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(11/16/00 10:00am)
In this, an age when people change careers like shoes , Dave Duke is a refreshing sight.
He's a basketball coach -- it's as simple as that. This is the job that he's always wanted to do, and he's made his living at it for the last 25 years.
His career has run the gamut, from a decade of paying his dues on the high school level, to eight years as a Division I head man, all the way to a two-season stint as a volunteer assistant at Penn. Dave Duke has gone through just about everything a basketball coach can.
And it hasn't been easy.
Sure, he had tons of success early. He won a Philadelphia Catholic League title as a high school coach and attracted accolades as a precocious head coach at Lehigh, leading the Engineers to an 18-win season in 1989-90 and a 19-win campaign the following year.
Dick Vitale even called Duke "one of the brightest young coaches in America."
Then the going got tough.
Duke had a losing record in each of his final five seasons at Lehigh and resigned after his second 4-23 campaign in four years.
But that was five years ago, and Dave Duke now has a new job. With the departure of Steve Donahue -- who left Fran Dunphy's staff to become head coach at Cornell earlier this fall -- Duke has been promoted to a full-time assistant for the Quakers.
"I think his level of experience is what makes him an asset to our basketball staff," Penn coach Fran Dunphy says.
Although he seems perfectly comfortable in his cramped office at the Dunning Coaches' Center, Duke is not your typical bench aide.
"I'm not as driven as some guys who are so focused on becoming a head coach," Duke says. "I was fortunate to be a head coach at a pretty young age, so that's not motivating me so much."
It's not a desire to become a superstar that drives Duke anymore. He knows that he's never going to be Bob Knight or John Wooden. Instead, it's his love for the game of basketball that keeps him working hard.
"This is what I've always done and what I've had a passion for," he says. "I've learned from a lot of good people, and this is what I do."
*
Duke grew up in Clifton Heights, Pa., in nearby Delaware County, and has always had a close connection to Philadelphia-area basketball.
"I spent a lot of my Wednesday nights and Saturday nights right here at the Palestra watching Big 5 doubleheaders," Duke reminisces.
In high school, he was a three-year starter and two-year captain, averaging 15.2 points for his career. When it came time for college, Duke stayed close to home and enrolled in Villanova.
In his four years on the Main Line, the short-of-stature Duke only made the Wildcats team once, getting cut his other three years.
Although he wasn't winning accolades on John Kraft's or Rollie Massimino's teams of that era, Duke was already sowing the seeds of a career on the sidelines.
"While I was still at Villanova, I started coaching CYO in my spare time, because I knew this was something I was interested in doing," he says.
And so Duke started in the mailroom, teaching hoops to kids who hadn't even taken algebra.
But pretty soon, he started to make his way up the ladder.
First, he went to take a job as an assistant coach at Cardinal O'Hara in nearby Springfield, Pa., working his way up to the head position at St. John Neumann High School in South Philadelphia.
It was in his five-year term at Neumann that Duke really starting turning heads. In 1984-85, his final season in high school coaching, Duke marshalled Neumann to the championship of Philly's notoriously tough Catholic League, and he was subsequently honored as The Philadelphia Inquirer's Coach of the Year.
Duke was in his early 30s, and he was a mentor on the rise. It didn't take long for colleges to start calling, so in the fall of 1985 Duke headed north to Bethlehem, Pa., to be a head assistant and recruiting coordinator under Fran McCaffery at Lehigh.
After Duke spent just three seasons as a right-hand man, McCaffery bolted to Notre Dame to become one of Digger Phelps' assistants.
Dave Duke was put in charge of the program.
*
The Lehigh Engineers do not exactly have a storied basketball tradition, and Duke makes that clear when he talks about his former employer.
"Lehigh was a tough place to coach," Duke says. "You wind up getting overshadowed by wrestling and football, and it's somewhat tough to recruit. Here at Penn you have the city of Philadelphia and a bunch of different programs. Up at Lehigh, people tend to think it's only an engineering school. It's just a lot tougher."
History seems to confirm Duke's claim. A number of talented coaches have led the Engineers and wound up with pretty unattractive records. Pete Carril, who led Princeton brilliantly for 30 years, went 11-12 in his one season at Lehigh, and Brian Hill, a long-time NBA head man, finished up with a 75-131 career mark with the Engineers.
In fact, Duke's career record at Lehigh -- 90-134 over eight seasons -- is really quite impressive by the school's standards. The only Engineers coach with more career wins is Tony Packer, the father of CBS analyst Billy Packer, who rang up 112 victories in 16 seasons.
In Duke's third season as head coach, Lehigh basketball moved to the Patriot League. With a scholarship-laden Fordham team leading the league and a gifted program at Holy Cross right behind the Rams, things got a lot rougher for the Engineers.
"We had some tough years," Duke recalls.
That's a fair estimation. Although Lehigh's 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons saw Duke go a respectable 21-33, they were bookended by awful 4-23 campaigns.
In the March immediately following the second of those 4-23 seasons, Duke resigned as the head of the program. In the Lehigh press release, the outgoing mentor said he was leaving to "pursue other coaching opportunities."
It was clear that there would be no more opportunity in Bethlehem.
*
After leaving a less-than-perfect situation with the Engineers, Duke decided to try something new.
"When I left, I wanted to be an NBA assistant," Duke said. "The way you usually become an assistant is to work your way up, first being a tape guy or something like that. I decided to go into the USBL."
The United States Basketball League has its season in the spring and summer and includes players with NBA aspirations.
Duke joined the Atlantic City Seagulls as assistant coach and director of player personnel, and his NBA longings were paired symbiotically with those of his players. He was a vital component of a Seagulls team that won back-to-back titles in 1997 and 1998.
Soon enough, however, Duke realized that the USBL was not the optimal place to work. Having known Fran Dunphy since his early days of high school coaching, he became aware of an opening at Penn.
