Penn outlasts Brown in overtime

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- For the second straight night, the Penn men's basketball team was on the receiving end of the best punch an inferior opponent could throw. And even though the Quakers found themselves on the ropes for the overwhelming majority of the evening against Brown, they managed to get up and land the final blow for a 74-68 overtime victory. "That's two real good wins for us, there's no question," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said of beating the Bears a night after surviving a close game at Yale. "We feel very fortunate to have won both games." The Bears controlled much of the first half with its defense, a three-quarter court press with a bit of 2-3 zone which flustered Penn throughout the first half.

"I thought it would help to slow them down," Bears coach Glen Miller said. "I thought it was the best defense for us to play, and I thought we did a good job." Penn would tie the score twice before halftime, but never led until senior Eric Osmundson hit a three-pointer seven minutes into the second half to make it 39-38 for the Quakers. That was his second of five made threes on the night out of 11 attempts from beyond the arc. Brown refused to fold, though, taking the lead back 36 seconds later on two free throws by junior forward Nathan Eads. That was the first of three lead changes in the second half; there would also be five more ties by the end of regulation. As has often happened with Penn this season, the final minutes against Brown were frantic but far from pretty. The first big play came with 1:19 remaining, when Osmundson nailed a 24-foot three-pointer to give Penn a 58-55 lead. Both teams made two free throws apiece over the next 48 seconds, with Brown going first, and when sophomore guard Brian Grandieri pushed the Quakers' lead back out to 60-57 with 21 seconds to go, some of the Penn fans in the crowd might have started to exhale.

Those 21 seconds would take the Red and Blue faithful's collective breath away, however. As Brown brought the ball up the floor, junior guard Ibrahim Jaaber stole the ball from Bears junior Marcus Becker with 11 seconds remaining. Jaaber took the ball up the floor, but instead of turning around to run out the clock, he passed the ball to Grandieri. His layup was blocked by Becker, who raced to the other end and drained a stunning three-pointer with four-tenths of a second to go. "It was a stupid play by both of us," Grandieri said. "When Ibby passed me the ball I should have just dribbled it back out and he should have done the same too, but two wrongs don't make a right and it ended up costing us." To anyone who was at the Pizzitola Sports Center two years ago, when Brown also forced Penn to overtime with a last-second shot, Becker's shot brought back some bad memories. "I was just like, 'Oh no, not again,'" Osmundson said. "I had a perfect angle on it and I knew right when he released it it was going to be in." Not surprisingly, Dunphy was less than pleased with the sequence. "Brian got goofy," he said. "There was no need to score it." Overtime began with the score tied at 60, and as he has so often this season junior forward Mark Zoller stepped up with two big baskets. The first was a floater to give Penn the first points of the extra session. The second was a three-pointer from just to the left of the arc to make it 65-63, giving the Quakers the lead back after Becker struck from long range again. Zoller ended up with 17 points and 10 rebounds, good for his fourth double-double in as many nights. Keenan Jeppesen led all scorers with 21 points for Brown. After Zoller's three, junior Steve Danley took a turn in the spotlight, banked in a layup and a 10-foot jumper to turn a 66-65 deficit into a 69-66 lead with 44 seconds remaining. "That was the big shot of the game," Osmundson said of the latter basket. Penn then sealed the win from the free throw line, as Jaaber sank six straight foul shots. "Everybody stepped up," Dunphy said. "That's what it would take to win a game like this." The champion in any sport almost always gets the hardest punch from the challengers it faces, and tonight was no different -- Brown shot an impressive 52 percent from the field for the game, the second night in a row it made more than half its field goal attempts. Furthermore, Penn only had the lead for four minutes and 52.4 seconds out of the 45 minutes of play, with that fraction of a second being the difference between Becker's game-tying three and the end of regulation. Yet as champions so often do, Penn threw the last blow, and the best one.

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