This is the column I never wanted to write but sensed I might have to after watching Loyola take a 30-point lead against Penn at that high school gym in Baltimore.
After that game, Glen Miller stressed his team's inexperience. That's when I almost wrote off this season as a rebuilding year. There's still a document on my laptop from that Sunday in November titled, "Rebuilding phase."
But when you're a die-hard fan of a team for which winning is not only the goal but the expectation, you can't stomach the idea of rebuilding, at least not so early in the season.
So I wrote about how inexperience isn't a big problem because it's self-correcting. I held out hope that a bunch of underclassmen and untested juniors could complete the maturation process by February.
Now, the Quakers find themselves in fourth place in the Ivy League at the halfway point, three games behind a Cornell team that no one will catch. And their growing pains are still showing. I've finally come to grips with the reality that Penn won't be going to the NCAA Tournament this year.
The team is going through a rebuilding phase. And this past weekend's games showed that it has been successful. In a season in which Penn won't win the league, gradual improvement and maturity are what matter.
At Loyola, the Quakers put up 23 three-point attempts and made only four. Nobody on the floor wanted to run the offense.
On Saturday against Yale, Penn attempted 12 fewer and converted the same.
At Loyola, the Quakers couldn't break the full-court press, and the Greyhounds beat them in transition time and time again. On Saturday, as freshman Jack Eggleston thundered through the press and passed it to Brian Grandieri for an easy, pull-up banker, the Loyola game seemed like a very distant memory.
Penn is still far from perfect. Harrison Gaines can dish out five pretty assists in 12 minutes just as easily as he can get beaten off the dribble.
But look at how the team responded overnight after the loss to Brown that more or less eliminated this team from contention. The Quakers bounced back stronger, playing their best stretch of basketball all season during their 23-1 run.
"I think they want be good; it's my job to show them how to be good and to make progress, Miller said after the game. "I think tonight's game was progress."
And if anyone knows progress, it's Miller. Just look at what Mark McAndrew and Damon Huffman, his prized Brown recruits, did to the Quakers on Friday.
Miller was the only Division-I coach to recruit McAndrew and figured he'd "find a way to maybe play 15 to 20 minutes per game." Miller made him into a lot more than a complementary player.
Brown was once an inexperienced team, going through a rebuilding process under Miller. Now the Bears are 6-2 - a team that has hit its peak, and the only team really within striking distance of Cornell.
Now Penn is an inexperienced team, going through a rebuilding process under Miller. And at the rate the Quakers are going, with a stellar recruiting class on the way, they'll hit their peak sooner than you might expect.
Andrew Todres is a junior Political Science major from New York. His e-mail address is todres@dailypennsylvanian.com.
