In recent years, the charity stripe has been anything but charitable to the Penn men's basketball team.
But, if last weekend's BCA Invitational was any indication, some of the Quakers' luck might be changing.
Mark Zoller, who went 17 for 21 (81 percent) for the weekend, was the most prominent example.
Last year, the senior forward shot under 63 percent for the year, the worst mark of his college career. The most notable miss came against Temple, when he failed to convert the front end of a one-and-one that effectively sealed the loss to the Owls.
But this year against Syracuse and St. Francis, Zoller went a combined 14-for-16.
"Thank you for pointing that out," Zoller joked after the weekend, adding that free-throw shooting is "just mental."
"I was a good high-school free-throw shooter, but I've kind of lost it the past two years," he said, alluding to seasons in which he shot 63 and 64 percent, respectively.
If Zoller were to maintain his current clip all year, he would finish with the best free-throw percentage for a Penn player since Jeff Schiffner shot 89 percent in 2002-03.
Bumps and bruises
Though three games in three days gave Penn somewhat of a barometer of its early-season progress, it also evidently took a toll on the Quakers' health: both Zoller and classmate Ibrahim Jaaber left the BCA Invitational with ankle injuries.
Jaaber tweaked his ankle late in the first half of the Syracuse game. The senior guard had 12 points in the first half but finished with only 18 points after the Orange ran away with the game.
Prompted at the postgame press conference about the condition of his ankle, Jaaber smiled and said it was "great." Less than 24 hours later, he poured in eight assists, despite limping slightly during the pregame warm-ups.
Zoller emerged from that same game with a reaggravated ankle injury.
"I guess I've just gotten used to it so much. . I just have to take a little [better] care of it," Zoller said.
"Mark is a very tough kid - we all know that," Penn coach Glen Miller said. "A lot of kids wouldn't play with his ankle."
Miller's players have close to a week to nurse their wounds between the BCA and Saturday's home opener against Florida Gulf Coast.
All-Windex team?
For all the success of the Syracuse big men during the Orange's convincing 78-60 win over Penn, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim still thought the Quakers' forwards came close to holding their own.
"We're a little bit bigger," he said, "but when we play with Demetris [Nichols] at the 4, . we're not that much bigger than anybody.
"We outrebounded [Penn] by two rebounds, so we're not
really beating anybody because of size."
But after the Quakers grabbed seven fewer boards than UTEP and just one more than St. Francis, Miller expressed disappointment with their rebounding.
"I still wasn't happy," he said after the 86-56 blowout of the Terriers. "When you keep the [opposing] offense on the outside, on the perimeter, you should have good rebounding position."
