Second half surge dooms Penn

After Darren Smith pulled free from two defenders with a flawless up-and-under move and banked a shot off the glass on Penn’s first possession of the second half, pulling his team within five, it seemed that the Quakers were at least going to make the Great Danes compete.

And when Rob Belcore stole a pass from Albany’s Tim Ambrose less than a minute later and took it coast-to-coast for a layup to make the score 36-39, there was even a glimmer of hope that Penn might finally obtain their elusive first win of its season.

Not so fast.

Albany would score on each of its next six trips down the floor, and didn’t miss a shot for over a four-minute span early in the second half. And when a Great Dane attempt from the field finally refused to drop, Albany center Brent Gifford came down with the offensive board and put it in for yet another basket.

At first, the Quakers were reluctant to see the opposition run away with the game. They responded with hot shooting of their own, trading three-pointers with the Great Danes for the next four possessions.

After Derrek Tartt scored Albany’s first points of the second stanza, Will Harris sank a deep three pointer to extend the lead to eight. On the ensuing possession, Jack Eggleston brought the lead back to five with a trifecta of his own.

Harris dropped another three after losing Belcore on a pick and roll on his next trip down the floor. But a Smith three from the corner once again neutralized the Great Danes.

But the Quakers inevitably ran out of answers and were unable to endure trading buckets with the Great Danes. Albany continued to create open looks on each of its possessions, while the Quakers fired up contested shots time and time again.

And the Quakers didn’t just slow down off this torrid scoring pace, they fell off of it completely.

After Smith’s three, the Red and Blue went ice cold, shooting one-for-11 from the field over the next 9:58 of game time.

Meanwhile, the Great Danes ran away with the game, putting on a shooting clinic in the second half. Every player that entered the game shot better than 50 percent in the final 20 minutes. Albany would finish the game with a remarkable 54.1 field goal percentage.

Albany coach Will Brown explained his team’s success.

“We thought that if we reversed the ball side-to-side and were aggressive, that we could get into the lane and cause some problems for them,” he said.

Yet Brown’s observation that getting into the lane caused some problems for the Quakers was a glaring understatement. The Great Danes dominated down low, scoring 42 of their 78 from inside the paint.

However, it was outside shooting that ignited the run that ultimately put the game away. Albany shot 57.1 percent from three-point land in the second half. It was Harris again, this time running around Eggleston off a screen and roll, that capped a 21-3 run with his third three-ball of the half.

“In the first half, Belcore was playing me tight and keeping me from shooting threes,” Harris explained. “In the second half, my guys set good screens for me, and I just let it go.”

But coach Brown said the run was sparked by his team’s defensive play, and the key to its success was limiting the effect of Quakers point guard Zach Rosen.

“He makes everybody on that team better,” Brown said. “He really does. So he’s a tough matchup, but we wanted to give him no angles, square up on him, keep him in front of us and not let him find open shooters.”

The story of the game boils down to the fact that during 10 full minutes of gameplay, Penn struggled to score and simultaneously proved unable to defend the Albany attack.

For the sixth straight game, the Quakers have seen the opposition run away with their elusive first win of the season. And for the players that now stand at 0-6, the frustration is building as notches in the loss column are becoming an all-too-familiar sight.

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