After last night's game, Monmouth coach Dave Calloway offered a bold prediction about Mark Zoller's expanding basketball resume.
"I'm gonna guess he's got a chance at Ivy League Player of the Week," the Hawks' coach joked.
No doubt Zoller will be on the short list of candidates after his 29 points and 11 rebounds propelled Penn to an 80-66 victory over Monmouth.
"We're not going to win a lot of games giving up 80 points," Calloway observed after his team conceded 26 assists on 34 field goals due to 50-percent shooting from Penn on the night.
The Quakers used an 8-0 run - including back-to-back layups by Zoller - to open a double-digit lead with 8:52 to play. The senior co-captain had 15 points in the first half and easily cruised past his previous career high of 26 in the second.
On a night when Ibrahim Jaaber was limited to five points on 1-of-7 shooting, Zoller's night had real significance.
"We get out on the break a little bit more" relative to last year, Zoller said, adding that the increased tempo helped him get easy baskets last night.
"Any scorer's mentality is, once you get those easy looks, you feel more comfortable shooting the ball."
"He's shown a great combination of inside play and outside play," Penn coach Glen Miller said. "Give him most of the credit, for sure."
But Zoller's scoring total reflected the performance of his teammates as well. Brian Grandieri and Steve Danley both notched double figures in points, and Jaaber quietly posted a career-high 10 assists.
The threat of Jaaber's shooting, in particular, cleared many of the lanes that Zoller waltzed through for easy baskets.
"Any time you have a player of Ibby's caliber, it's going to open up more shots for the other players on the team," Zoller said.
The Hawks tried to make a game of it in the second half. They cut the lead to 43-40 on an and-1 by Marques Alston, who paced Monmouth with 23 points.
But the man of the game responded in typical fashion.
Zoller put together an 8-0 run, punctuated by an and-1 of his own that brought the lead back to double figures for good.
"It's a game of runs, or it was tonight," Miller remarked of the back-and-forth game, which he said led him to rest Jaaber and Zoller for only a combined eight minutes.
The Quakers showed a surprising degree of dominance inside as well. Monmouth was hampered by the surprise absence of 7-foot-2 center John Bunch, who collided with a player in the Hawks' last game.
Monmouth was still bigger, but Penn was stronger. 52 of its 80 points came in the paint, and the Quakers easily outrebounded the Hawks, 39-27 (the margin was 18-9 in offensive rebounds).
"From my standpoint, there's probably been a little more of an emphasis," Miller said of Penn's work on the glass, a bugaboo during the early part of the schedule.
"We started out the year on the negative side, and the guys are doing a little better job of making contact and then getting the ball."
Brennan Votel played a noticeable role in that, garnering six rebounds in 17 minutes of action.
And junior guard Mike Kach made his first appearance for Penn in over a year and a half, scoring two points in five minutes after missing the early part of the season with an ankle injury.
But tonight was a night for a senior.
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