It was March 2003, and the Quakers already had their front line for the next four years solidified.
Fran Dunphy had found his replacements for Ugonna and Koko. Their names were Stephen Danley and Ryan Pettinella.
But in the closing stages of recruiting season, somebody caught Dunphy's eye. The kid came to Penn, toured campus with a student manager, not even a player. Nobody seemed to know, including the undersized forward himself, if he even belonged at this level.
Four years later, Mark Zoller is a favorite for Ivy League Player of the Year.
The visit
Before he was the all-star of 33rd Street and the rock star of 40th Street, he was the scared kid in Philosophy class.
Zoller took his official visit to Penn in late March following his senior season at St. Joseph's Prep. While most recruits toured campus with players or coaches, Zoller took his tour with Matt Bloom, a third-year student manager.
While Dunphy and Zoller said the choice was a logistical one, fitting the visit around class times, Bloom thought he could get a sense of how Zoller's visit was prioritized.
"You had an idea; the fact that they sent Mark around with a manager probably meant that he wasn't the cream of the crop," said Bloom, who now analyzes game tape for Lawrence Frank and the New Jersey Nets.
"We had already gotten a commitment from Steve Danley and gotten a commitment from Ryan Pettinella, so it wasn't a top priority," Dunphy said. "But the more I watched him and understood what kind of player he was, the more I wanted him to come to Penn."
So Zoller took the short trip from his home in Blue Bell, Pa. to West Philadelphia, and got ready for his first big stop on the tour: Philosophy recitation.
While Zoller admitted that on his three free throws with a second to play in this year's Temple game that he'd "never been more nervous in my life," this episode had to be close.
"He seemed like a nervous, floppy-haired kid," Bloom said of Zoller, who has since increased the confidence and decreased the 'do. "I could see how nervous he was about getting called on in class."
More anxiety
Compared to the possibility of a temporary embarrassment in a room full of strangers, Zoller had bigger problems.
Most notably, whether he could set foot on the same court as the Villanovas of the world.
"Coming in, I didn't know whether I could compete at this level, playing in the Big 5 and playing against these Big East and A-10 schools," Zoller said. "I didn't know if I was good enough."
He was good enough to win Catholic League Player of the Year in his final season at the Prep, but his skills were no guarantee to translate to the collegiate game.
He was an undersized power forward, standing 6-foot-6 and weighing in then at 210 pounds. He had very little confidence in his post moves and didn't have much of an outside game to complement them.
"To be honest, the first couple of times I saw Mark, I saw question marks," Dunphy said. "And each and every time I went back to see him play, the question marks became less and less, just because he was such a terrific competitor."
So Dunphy took a chance on Zoller, which was feeling less and less risky every day.
And as Boston University and Colgate came calling as well, Zoller took a chance on himself.
Payoff
Zoller's breakout, in Dunphy's eyes, came late in his sophomore season. Maybe it was experience, maybe it was Dunphy's decision to start him in place of Wharton senior Jan Fikiel.
Whatever it was, Zoller hasn't looked back.
Now going on three Ivy League championship rings, Zoller's 1,355 points put him 11th on Penn's all-time scoring list. And he currently leads the league with 18.2 points per game and trails only Cornell's Andrew Naeve with 7.3 rebounds per game.
So what's been the difference? Two things, really.
"I have more of a go-to move; when I came in as a freshman, I really didn't have a go-to move."
And for every step forward his inside game took, his outside game took two.
"As a freshman, I wasn't real comfortable shooting the three-pointer," said Zoller, who took just one three every 182 minutes in 2003-04. "Last year, I felt a lot more comfortable shooting the three and shooting it with consistency."
Since his freshman season, his three-point attempts have gone up steadily from one every 21.4 minutes in 2004-05 to every 10.4 minutes last year and every 8.5 this season.
And it's not like he's a bricklayer, as the big man has hit on 38.4 percent of his tries.
"He's a smart enough guy and has enough of a knack for the game that he figured out what he could do well," Dunphy said. "And he perfected what he could do well."
Ask anybody in the crowd for Senior Night on Saturday, and they'll tell you all about what Zoller can do well. They might not know that the player who looks so fearless on the court encountered one of his biggest fears in Philosophy recitation on that late March morning.
"Coming from an all-guys school, I was waiting for there to be girls in the class," Zoller said.
The male-female ratio was not to his liking, but one piece of advice from the manager might have saved his chances of being a Penn Quaker.
"I told him not to worry," Bloom said. "Once he's a basketball player, he'll be fine."
Zachary Levine is a senior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