"I enjoyed the situation in the USBL," Duke recalls. "We had a very good owner, but I missed college coaching, and I knew the Big 5 and the whole area. I just couldn't pass it up."
Ivy League rules prohibit teams from having more than two paid assistants, so Duke had to work for free in his first two years at Penn.
His wife, Maureen, worked throughout this period, and the Duke family -- which includes his two teenage daughters Christine and Kelly Ann -- was able to make ends meet without a coaching salary.
In addition to a variety of responsibilities with the varsity program, Duke was in charge of the Quakers junior varsity team during his two years as a part-time assistant -- a task in which he took pleasure.
"Those guys just love to play," Duke says. "That's what it's all about. There are no crowds at their games, they just want to play.... I loved those guys."
Perhaps one of the reasons Duke loved the Penn JV team so much was because he saw a little bit of himself in those gym rats.
Maybe he saw that same unabiding love of the game that has kept him in it for a quarter century.
(11/14/00 10:00am)
In a welcome conclusion to its season, the Penn men's cross country finished eighth out of 25 teams at this past Saturday's NCAA District Championships and, in the process, went a long way toward soothing the sting of a seventh-place finish at the Heptagonal Championships two weekends ago.
"This definitely takes some of the sting off," Penn junior Anthony Ragucci said. "Heps is on a whole different level, so it doesn't erase anything. They say you're only as good as your last race, so in that sense it's good to have done well at Districts."
The Quakers may have finished well behind first-place Georgetown and second-place Villanova, but Penn has plenty of reason to be pleased with its performance on the 10-kilometer course in State College, Pa.
Three Red and Blue runners crossed the line in the top 50 at this ungainly 177-competitor race. Senior Bryan Kovalsky, in his final cross country race in a Penn uniform, secured 21st place with a time of 31:14. Ragucci was the next Quaker to come in, capturing 32nd position with a time of 31:37. Sophomore Anthony Sager rounded out the top three with a time of 31:42 and a 39th-place finish.
Penn coach Charlie Powell's runners were very close to an even higher finish on Penn State's stomping grounds. If the Quakers had corralled just four more team points, they would have vaulted past two teams -- West Virginia and Farleigh Dickinson -- into sixth position. And that would have marked an improvement over last year's seventh-place outing at Districts.
Perhaps the most important factor in the Quakers' favor this past Saturday was their mental outlook going in.
"At Heps, we really talked it up and wound up putting a lot of pressure on ourselves," Ragucci said. "This time, we knew the importance of the race, but coach made sure that we were relaxed the whole time."
Making sure not to psych themselves out of the race, Penn showed that it is still a force to be reckoned with on the East Coast. Last season at this race, the team performed similarly, but with one major exception -- then-seniors Scott Clayton and Sean MacMillan won trips to the NCAA Championships by finishing third and eighth, respectively.
At every District Championship throughout the country, the top two teams win automatic trips to NCAAs, and those went to Georgetown and Villanova on Saturday. In addition, the top four runners overall who are not part of those squads get a trip to Nationals -- which will be held this year at Iowa State -- and that's how the pair of Penn runners went last year.
This year, the Quakers harriers had no such luck, but this race still bodes well for them.
"It's an improvement over Heps, and I think everybody is happy with that...," Ragucci said. "Last year, I was 90th, so I'll definitely take this."
The Penn top five on Saturday also included senior Andy Kish and junior Matt Gioffre. Kish has been a nice fourth/fifth man for the Red and Blue this season, and Gioffre, whose health has been sub-par over the past few weeks, will be a vital part of Penn's distance events in the winter and spring.
(11/08/00 10:00am)
Among the Penn alumni who will make a Homecoming trek back to campus this weekend will be two Quakers wrestlers with a little bit of extra hardware in their luggage.
Brandon Slay, the 1998 Penn graduate who will soon be crowned as an Olympic gold medalist, and Brett Matter, a 2000 Penn graduate and reigning NCAA champion, will headline events sponsored by the Quakers wrestling team this weekend.
"They're both excited to be coming back," Penn coach Roger Reina said. "We definitely have a lot to celebrate."
Reina's grapplers, who finished ninth at the 1999 NCAA Championships and are ranked No. 15 in a preseason poll published by Amateur Wrestling News, kick off their official season on November 18 at the Palestra with the Keystone Classic, but will get in some early action at this Friday's Alumni Homecoming Meet.
Then, during halftime of the Penn-Harvard football game, all of the Quakers will be honored for their 1999-2000 Ivy Championship season. In addition, both Slay and Matter will walk out onto the field to receive recognition for their achievements.
Slay, who finished second in the 167.5-pound weight class at the Olympics in Sydney, will soon have his silver medal upgraded to gold. His finals opponent in Sydney, Alexander Leipold of Germany, has been stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for steroids, but Slay will not have yet received his new award when he visits campus this weekend.
According to Reina, Slay may be crowned with his new medal during the middle of next week on NBC's Today Show, but no official announcement has been made.
Friday's alumni meet, which will pit eight recent grads against current members of the Red and Blue, will get underway at 8 p.m. at Hutchinson Gymnasium and is open to the public.
The alumni squad, which will be led by honorary captain and former Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity -- who wrestled as an undergraduate at MIT -- will square off against veteran grapplers, as well as members of what may be the most talented recruiting class in Penn history. The Quakers' freshman class is ranked as the fourth best in the nation according to AWN.
The meet will be followed by a reception for the alumni, family and friends of the wrestling program.
The wrestling team will not be the only Penn squad honored at the football game on Saturday. The women's squash team, the men's basketball team and the gymnastics team -- all of which won Ivy League titles last season -- will march onto Franklin Field's turf to hear the applause of the crowd and to shake hands with President Judith Rodin and Athletic Director Steve Bilsky.
(10/31/00 10:00am)
Penn men's basketball guard Duane King will miss at least six weeks of action after undergoing surgery on his foot last Thursday.
