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Penn falls to California, 82-75

(03/15/02 10:00am)

PITTSBURGH - The Penn men's basketball bowed out of the NCAA tournament Friday afternoon, losing to a bigger and stronger California squad, 82-75. The Quakers hung with the Golden Bears early in the first half thanks to five three-pointers in the opening eight minutes, including three from swingman Jeff Schiffner. But a 10-0 Cal run turned the Golden Bears' four-point deficit into a six-point lead. Cal would never trail again. At the end of the first half, the Quakers had the ball and a chance to cut Cal's lead to four. However, Cal's A.J. Diggs stole the ball from Penn backup point guard David Klatsky at the top of the key, dribbled the length of the floor and laid the ball in as time expired. "That was a huge play that gave us momentum and distanced us," California head coach Ben Braun said. "There's a big difference between a six-point lead and an eight-point lead. It made the climb for Penn a little bid harder." Also making the climb difficult was that many of Penn's impact players were hampered with foul trouble. Four of Penn's five starters had at least two fouls in the first half, with point guard Andrew Toole the lone exception. Ivy League Player of the Year Ugonna Onyekwe played just 13 minutes and attempted just two shots in the first half due to his two early fouls. "We needed `U' on the floor more than he was," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. Onyekwe and Koko Archibong, Penn's top two inside threats, had difficulty controlling the paint because of California's size. Each forward went for 16 points, but Archibong shot just 5-of-17 - 1-of-9 in the first half - and at one point was blocked twice in one possession. Jamal Sampson and Solomon Hughes, Cal's 6-foot-11 monsters, each blocked three shots apiece. Onyekwe and Archibong "are two of the most active post players we've seen all year long - they're dynamite players," Braun said. "Our post guys took away their inside position and tried to bring them out to the perimeter and limit their touches. [But] they both found a way to combine for double figures. With great players, you have to hold them to their average and you're O.K." While Solomon and Hughes were able to contain Penn's scorers, the Quakers had trouble finding like answers for Cal guard Joe Shipp or forward Bryan Wethers. Shipp led all scorers with 20 points, and Wethers was second with 19. "It was difficult when Shipp and Wethers posted up inside," Toole said. "They have a little size and we had to double up on their shooters, so that made it tough inside." Shipp, for his part, had the game's most exciting play, and perhaps Cal's biggest bucket. With the Bears up 11, Shipp took a pass from A.J. Diggs in transition, elevated and slammed home a thunderous, one-handed dunk over Archibong. The Penn forward tried to take a charge, but he was too far under the basket and ended up flat on his back, with Shipp standing over him. "It was a pretty big play but it was only worth two points," Toole said. True, but Shipp's other basket was worth three points, and probably did more in helping the Bears fend off the Quakers. The Quakers were down six, 65-59, and had just pressured Cal into taking a timeout with six seconds left on the shot clock. Taking the inbounds pass, Shipp fired from at least 25 feet, draining the shot and effectively ending the Quakers upset dreams.

https://www.thedp.com/article/2002/03/penn_falls_to_california_8275

Sebastian Stockman: Breathing a sigh of relief

(03/10/02 10:00am)

The Penn men's basketball team sat in three rows in front of a TV in one corner of a room in the Dunning Coaches' Center, as various friends, family members and boosters milled around behind them, making idle chitchat and eating Abner's cheesesteaks and hoagies. The Quakers and their supporters were waiting to see which team the NCAA Selection Committee would have them play in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The Quakers had taken any real suspense out of these proceedings the previous night by drubbing Yale, 77-58, to secure the Ivy League's automatic berth. "Being in that room on Sunday night when your name is being called is the best feeling in the world for a college basketball player," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said after that game. The Quakers had answered the if. The only questions now were who, when and where? Shortly after 6:00, the CBS NCAA Selection show got under way. The East bracket was up first, followed by the Midwest. Penn wasn't in either bracket, but there were some close calls. Everyone in the room knew that the Quakers would be a good bet for 12 or 13 seed, and might even go as high as 10 or 11. Every time a four or five seed was announced, the entire room held its breath. "For me as the coach," Dunphy said. "I've had the opportunity to be there a couple of times before this. But to see [the team's] faces and know that the anticipation is going to be rewarded shortly -- that's something they're going to remember for the rest of their lives." Kentucky -- which beat Penn in the first game of the 1999 preseason NIT -- was a four seed in the East. But they're Kentucky, so there was a collective sigh of relief when Valparaiso was announced as the Wildcats' opponent. Same thing with Illinois and Florida -- the last two teams the Quakers faced in the tournament -- fourth and fifth seeds, respectively, in the Midwest, some folks even applauded when Creighton and San Diego State were revealed as their respective opponents. "I didn't think it would be nerve-wracking at all," freshman guard Tim Begley said of waiting for the announcement of Penn's seed. "But yeah, you see all those names pop up, you start wondering when you're gonna come, where you're gonna be going, who you're gonna be playing. "I'm glad they didn't call our name right away, or else it would have taken the fun out of it." An audible gasp went up when the 10 seed in the Midwest -- seven-seed Wake Forest's opponent -- was announced. Was it Penn? No, Pepperdine. "They saw that `P' and thought that was it," one of the guys from Abner's said. While the anticipation never turned into uneasiness, the Quakers and their supporters must have been a little anxious by the time their seed finally was announced. Greg Gumbel, the CBS announcer, read all the way through the South bracket until he got to the eleventh seed -- the very last slot in that regional -- "Pennsylvania out of the Ivy League." The crowd erupted and the CBS crew flipped on its camera, broadcasting the Quakers' reaction to the rest of the country. "Once they showed our name," sophomore swingman Jeff Schiffner said. "We were really fired up." No one bothered watching the rest of the selection show. The Quakers knew where they were going, and that was pretty much all anyone in the room was interested in. "It's just fun," Dunphy said of the festivities. "I think the only thing that would be better is if you were on the bubble and your name got called. What a relief that is for everybody in the room -- but this is better. When you come off that game like we had last night, knowing that you're in, it's just a fun time. "It's the best day of the year when you're in, it's the worst day of the year when you're not."

