Penn - UIC notebook

For those of you who weren't among the 2,218 fans at the Penn win over Illinois-Chicago last night, you missed a thrilling comeback from the Quakers, as well as a few off-the-court happenings.

There were a few season ticket holders still around, but Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell was clearly the biggest Penn fan there. Rendell was noticeably livid about a double-dribbling call on Ibrahim Jaaber early in the second half. From my angle (and the ref's) it looked as if the guard was guilty, but from the opposite side it was clear to fans that a Flames defender tipped the ball out of Jaaber's control. On what was Jaaber's only turnover of the game, Rendell jumped out of his seat and started screaming at the ref, and worked the near official for the next few minutes.

Gotta give props to the Penn perimeter defense, which held the Flames to 6-of-20 three point shooting, half of which were in the final nine minutes against Penn in a zone defense (which is easier to shoot threes over). Last week the Quakers got lit up by Fordham. And while the Rams had much better ball movement, Penn did a better job this week of getting a hand up in the shooter's face, and switching off of all screens to not give up many open looks.

Jaaber, for the first time I can remember, went sans undershirt, deciding to show off his guns. It's definitely a good look, too many players on the team wear T-shirts under their jerseys. Who knows, it might have helped his game as well; Jaaber had nine assists, one turnover and six steals.

As mentioned earlier, the student turnout was light, and there was no band, only a few cheerleaders and no rollouts from the crowd. Still, the crowd got pretty loud when the refs made a few questionable calls, and even more so as Penn tied it up and took the lead late in the game. There was a highlight when during two free throws from Jovan Stefanov, the Red and Blue crew chanted: "USA! USA"