Seifter | It’s the little things that count

PRINCETON, N.J. — In a storybook world, Penn could have been a team of destiny.

The Quakers could have been remembered for their tremendous character, for their refusal to acquiesce against all odds, and for their ice-cold veins in executing stunning, miraculous comebacks in the final minutes of big games.

More than likely, though, Penn will have to settle for being the team that exhibited all of the above but couldn’t quite do the little things to get over the hump.

“We should have won the game, we had opportunities to have the decision go in our favor,” Penn coach Jerome Allen said of Tuesday night’s overtime loss to rival Princeton. “It’s the smallest details that matter. Those things determine wins and losses.”

First there was the five-minute, 11-point comeback against La Salle to force overtime.

Then there was Saturday night’s 18-point second-half deficit turned double-overtime thriller against Harvard.

And finally there was last night’s rivalry game, with everything on the line. Penn once again dug itself a double-digit hole and once again clawed back with a trio of clutch three-point plays, culminating in a beautiful inbounds play to set up Tyler Bernardini’s game-tying trifecta with three seconds left.

The box scores indicate three gutsy comebacks, but in the all-important standings, they were simply dumped into the dreaded loss column.

Last night’s outcome in particular should have been different, if it weren’t for those pesky, fairy-tale wrecking details — two uncharacteristic Miles Cartwright misses from the charity stripe, Eggleston’s technical foul for jumping on a loose ball and calling a timeout the team didn’t have, a turnover on the ensuing inbounds, an unnecessary frustration foul and a blown wide-open layup by Fran Dougherty in the final seconds.

“I’m running the sequence in my head right now, and I’m not really following it,” Penn guard Zack Rosen said. “It was over, and we let it slip.”

The Quakers rightly pointed out that none of those plays truly decided the outcome because every possession counts equally in the final score.

But after wasting away early opportunities, Allen’s squad would rather dish out the first punch than rely on scrapping its way back into the game.

Instead, Penn has been the Ivy League’s Sisyphus, repeatedly pushing the boulder up the hill, only to watch it fall at the last second.

“We gave that game away, we wrapped that thing up and gave it to them,” Penn guard Tyler Bernardini said. “We’ve just had two of these things back-to-back, and it’s just tough. We could very easily be undefeated and in first place right now. But we’re not.”

Given the emotional roller-coaster ride of a season so far, there’s still a chance this Penn team will leave its imprint on the Palestra rafters.

But the Quakers no longer control their own destiny — they’ll need help from another team to hand Princeton its first loss.

But maybe for once the storyline will finally cooperate. After all, it seems only fitting that this Penn team’s destiny should be decided in the final seconds of the season.

ARI SEIFTER is a senior computer and cognitive science major from Ellicott City, Md., and is former Associate Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. He can be contacted at dpsports@theDP.com.

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