The 6'5" sophomore, who was in the running for a starting spot in the Penn backcourt, has a crack in his fifth metatarsal, a bone on the outside of his right foot. A surgeon inserted screws to repair the fracture, forcing King to rely on crutches to make his way around campus.
"He was doing a real good job before he got hurt. It's unfortunate," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said at practice yesterday.
King claimed that he had been playing on the injured foot for roughly five weeks.
Near the beginning of the semester, King suffered what he thought was a twisted ankle in a pickup game. Ignoring the mishap, King kept working out, favoring the outside of his foot and putting pressure on the bone.
After over a month of pain, it was discovered that the Louisville, Ky., native would need to go under the knife.
According to King, he will be out at least six weeks -- and maybe more, depending on the rate of his recovery.
"I hope he's back and ready to go in six weeks," Dunphy said.
The loss of All-Ivy guards Michael Jordan and Matt Langel to graduation leaves something of a question mark at the guard positions for the 2000 Quakers.
David Klatsky looks to have the inside track to the point guard spot, but King is one of at least four or five Penn guards with a shot to join the starting lineup.
King thinks that senior guard Lamar Plummer will be key.
"I think it's his turn to step up," King said.
Dunphy, however, feels that King's injury doesn't pave anyone's path into the top five.
"It's still very much a wait-and-see thing," Dunphy said. "Thankfully, we have a number of weeks to make those decisions."
(10/25/00 9:00am)
I'm just now starting to get over the soreness.
My back has been aching from the night spent in unsuccessful pursuit of sleep on the stone floor at Hutch, and I rolled my ankle while playing basketball earlier Sunday night.
Apart from these few minor scrapes, however, I emerged from the men's basketball ticket line unscathed and, more importantly, hugely impressed by the efforts of the Penn Athletic Department.
I blame myself for not taking part in this tradition earlier in my Penn career. I've gone to almost every home game in my two previous years as a student, but I just never got up the gumption to park myself in The Line at the Palestra.
Most of the reports I received from the previous two Lines were essentially positive.
People loved getting a chance to hang out with their friends in unique and memorable circumstances.
It was, they said, the type of event that made a perfect college story, the kind of crazy thing you only do as an undergraduate and laugh about over a beer 20 years later.
There were also a few comments that basically boiled to down to self-congratulation.
"I love camping out; I'm a true fan," somebody might say.
What I didn't have a real sense of before this past weekend was the amount of hard work that members of the Athletic Department put into the two days of waiting. What I didn't understand is that The Line is as much a celebration of the loyalty of Penn fans as it is a demonstration of that loyalty.
I'm usually not the first person to pat Penn athletic officials on their collective back, but this time I really have to.
Anybody that spent Saturday and Sunday at Hutch owes a debt of gratitude to the people from Penn Athletics who put time into planning and executing The Line.
Except for the tropical temperatures and humidity levels, it was much more of a user-friendly experience than I expected it to be.
Rather than pulling a Tom Bodett and just leaving the lights on for us, the folks in charge gave us a TV so we could watch the World Series, bought enough pizza to feed a starting five of circus elephants, gave away a ton of prizes, woke us up gently in the morning and generally made the two days much more than bearable.
That's not to say that I think that Penn does everything it can for its loyal Quakers supporters.
Maybe they could give Midnight Madness a shot in the near future. It seems, at least to me, that Fran Dunphy's team has enough of a committed following that the Palestra would be at least partially full for a dramatic start to practice.
Still, there's no doubt that The Line is well done.
It not only gives student fans a chance to secure the best seats available, but also makes them feel wanted.
Did Athletic Director Steve Bilsky's speech about his experience with The Line move me?
Not really.
But it did make me feel like I was appreciated.
If there's one thing that Penn students have in abundance, it's an aggressively healthy sense of entitlement.
As a result, it didn't surprise me that I heard some grumbling from the folks around. Some people didn't like the line leaders; others were miffed about the new wrinkle in the student seating plan; still others had their own complaints.
A friend of mine even said that last year, when a dinner of hoagies was presented before the folks waiting in line, more than a few began to angrily ask, "Hey, where are the cheesesteaks?"
That sort of attitude is really out of joint.
You are students that are about to purchase season tickets and thereby give a chunk of money over to the Athletic Department -- and that should entitle you to a certain amount of respect.
Should it entitle a free cheesesteak? No.
I feel bad that I didn't thank everybody at The Line for their hard work over the two days, because they definitely deserved it.
Next year, I hope it's back at the Palestra; it'll probably be a bit more special there.
Nevertheless, this year was a success in my book.
All the fans lined up last weekend were there to demonstrate their allegiance to Penn, and Penn did a good job of showing its gratitude.
(10/19/00 9:00am)
Beneath an unrelenting sun that made it feel like mid-May at Franklin Field, the Penn men's lacrosse team got in a full day of fall scrimmaging last Sunday.
Under Ivy League rules, the Quakers are allowed one full day of inter-squad competition before the real season starts in late February. Penn squared off against Rutgers and Towson in a three-game mini-tournament that lasted most of the day.
At the end of four early-morning quarters of play against the Scarlet Knights, the Quakers trailed, 9-8. Penn also came out on the short end of its second, five-quarter scrimmage, losing 18-12 to the Tigers.
The two close losses have Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale thinking that his charges look good in some facets, but are in need of definite improvement in all.
"We all walked off the field knowing that there are a bunch of things that we really need to improve on," Van Arsdale said. "I think there are enough that we all have some clear goals."
Penn senior midfielder Kevin Cadin led the Red and Blue in scoring, notching five total goals, three against Rutgers and a pair against Towson.
According to Van Arsdale, the most impressive part of the Quakers' performance was the play of their defense. They seemed to click best early on in the Rutgers game, especially when Penn excelled in the second and third quarters.
