Midseason Report: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

With 16 games down and 15 to go (and hopefully more), the DP Sports staff has compiled a collective Good, Bad & Ugly for the season thus far. Penn (7-9, 0-3 Big 5) got off to a quick 3-1 start, but since then the Quakers have dropped eight of 12. The Red and Blue are 4-5 at the Palestra and 3-4 on the road. They begin their quest for their first Ivy Title since 2007 tonight against Columbia.

THE GOOD

Zack Rosen becomes program’s all-time assists leader With his 506th career assist in a 78-73 win over Lafayette, Rosen passed his coach Jerome Allen as Penn’s career leader.

Zack Rosen named a finalist for 2012 Bob Cousy Award The senior guard is the last Ivy League and Big 5 guard in contention. The current field of 20 players will be narrowed to 10 in February and five in March. The award winner will be announced on April 2nd as part of the Final Four in New Orleans.

Tyler Bernardini’s back-to-back monster games The fifth-year senior notched a career-high 29 points in his home state of California against UCLA, and in Penn’s next game he topped that with 30 points against Marist. On both nights, Bernardini was 8-for-12 from beyond the arc.

Rob Belcore's new offensive confidence When he’s going, he goes. Always known for his defense, this season he has turned up the heat offensively as well. When Belcore heats up in a game and gets confident, he’s such a black horse. And he’ll do anything to win, even tossing out water bottles. Ivy squads may struggle to answer.

The Palestra’s new scoreboard Instant replay is finally available in the Cathedral of College Basketball! So are pregame pump-up videos.

Giving Temple a run for its money Even in a 73-67 overtime loss, the Quakers played extremely well. Zack Rosen scored 27 points and made 7-of-10 three-pointers, including six in the second half and overtime. And the Palestra was rocking — it felt like a throwback Big 5 game.

THE BAD

Inconsistency of player performance game-to-game Each game, someone is great — but never at the same time. As the Quakers begin the grueling Ivy weekend with back-to-back game days, they’re going to need more consistency.

Rebounding The Quakers rank dead last in the Ivies in defensive rebounds. Box out!

Biggest win came against … Robert Morris? Thus far, the Red and Blue have defeated most of the teams they should have, but they failed to pull off any upsets. They took Temple, UCLA and Davidson down to the wire, but they failed to finish the job each time.

Foul trouble This issue was epitomized against Rider, when three big men fouled out. Despite the absence of Fran Dougherty, Mike Howlett and Henry Brooks, the Quakers were still able to come away with the 78-72 win in overtime, even though they finished the game with five guards on the court.

THE UGLY

Back to Big 5 irrelevance After snapping a 16-game losing streak in the Big 5 against St. Joe’s last year, the Quakers are one loss away from going 0-4 in the city series again.

Late arrivals We’re not talking about the fans. The Quakers just don’t seem to be there when the game starts — they’ve allowed teams to get out to double-digit leads in the first few minutes of too many games to count.

When Zack Rosen sits on the bench Rosen came out of the La Salle game for 46 seconds, and the Explorers rattled off six points en route to a 68-57 victory. The Quakers just look lost without their star on the court.

Frontcourt mismatches Penn hasn’t matched up against anyone very well in this area and has looked especially vulnerable against talented big men. In the Pittsburgh game alone, they were outscored in the paint, 48-16. Talk about ugly.