitive against - and even dominate - the very best in college basketball when they play that way. "They're good at [dribble penetration], they're not one-dimensional players," Villanova coach Jay Wright said. "Grandieri's good off the dribble - even though he doesn't look like he is - Jaaber is, and Ebede, he's good off the dribble. He hurt us. They're not just a three-point-shooting team, they're a good team." Is this even a three-point shooting team? Not one player on the roster shoots better than 40 percent from beyond the arc. What's more, most of the second-half success that Penn found against Villanova came with Eric Osmundson sitting on the bench. The captain has become the poster boy for the team's shooting woes, mired in a slump of his own. Last night, he shot 1-for-9 from the field before sitting and watching his Quakers make it a game. Osmundson's exit signified a refutation - intentional or otherwise - of the three-point-oriented philosophy and its ineffectiveness for this team. Dunphy, and a great proportion of the Penn faithful, would still like to believe that the senior leader will eventually break out of his funk and contribute. "Oz is an important part of what we're going to do for the rest of the season, so hopefully he'll learn some things about himself," Dunphy said. "Hopefully, it's just going to be a matter of time that he's going to start making some shots." Last night was by no means the be all, end all for Osmundson and the Quakers. However, they did find something that worked, and that was plain for all to see. Dunphy would tell you that the Quakers took what Villanova gave them, but don't be surprised if you start seeing more of Ebede and Grandieri slashing to the rim. As for Osmundson, one of the worst games of his career will soon be in the rear-view mirror. If he can turn his game around, and take Penn's shooting with it, then the Villanova contest won't be the only thing in the rear-view. You'll find the rest of the Ivy League there, too. Ilario Huober is a sophomore in the College from Syracuse, N.Y., and is sports editor-elect of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is ihuober@sas.upenn.edu.