The Quakers -- who are coming off a disappointing 5-8 season last spring that also saw them go 1-5 in the Ivy League -- ended their fall practice schedule with Sunday's scrimmages. From now until the end of the semester, independent conditioning is all the preparation that league rules permit.
This is a team that knows a thing or two about what it takes to prepare for major college lacrosse. After losing just four players to graduation, Penn has eight seniors and is long on upperclass leadership.
(10/09/00 9:00am)
On a weekend where it really started to feel like autumn in the Northeast, the Penn volleyball team travelled to New England to enjoy the fall foliage and a mostly encouraging start to its Ivy League schedule.
The Quakers (13-6, 1-1 Ivy League) dropped a gut-wrenching, five-game decision to Dartmouth on Friday in Hanover, N.H., but recovered in time to travel to Cambridge, Mass., and confidently dispose of Harvard on Saturday, 15-12, 15-11, 15-13.
Although Penn would have loved to emerge from the 17-15 final game at Dartmouth victorious, the youthful Quakers know they should be proud of their ability to bounce back and take care of the Crimson the following night.
"Am I pleased? Yes and no," Penn junior Kelly Szczerba said. "We had a big disappointment at Dartmouth. But these are two teams at about the same talent level, and we took what we learned at Dartmouth and changed what we needed to in order to beat Harvard."
The Red and Blue came out with guns ablazin' on Friday night. In the first two games of the match, Penn downed the Big Green, 15-10 and 15-11.
It looked as if the Quakers were primed to open the Ancient Eight season with a bang.
Last October, the Quakers lost to Dartmouth 3-0 in their third Ivy league contest. That defeat also marked their third-straight Ivy loss. Early on Friday, however, it seemed as if coach Kerry Major's team was determined to begin its 2000 conference season on a much sweeter-sounding note.
But that was not to be.
The Quakers didn't exactly turn into Mr. Hyde in Friday's last three games, but they definitely underwent something of a transformation. Penn no longer seemed to be out for blood down the stretch.
"I think we let down our guard," Penn freshman Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan said. "We didn't have the killer instinct that we needed to win."
Dartmouth made use of 14 Penn service errors to stage a stirring comeback. The home team bested the Quakers 15-11 in the third and then pulled out wins in the final two games by the narrowest of margins, 19-17 and 17-15.
Kwak-Hefferan led the Penn attack with 15 kills and 16 digs. Fellow freshman Heather Janssen notched 12 kills, and Szczerba recorded a team-high 18 digs and a season-high 11 total blocks in the loss.
The sting of the loss in New Hampshire had to still been on the Quakers' mind the next afternoon at Harvard, but coach Major made sure her troops took the right lesson from the defeat.
"She [Major] told us before the Harvard game that she knows we're a good team this year," Szczerba said. "She said we played too tentatively against Dartmouth. We didn't play to win. We played not to lose."
The Crimson (7-9, 1-1 Ivy League) were coming off a tough loss of their own on Friday, having dropped a 3-2 match to Princeton the previous evening. Harvard hung tight throughout. Penn's largest margin of victory was a four-point edge in the second game.
"It was a fun match to play," Kwak-Hefferan said.
Penn sophomore Stacey Carter turned in a stellar afternoon, with a .500 hitting percentage and 15 kills. Kwak-Hefferan aded 13 kills and 15 digs, while Szczerba finished with 14 kills and 10 digs.
After the grueling road trip, the fatigued Quakers took yesterday off. They return to practice today and will take on Villanova tomorrow at home.
(10/03/00 9:00am)
This isn't your grandfather's Ivy League.
This isn't even your father's Ivy League anymore.
This is a fun-to-watch, passing friendly football conference that likes to air it out as if it were the WAC East. Granted, there will still be a share of old-fashioned grind-it-out games in the Ancient Eight this fall. There are even a few Ivy teams that don't think pass first.
Still, gone are the days of Ed Marinaro's Cornell and Calvin Hill's Yale. Gone -- at least for now -- is the smashmouth Ivy style that flew in the face of major trends in the college game. Gone are the scores that read like those of baseball games.
Ivy teams are passing more than ever, and the offensive schemes of Ancient Eight schools look a lot more West Coast than their classic stadiums and idyllic courtyards.
The numbers don't lie.
Scoring is way up throughout the league. Over the first three weeks of this still-fledgling season, seven of the eight Ivy teams have scored more points than they did in the same period last year.
Penn has shown the largest increase in scoring. In their first three contests last season, the Quakers tallied 39 points, while they have already put 103 up on the board in 2000.
Dartmouth, for example, has gone from positively anemic to almost healthy. Through the first three weeks of the 1999 season, the Big Green had managed to score a scant 16 points. They have 59 points already this year.
Cornell is the only Ancient Eight squad to watch their offensive output take a slight dip this season -- the Big Red have scored 55 thus far this year, compared to 95 in 1999.
Overall, the blue-bloods have tallied an eye-popping 191 points more this season than they did at this point last fall.
Although not the first Ivy to feature an offensive scheme full of multi-receiver sets and high-percentage passes, Penn is certainly at the forefront of the aerial show this season.
With new offensive coordinator Andy Coen, the Quakers feature an attack that, while maintaining a potent ground threat, thrives on efficient passing that comes fast and furious.
Penn has been dynamic through the air. The Red and Blue are averaging 358 yards per game off the pass, making them the most prolific passing offense out of all 122 Division I-AA football teams. At this point last season, Penn was only passing for an average of 183.3 yards every contest.
There's no doubt that the team that started this pass-happy trend in the Ivies was the Brown Bears. With the hiring of Mark Whipple as their head coach in 1994, the Bears began a new era in the storied history of the league.
Whipple's squads featured an offense that could line up in a seemingly endless variety of formations. And from each of those formations, Brown could air it out. Whipple had moderate success throughout the mid-to-late 90s before leaving to take the head job at UMass, but his successor at Brown, Phil Estes, picked up right where he left off.
