With eight minutes remaining and his team trailing by 31 points to the No.1-ranked team in the country, freshman Remy Cofield finally got the call from coach Glen Miller to enter the game.
Cofield was the tenth man off the bench on Tuesday. He got a quick steal for his only crooked number on the score sheet, but was taken out two minutes later.
It was just two weeks ago, against another ACC opponent, No. 25 Virginia, that Cofield was atop the Penn offense.
He led all Quakers that day with 20 points in 19 minutes.
Miller rewarded the freshman's strong efforts with just 16 minutes of playing time in the four games since.
The 6-foot-4 Massachusetts native has notched just three points over that span.
Cofield's lack of playing time in blowouts where the opportunity existed to sub him in is somewhat conspicuous. He's a raw talent who needs the experience.
Gotta get those boards. Cofield failed to pick up a single rebound against the Tar Heels, but that is hardly a surprise. Indeed, the battle of the glass was one of the most one-sided aspects of Penn's loss to Carolina.
Only one member of the Quakers -- senior Brain Grandieri - had over three rebounds on Tuesday, with six. By contrast, two of Roy Williams' players had double-digit rebound totals.
Overall, Carolina Blue beat the Red and Blue by a two-to-one margin in the battle of the boards, 49-24. The more telling statistic, however, is the number of caroms on the offensive end: 20 for Penn, seven for UNC.
Glen Miller's squad could thus not capitalize on the Tar Heels rare miscues to stay in the game.
"You can't jump with these guys. We're learning it the hard way," Grandieri said on Tuesday. "We really got to start boxing out."
Tyler Hansbrough was dominant, but not just because of height; the junior and future NBA draft pick is listed at a respectable 6-foot-9, but hardly atypical in the basketball world. Penn's Andreas Schreiber, for instance, is just as tall and weighs just five pounds less than Hansbrough.
Yet the Quakers have struggled on the glass long before they had to play the best collegiate team. They have averaged 35 boards per game, 5.7 fewer than their opponents 40.7
"I don't think we're lacking effort," Grandieri said. "But for some reason once the ball goes up, we just all gravitate to the ball."
Conspiracy Theory. Tony Kornheiser, host of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption and Monday Night Football, has his own theory on why the Quakers lost to the Tar Heels last night.
He did not credit Tyler Hansbrough's 29 points and 10 rebounds. Nor did he blame the four turnovers apiece from Brian Grandieri, Harrison Gaines, and Justin Reilly.
Rather, Kornheiser -- whose son played on Penn's varsity golf team before graduating this spring - targeted the men in stripes.
"I watched the whole game. The refs hosed them," he said. "It was a conspiracy to keep Carolina number one, or Penn would have won."
