Game 1: UMBC — The Good, Bad and the Ugly

In its season opener, Penn did what it was supposed to against a young and turnover-prone team — pressure the ball. The Retrievers had 20 miscues in the Quakers 59-45 win. Penn suffered some lapses of its own on both ends, which is the reason this game was not put away in the first half. A win's a win, but let's take a closer look.

The Good: Activity/effort on the defensive end and Zack Rosen the closer. Coach Allen and senior forward Rob Belcore will tell you that the defense could have been much better (and it certainly could have) but from watching the game in person, I was struck by the effort and activity on that end of the floor. UMBC is not the greatest team, so the fact the Quakers held them to 33.3 percent shooting should not be hyped up. Still, the energy and effort of the defense is something that stood out — Belcore flying around, Rosen digging in on UMBC frosh point guard Joey Getz, active hands all around.

Offensively, Rosen was the reason Penn was able to keep a comfortable cushion in the 2nd half. The senior point guard asserted himself when he needed to, and served as the team's closer for the night, scoring 16 points in the 2nd half (26 for the night on 10-for-15 shooting, 4-for-5 from distance). He made some difficult — and timely — shots on a night when Miles Cartwright and Tyler Bernardini were unable to get it going.

The Bad: Perimeter shooting, by both teams. Taking away Rosen's 10-for-15 shooting, the rest of the team shot just 30.6 percent from the field, 15.4 percent from deep (2-13). UMBC, meanwhile, was 0-11 from three and 16-for-48 overall. It wasn't so much a lack of execution for Penn. Guys like Cartwright and Bernardini had a few good looks on set plays from three, they just couldn't knock 'em down Friday night. Another bad? Penn's rebounding in the first half. Like I said, the defense was active and flying around, but Penn didn't close out some of those possessions. UMBC had 8 offensive boards in the first half (the Retrievers outrebounded Penn, 23-10 in the opening period). That can't happen going forward.

The Ugly: In a game where both teams combined to shoot 37.4 percent, there was a whole lot of ugly. But one shot from UMBC's Adrian Satchell was just downright ugly. He launched a three that literally fell a few feet from the basket — not even close. It looked like he was expecting a foul and then when it didn't come, he had nothing left on his shot. Still, that led my liveblogging partner Brian Kotloff to call it "The worst Division-I college basketball shot I've ever seen"