Last year was the best season in a long time for the Bears. Behind the golden arm of then-senior James Perry, Brown won a share of the Ivy title while compiling a 9-1 overall record.
Although recruiting violations made Brown ineligible to win the Ivy title this season, the Bears still look solid. Despite a loss to Harvard two weeks ago, Brown is averaging 351.33 yards per game in the air thus far.
The most obvious Brown clone in the league is the new-look offense in Hanover, N.H.
Dartmouth went out this year and hired John Perry as its new offensive coordinator. Not only did Perry coach receivers at Brown from 1994 until 1996, he is also the brother of the Bears' former field general.
Head coach John Lyons' offense was awful last season, bringing up the Ivy rear with 267.9 yards of total output per game. The Big Green went out and acquired one of the competition's gurus as a result and have begun to run an attack reminiscent of Brown's.
Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Now, not every team in the league has gone the way of trend-setter Brown.
Yale, for one, is rushing for more yards than it is passing, and Columbia is balanced virtually 50-50 between run and pass.
Harvard, however, has an average of 290.33 yards through the air, compared to 130.33 on the ground. This is in stark contrast to the first three games of last season, when the Crimson were basically split down the middle.
Up and down the league, the pass is in -- and for good reason.
"You have to run the ball to win games, but to win championships, you have to throw the ball," said former Penn offensive coordinator Chuck Priore, now the head coach at Trinity College.
I don't know whether the new Ivy emphasis on the airways is good for the level of play in the conference. All I do know is that it makes games more lively and more fun to watch.
These may be the oldest programs in all of collegiate football, but they sure aren't old-fashioned.
(09/25/00 9:00am)
If the Penn Quakers were a boxer, they'd be Sonny Liston.
Right now, they're not pretty enough to be Ali, quick enough to be Sugar Ray Leonard or big enough to be Butterbean.
Like Liston, the Penn football team intimidates because it has an ability to knock out its opponents at any time. And like Liston, Penn is somewhat undisciplined, not quite polished.
With their high-powered offense and talented defense, the Quakers have the capacity to be dominant, to manhandle their opponents in and out of the Ivy League. Nevertheless, the 2000 Penn team has shown itself to be self-destructive at times, and Saturday's 45-28 win over Lafayette was a perfect example.
The Red and Blue racked up an impressive 477 yards of total offense. They ruled the trenches throughout most of the game, blowing holes through the Lafayette defensive line and registering three sacks while not allowing a one.
They demonstrated true offensive versatility, rushing for 157 yards and throwing for 320. Senior running back Mike Verille finished the day with 99 on the ground, while Todd Okolovitch added 58 of his own. And all of that came with All-Ivy tailback Kris Ryan watching from the sidelines.
An eyebrow-raising total of nine players caught passes for the Quakers, five of them with at least three apiece.
As if that weren't exciting enough, Penn was inventive on special teams, too. On the first three kickoffs that they fielded, the Quakers got creative.
First, after Lafayette made the score 14-7 in Penn's favor, Kunle Williams received the kick and handed it off to Steve Faulk on a reverse. Faulk proceeded to take the return up the sideline for 64 yards to the Leopards' 25-yard line. The next two returns were variations on that theme, as Faulk handed it to Williams and then faked a reverse on the third kickoff.
Up and down the field, the Quakers showed that they are a very talented football team. They showed that they have the ability to be ferocious, to tear an opposing squad apart.
But the Red and Blue also showed that they have the ability to shoot themselves in the foot.
For a while on Saturday, it looked as if Lafayette might make it into the bonus. Even though the game was played on the turf of Franklin Field and not on the hardwood of the Palestra, Penn had a major bout with foul trouble, committing a total of six personal fouls, most of which went against the defense for a barrage of late hits.
The refs called Penn for a total of 12 penalties on the day for 122 lost yards, compared to only three penalties for Lafayette.
"Whether or not they're good calls, bad calls, indifferent calls, I don't think that's the issue...," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "So we do it once, then OK, we play hard. But we don't do it the second, third, fourth and fifth times. It certainly puts you in a very precarious situation potentially.
"We're going to have to cut that out."
If Penn has hopes of winning an Ivy title this season, it needs to get out of the habit of committing so many penalties. Championship teams don't take themselves out of ball games, and double-digit penalties do just that. Last week against Lehigh, Bagnoli's squad had 17 points taken away on flags, so Lafayette is not an isolated incident.
The Quakers also showed a slight lack of offensive composure. On two separate occasions early in the second quarter, Penn turned the ball over on either its first or second play from scrimmage after getting a turnover of its own. Five fumbles, only two of which Lafayette recovered, were also too much for Bagnoli and his staff to be elated.
"I'm concerned. Our maturity level is not where it has to be, which I think is one of the big things that's going to determine whether or not we're going to be a good team," Bagnoli said.
Bagnoli has reason to be concerned on that front, but he doesn't need to worry about his team's right hook.
(09/19/00 9:00am)
Last Wednesday, the folks at the Harvard Crimson ran an editorial extolling the potential virtues of Harvard's hiring Bob Knight as its new men's basketball coach.
In four paragraphs that sounded like, well, somebody from Harvard trying to talk basketball, the editorial board in Cambridge basically made the following case:
Harvard's a nice place that has a good athletic reputation. Knight's a real good basketball coach. Thus, wouldn't it be nice if the two decided to hang out together?
Now, I really don't want to sound overly critical.
In reality, I agree with the crux of what the Crimson's trying to say. It's interesting and even a bit appealing to think of Bob Knight coaching in the Ivy League. For a guy who graduates his players and puts a premium on discipline and honesty, the Ancient Eight -- with its obvious emphasis on academics and dearth of soon-to-be-millionaire prima donnas -- looks to be a nice fit.
