The Penn men's basketball team went 4-for-15 from three over the weekend. Instead of being disappointed with that first number, the squad is content with the second one.
The nation's 334th-best three-point shooting team was attempting 17.3 per game coming into the weekend but managed to get different kinds of looks in wins over Harvard and Dartmouth.
"It's always been an effort of ours to get the ball inside, and we've had a little success doing that," Penn coach Glen Miller said.
"If the shot presents itself and we're in good rhythm in space, we'll take it. But we've shown we're a low-percentage three-point shooting team, so we try to play more to our strengths."
It's easy to settle for a three, but Miller knows that his team can't rely on that.
"We're not North Carolina, but they shot [seven] threes and they beat us by 30-something, so I don't know that you need to take threes to win," Miller said. "It's nice to have a balance . we've been getting the ball inside and getting to the foul line."
Hard-headed. The exchange between Harvard's Evan Harris and Penn's Justin Reilly led to the ejection of forwards Andreas Schreiber and Brennan Votel (for leaving the bench), and it seemed like Reilly's day might have been done too.
The 6-foot-8 sophomore got entangled with Harris in a heated moment midway through the first half that ended with Reilly taking a shot to his dome.
"We got in a tussle, and his elbow cut the top of my head," Reilly said.
Reilly immediately ran into the locker room holding his head, but five stitches later, he returned to the game.
Still, he said it didn't particularly hurt, and he was soon fine.
"I think adrenaline probably had a lot to do with it," Reilly said. "I had a little headache, obviously, but nothing serious."
Ghosts of the Palestra. Two days later, the Quakers still have no idea how Elgin Fitzgerald's potentially game-tying shot at the buzzer stayed out.
After picking up a stripped ball, the Dartmouth big man threw up what looked to be a prayer of a hook shot. It rolled around the basket and sat on the front of the rim for a good two or three seconds. And while Dartmouth finished the game on a 21-10 run, those last two points fell out, securing the Quakers' 68-66 win.
"I was thinking 'I wish I could be up there and blow it off the rim,'" Reilly said.
"I definitely thought it was going down. It would have been fitting considering the final stretch of that game."
Miller had called timeout, setting up his defense to stop Dartmouth from getting an opportunity to win in regulation and to shut down Alex Barnett, who already had 18 points.
"We didn't give up anything easy at the rim, and we had good organization not to give up a three-point shot," Miller said.
"We had two guys converge on [Barnett], and we were able to strip him, and the kid picked it up off the ground in a scramble situation, and tossed it up while falling on the ground."
No matter what happened with Fitzgerald's shot, the coach would have been happy with his team's efforts on the final possession.
"It hung around the rim, and I actually thought it was going in," Miller said. "But even if it went in, I would have been pleased with the defense."
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