https://www.thedp.com/article/2002/03/sebastian_stockman_breathing_a_sigh_of_relief

Sebastian Stockman: Yale eliminated - for now

(03/09/02 10:00am)

EASTON, Pa. -- The 3,600 Ivy League basketball fans packing Lafayette's Kirby Sports Center Saturday night witnessed not a basketball game so much as a coronation. The Penn men's basketball team grabbed an NCAA tournament berth by beating Yale, 77-58. Leading from start to finish, the Quakers wouldn't even let the Elis come up for air. Quakers fans loved it. The noise level seldom dropped below a dull roar as the Penn faithful outdid the sizable Yale contingent in pretty much every facet of fandom. With a battery of signs and rollouts -- "1962," "40 more years," and "Yale: see you again in 2042." -- Penn fans harped on the fact that Yale hasn't been to an NCAA Tournament since before we put a man on the moon. The generally witty signs were alluding to the Yale program's long history of ineptitude and suggesting that Yale's 20-win season -- its first since 1948-49 -- was a fluke, and that the Quakers wouldn't be seeing the Elis in an important game again anytime soon. But if the Elis have anything to say about it -- and, rest assured, they do -- they'll have you know that this isn't your grandpa's Yale ball club. "None of us were born 40 years ago," said backup Yale center Josh Hill, who led the Elis with 14 points on Saturday night. "We're not really concerning ourselves with the people that came before us. Nothing against them, but [Yale's history] has nothing to do with us. We're trying to start our own tradition, and I think we're on the right path." It would certainly seem that way. Since 1999, when he took over a team that had gone 4-22 the previous season, Yale coach James Jones has gotten more and more out of his team every year. This season, they got him a share of the Ivy League championship. This from a program that last finished with a winning conference mark 11 years ago. The Elis owe a great deal of their success to their intense, fiery coach. Rather than just patching together a team for one title run, Jones seems to have performed the Herculean feat of turning around the Yale basketball program. The team has no seniors (several people left when Jones took the helm), so this is wholly Jones' team. They've only improved under his tutelage. "The good thing about my squad," Jones said Saturday night. "Is that we have everybody coming back, all the guys will have another opportunity." What's more, the Elis' two best players are their freshmen guards, Alex Gamboa and Edwin Draughan. The short, quick Gamboa was this season's Ivy League Rookie of the Year while the tall, skinny Draughan led Yale in scoring. After just one season, these two are probably Yale's best-ever backcourt tandem. Just as important as Jones' success in convincing talented recruits to go play in New Haven, Conn., though, has been his ability to convince them that there's no reason they shouldn't be in the Ivy's elite. Throughout the Elis' title hunt, Jones has put up an us-versus-them front, bristling at the merest hint of a slight or the suggestion that Yale was somewhere it wasn't supposed to be. "We didn't need this season to get confident," Gamboa said. "No one believed in us over the season, and we all believed in ourselves. We went out there and we proved that we deserve to win championships in the Ivy League." Note the freshman's use of the plural. In features about Jones -- of which many were written this year --ÿthere's an often told story. In Jones' first day on the job at Yale, he walked into the Elis locker room and found utter disarray. He was appalled and let his players know it, by making them run ungodly distances at ungodly hours. The locker room has been clean ever since. At Yale, Jones has manufactured a winning atmosphere where there wasn't the hint or memory of one. Jones found a program with zero tradition, so he started his own. "Obviously, Penn is where we want to be," Hill said. "But we did win a three-way tie for the championship in the Ivy League. That's something none of us will ever forget, something nobody can ever take away from us." As the Penn team cut down the nets Saturday night, the Elis stood off to the side, with their coach, watching. Abruptly, Jones gathered his team around him, yelled forcefully into the huddle and then ushered the Elis out of the gym. "I told them that we had more season to play," Jones said. "That for us -- 20 wins in our league this year -- we should get an NIT bid. I told them to keep their heads up." This has to be the difference between Jones and those who preceded him at Yale. He not only wants a spot in the NIT, he expects it. While it's true -- as one of the Penn signs read -- that "You can't spell Eliminated without ELI," it won't be a valid taunt forever.

https://www.thedp.com/article/2002/03/sebastian_stockman_yale_eliminated_for_now

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