Still, although I don't want to get nit-picky, I feel the Crimson's editorial misunderstands a few important issues. And, more importantly, those issues wind up pointing to an unavoidable conclusion -- that it's in Knight's best interest to never coach again.
The editorial begins with a miscue that I'm sure was unintended. It reads: "Indiana University's stunning decision to fire Bobby Knight presents Harvard with a historic opportunity."
Sounds fine, right?
Wrong. Robert Montgomery Knight doesn't like being called Bobby. That's what he was called as a youngster, and he feels that he's grown out of it. And if the events of the past week teach us anything at all, it's that calling Bob Knight by the wrong name can lead to absolute chaos.
I think Knight is one of the finest basketball coaches to ever live, but there's no doubt that he's shown himself to be an emotional midget over the past few decades. Be it throwing a chair, or assaulting a secretary, Knight has demonstrated an inability to keep his tempestuous emotions under wraps.
Any way you look at it, Knight is a powder keg capable of blowing the roof of an arena sky high.
The Crimson goes on to argue that Knight can push Harvard past the Ivy-dominating "triumvirate" of Dartmouth, Penn and Princeton.
Now, to call Dartmouth, which hasn't won an Ivy championship since 1959, a member of a triumvirate is preposterous. If this was Rome's First Triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, Dartmouth would definitely be unknown Crassus.
Scratch that, she'd be Crassus' butler.
The editorial is most interesting in its second paragraph, which ends like this: "Taking Harvard to the Big Dance would cement his Hall of Fame credentials as an accomplishment on par with anything Dean Smith or John Wooden has done."
It pains me to say it, but that statement's false. There is nothing that Bob Knight will be able to do to earn him a place next to John Wooden in the pantheon of collegiate coaching.
And that wasn't always the case. By the time he made it into the Hall of Fame in 1991, Knight had accomplished virtually everything that a coach can. He'd won three national championships, an Olympic gold medal in 1984 and led Indiana teams in the 1970s that dominated college basketball and left every other coach scratching his head trying to figure out how Knight prepared his squads so well.
He had the Wizard of Westwood dead in his sights, but things began to unravel. Explosive incidents worsened after the infamous chair-tossing at Purdue in 1985, and his teams began to bow out of the Tournament earlier and earlier.
Knight's temper has created a tragic impediment to greatness. Whatever he does from here on -- even if he did lead Harvard to the NCAA Tournament -- will always be mentioned alongside his personal shortcomings.
And as much as the Crimson might think that taking Harvard to the Dance is tantamount to walking on water, it really isn't. Harvard's a school with a great reputation, a ton of money and an ability to recruit athletes. There's no fundamental reason why it can't get past Penn and Princeton to win the league.
If Knight led Harvard, the only Ivy team to never win the league title, to the NCAAs, it would serve as a charming postscript to a career that was full of promise, much realized, some squandered.
It would be no miracle, and it surely wouldn't turn Bob Knight into John Wooden.
Knight's the prototypical tragic hero. His demise stems from a character flaw -- a temper that should convince him to stay out of coaching. He's accomplished everything he can. He should just go home, hunt, fish and maybe even do some TV work.
It's sad to hear this week of Al McGuire's losing battle with leukemia, and perhaps it's even sadder that this news comes in the midst of all the Knight hubbub. It's sad because over a decade ago, in the foreword he wrote for John Feinstein's A Season on the Brink, McGuire asked Bob Knight to pack it in.
As McGuire argued, Knight had done everything he could in the world of coaching. McGuire, who himself walked away from the profession at the age of 48, wanted his friend to leave the job that he felt would bring him too much pain. He didn't want Bob Knight to become the next Woody Hayes.
Hang it up, Coach. Hang it up, even though it might be too late.
(09/12/00 9:00am)
A century ago, if America's fastest men weren't outfitted in red, white and blue while competing for the USA, they didn't revert to the swoosh-bearing duds of Team Nike.
And they didn't pull on the sky blue singlets of the Santa Monica Track Club, either.
Instead, America's -- and for that matter, the world's -- fastest and most talented track and field athletes wore the red and blue of their beloved alma mater, Pennsylvania.
One hundred summers ago, the American team excelled in the track competition at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. And although American domination was not quite as demonstrative as it had been in the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, the Yanks still "swept the field," in the words of the Chicago Tribune.
Leading the charge for the new-worlders was a quartet of University of Pennsylvania Quakers that combined for an astonishing nine gold medals: Alvin Kraenzlein, Irving Baxter, Walter Tewksbury and George Orton.
The performance of this foursome in Paris represents not only a high-water mark for the success of Penn athletes on an international stage, but it also points to a bygone era, when gold medals were made of silver and the Olympics were the sight of a cut-throat debate over how to best keep holy the sabbath.
In the spring of 1900, the Board of Directors of the Athletic Association at Penn voted to send a contingent of 13 Quakers or recent alumni across the pond to take part in the English Championships and then the Olympics, which were being staged in conjunction with the World's Fair in Paris.
After a solid performance at the English games, the 13 Penn athletes and legendary coach Mike Murphy made their way to the City of Lights. The Red and Blue found themselves smack-dab in the middle of the gorgeous spectacle of the Paris Exposition, complete with the newly constructed Eiffel Tower and the games of the second Olympiad, which boasted 1,330 competitors from 22 countries.
But before the Philadelphians could even catch their breath, controversy began to brew.
The French organizers of the Games had committed a mortal sin in the eyes of the pious American team. The cosmopolitan Olympic Committee has scheduled a series of important finals on Sunday, July 15, the day of the Christian sabbath.
The Yanks were up in arms, and an emergency meeting of track officials was called on Wednesday the 11th. At that meeting, so the Americans claimed, the French promised to allow any conscientious objector to participate in his event on Monday.
When Sunday morning rolled around, however, the French Committee formally announced that every final scheduled for Sunday would mark the only chance to compete.
The Americans felt they were victims of Gallic treachery.
