PROVIDENCE, R.I. - On another night, it might have been a setback. But when leading scorer Tyler Bernardini fouled out after just 18 minutes on Saturday night, Penn had already disappointed in so many ways that one more hardly mattered.
Brown shredded Penn's defense, shot a remarkable 64 percent from the field, led by as many points as 39 and put a 75-43 beatdown on the Quakers (11-17, 6-5 Ivy), producing the largest margin of defeat Penn has ever endured in an Ivy League game.
"It wasn't tough [to lose Bernardini]. He wasn't doing anything," Quakers coach Glen Miller said. "We could have kept him in there [or] he could have fouled out in the first half and it wouldn't have made any difference."
Bernardini, whose scoreless night stood in stark contrast to the 16 points he hung on Yale the night before, was hardly the sole offender, and Miller spared no one in his analysis of what went wrong.
"We got drilled," he said. "Brown was ready from the get-go and we weren't. They beat us to every rebound, [every] loose ball. We were just ill-prepared to play.
"Our younger players need to . understand the type of program that [they're] playing in," Miller added. "You just don't have a game like this.
Brown coach Craig Robinson said that, contrary to the perception, his team does not run a Princeton offense and that scoring 75 points was no aberration for the Bears (17-9, 9-3). They were averaging 68 points per game, fourth in the Ivy League.
But they did succeed in taking two hallmarks of that complex motion scheme and running them to perfection.
The first weapon of choice was the classic backdoor cut, which helped them build up a 44-14 first-half lead. The second was the three-pointer; Brown hit six of 13 attempts. Senior guard Damon Huffman hit two of them, which made him the school's all-time leader from long distance. One of them banked in off the glass, a fitting snapshot of a night where nothing could go wrong for Brown.
"It was everything I could have asked for," Huffman said.
To top it off, the win came against a coach - Miller - who left Brown two years ago to climb the career ladder. Huffman said he had good memories of Miller but that winning this game did give him some extra satisfaction.
"I had a good freshman year, so he liked me [and] he wasn't as hard on me," he said. "He's the kind of coach that, in a way, favors certain players, so our personalities worked well together."
Freshman Peter Sullivan and senior Mark McAndrew led Brown with 16 points each, and center Scott Friske added 13.
Only Brian Grandieri hit double figures for Penn, which committed 17 turnovers and struggled against Brown's 2-3 zone.
"They're a better team, but they're not 30-something, 40 points better, " Miller said.
Despite Cornell's title-clinching win, Brown still has two goals left: breaking the program record for wins in a season, which it can do with one more victory and making the National Invitational Tournament.
The Quakers took the long bus ride home without such prospects, only able to hope that next Saturday, the last home game ever for Penn's seniors, will be different.