There's no official record of how many runners elected not to participate on Sunday, but the Tribune straightforwardly claimed that the U.S. team was "deprived of the service of some of her best athletes."
Five of the 13 Penn athletes present went against the wishes of many of their collegiate counterparts and elected to participate on the 15th. They were criticized severely.
A Princeton manager by the name of Jamison was livid: "By the change our pole vaulter and high jumper were unable to compete after traveling a great distance. Pennsylvania protested most strongly to Sunday games, but finally entered. I think her representatives should have stood with those of other colleges."
Although Sunday racing might have thinned out the field somewhat, the performance by the Penn athletes was extraordinary.
Kraenzlein's performance was clearly the blockbuster of the games. His four victories -- in the 60-meter dash (world record), 110 hurdles, 200 hurdles and long jump -- marked the first time ever that a track athlete won four golds (even though first-place awards were silver in Paris).
The only other track athletes to repeat such a feat are Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis -- illustrious company, to say the least.
Kraenzlein's talent was truly prodigious. To give you an idea, his best long jump in a Penn uniform of 24 feet, 4.5 inches is still the sixth-best in Red and Blue history. That fact is almost unbelievable given the advances in equipment and training that have occurred in the past century.
Orton, who was actually Canadian but competed under an American flag, had the most dramatic victory of the games. With the grandstand packed with American supporters, Orton, who was trailing Sydney Robinson of Great Britain by well over 100 meters with less than 400 to go, sprinted down the stretch and earned a dramatic, come-from-behind win in the 2,500-meter steeplechase.
Tewksbury came clanking home from Paris with plenty of hardware as well. The '99 grad won two golds, two silvers and one bronze, with first-place finishes in the 100-meter and 220-yard dashes.
Baxter rounded out the list of Penn standouts in 1900, taking first in the high jump and the pole vault.
One hundred years after the controversial triumph of 1900, a group of new Penn-trained Olympians will test their mettle in Sydney over the next few weeks.
This group, which includes medal hopefuls in fencing, rowing and freestyle wrestling, may make history of its own this month, but there's little chance that their story will be more colorful than that of Penn's men of the second modern Olympiad.
(09/07/00 9:00am)
Yogi Berra, that master of the malaprop, once said that "baseball is 90 percent mental, the other half is physical."
The math might be a bit hazy, but the crux of Yogi's comment rings true. No matter how far you can push a sled or how many beer cans you can crash over your forehead, the most important action on an athletic field happens in between your ears.
And if there's one squad at Penn that takes that notion to heart, it's the field hockey team.
Coming off an injury-plagued 5-12 season, the women of Penn field hockey -- who have only four of 11 starters returning and boast 22 freshmen and sophomores -- know they have an unenviable task ahead of them. They aren't backing down. Taking a page out of Norman Vincent Peale's book, the Quakers are extolling the power of positive thinking. Yes, this sort of approach might be hokey, even a bit naive, but it's right more often than it isn't.
This young, inexperienced team seems to have just the mindset it needs to succeed. That all might change, but at this point the Quakers are psychologically prepared to surprise everyone.
"One of the most vital things we can do is make sure that they learn to believe in themselves," Penn coach Val Cloud said.
The Quakers have spent the last two weeks in an unrelenting series of two-a-days, pushing themselves to their limits and proving to themselves that they have what it takes to excel.
Penn knows it can win, so its unofficial rallying cry is terse.
"Prove it."
They tell it to each other, scream it coming out of the huddle like a "Whoa Bundy" and use it to focus their energies. In this, a season where Penn isn't expected to win much of anything, the Red and Blue have everything to gain, and that's what's going to make them interesting to watch. They want to prove that they're winners.
"We know that not much is expected of us," Penn senior co-captain Amna Nawaz said. "That's why we're focused on doing better than what people expect."
Toward that end, Penn is employing a sports psychologist for the second straight year.
In the fall of 1999, sensing potential rifts in her team, Cloud enlisted Keith Waldman to help cultivate team unity.
This season, however, the problem of team disunity hasn't reared its ugly head. Instead, the psychologist handling the Quakers this year -- who comes from the group headed by esteemed professional Joel Fish -- is focused more on helping the members of the team set good and realizable goals.
This shift in focus from the team to the personal is telling. Whereas last year's Quakers needed help on keeping the team together, this year's squad seems to have a clean bill of mental health in that department.
"Because we're a close team, we can tell when people are having problems," junior co-captain Monique Horshaw said.
With this sort of attitude, it's a shame that all the good slogans are taken. "We are family" would fit. So would "Ya gotta believe." But at least the Quakers have one they like.
"Prove it." It's short, to the point, and who knows -- it might just work
(08/31/00 9:00am)
The Brown football team's quest for a second consecutive Ivy League championship came to a screeching halt before it could even get underway.
Stemming from recruiting violations that Brown first made public on April 27, the Council of Ivy Group Presidents released a decision on August 1 that rendered the Bears ineligible to compete for the Ancient Eight crown this fall. In addition, the football team, which shared the 1999 title with Yale, will lose 10 recruits over the next two seasons.
The penalty levied against Brown is not only stiff; it is unprecedented. No other team has ever been barred from competing for the Ivy title in the league's 44-year official history.
"I'm embarrassed. I'm hurt. I feel awful for our football team," Brown coach Phil Estes told the Providence Journal.
The punishment stems from a set of admitted acts of wrongdoing in which representatives of Brown improperly offered financial aid from non-university sources to athletes and prospective recruits. Some of the allegations involve the executive director of the Brown Sports Foundation, David Zucconi.
Besides the sanctions imposed on the Brown football team, the presidents also prohibited Zucconi indefinitely from direct or indirect contact with prospective Brown student-athletes or from providing services or benefits to any member of any Brown athletic team. The final sanction imposed by the Ivy Group leaders is a 25-percent reduction in the number of paid recruiting visits for the women's volleyball, men's soccer and men's basketball teams.
The Bears have won Ivy League championships in both volleyball and soccer as recently as 1998.
Since its inception, the Ivy League has prided itself on the fact that it does not offer athletic scholarships, and Brown's actions were clearly seen as an affront to this most sacred of Ivy cows.
"The league's prohibition against special financial aid for athletes is perhaps the most fundamental of all league rules, which is why the Council is determined to make clear that the remedies for violations of this rule will be severe," Columbia President George Rupp, chairman of the Council of Ivy Group presidents, said in a statement released on August 1.
The Brown saga began last January when a recruit reported to the Ivy League office after allegedly receiving an improper financial offer. A lengthy university investigation followed this initial contact and resulted in Brown's late-April announcement of a series of self-imposed sanctions. These included less stringent limits on recruiting visits and the number of incoming recruits, as well as a one-year ban on Zucconi making contact with prospective Bears.
At the time, the punishments satisfied Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans and were also enough for the NCAA, which deemed Brown's rule-breaking minor in June.
But Brown's mea culpa was not enough for the Ivy presidents. The Brown case was reviewed at their annual summer meeting, and their harsh judgement was passed down soon after
(08/31/00 9:00am)
While the insidious machinations of Wharton courses are still a few weeks away, the members of the Penn football team are in the midst of dealing with a learning curve of their own.
With their season opener just 16 days away, the Quakers are working furiously to adjust to a new offensive system, a slew of personnel changes and -- as always -- the bumps and bruises that come along with the start of preseason practice.
The Penn coaching staff has been running its players through the gauntlet since they returned to West Philadelphia. The Quakers have been practicing twice every day since last Friday, often with full equipment and contact.
"Right now we're just trying to work on getting better," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "We've got some positions where we need some growth and where we have relative inexperience. We're also in the process of adjusting to a new offense run by a new offensive coordinator in Andy Coen."
Although Bagnoli claims there aren't many "philosophical differences" between Penn's new offense and the one designed by Chuck Priore -- who left Penn after last season to take head coaching responsibilities at Trinity College -- there are still a bevy of adjustments that the Red and Blue must make.
Coen served as an offensive assistant at Lehigh for the past six seasons and helped architect a balanced attack that led the Engineers to the first-ever win for a non-scholarship school in the Division I-AA playoffs.
"We'll feature a little bit more sophistication in terms of the passing game, where I think we were a little more sophisticated in the running game last year," Bagnoli said.
It's lucky for Penn that it brings back an experienced quarterback in junior Gavin Hoffman. The signal-caller is coming off a campaign in which he broke the Penn single-season records for passing yards (2,328) and completions (200), but he is also now getting used to his third offensive scheme in as many seasons. Hoffman transferred to Penn from Northwestern before the 1999 season.
"Gavin's doing real well considering this is his third different offensive system," Bagnoli said.
Hoffman's targets look to be in tip-top shape as Penn has a solid corps of returning wide receivers. Senior captain Doug O'Neill will head a group that also includes Hoffman's favorite 1999 target, junior Rob Milanese, as well as junior Colin Smith.
The Penn backfield also boasts a nucleus of returning talent. Junior tailback Kris Ryan, who led the Ivy League with 1,197 rushing yards last season, will return to the Franklin Field turf this year, but he is currently watching practice from the sidelines. Ryan went down with an injured ankle on Monday, and coaches were nervous that the 235-pound back might have broken a bone in his left leg.
As it turns out, Ryan just has what Bagnoli termed "a pretty good ankle sprain."
"It's a moderate ankle sprain," Bagnoli said. "We're being very cautious about bringing him back. We're not even sure that we'd want him to play against Millersville [in a scrimmage to be held on Saturday]. We just want him to be healthy."
Matt Thomas, who was second on the team to Ryan in rushing yards last season, has opted not to return to the Quakers this year. So, with Ryan looking on for the time being, senior Mike Verille and sophomore fullback Todd Okolovitch have gotten more than their share of practice time over the past week.
On both the offensive and defensive lines, Penn has lost a number of key players to graduation. As a result, these still-sultry days are important for the Quakers coaching staff to decide who will get the starting nod come opening day.
This Saturday, the Red and Blue will travel to Millersville, Pa., to take on Millersville in a preseason scrimmage. Both that contest and the season opener at Lehigh will take place on natural grass, so Penn has spent a good chunk of its practice time on the live stuff on Bower Field
(08/10/00 9:00am)
In the grand and sometimes-sordid scheme of collegiate athletics, the sins of the Brown Bears are far from mortal. But unfortunately for them, much like the folks over at Hebrew National, the teams from Providence need to answer to a higher authority.
(05/25/00 9:00am)
Gloomy skies and a persistent rain couldn't put out the Penn men's track team's competitive fire this past weekend.
(05/03/00 9:00am)
The Carnival showcased the best the USA will have in its track aresenal. As Michael Johnson walked up Franklin Field's north straightaway this past Saturday afternoon, donning gray-and-black warm-up duds, a few sections of the 45,203 fans in attendance raised their voices, as if to let the Olympic gold-medalist know that they recognized him. When Johnson returned the favor with a grin and a turn of the head, it became obvious to those in attendance just what USA Track and Field, ESPN and a host of sponsors had in mind when they cooked up the idea of the "USA vs. The World" events that highlighted Saturday's Penn Relays schedule. The organizers of this assemblage of sprint relays and the men's 4x1,500 meters wanted to give America's top athletes a chance to shine in front of an enthusiastic crowd -- the biggest they will see in the States in even this, an Olympic year -- under a gentle, late-April sun and against some of the best that the rest of the globe has to offer. And the American athletes did everything they could to oblige. Although not an official part of the USA vs. The World promotion, the women's 4x200 Olympic Development relay played host to something that one rarely sees at the Penn Relays -- a new world record. The USAB Nike Blue quartet of Latasha Jenkins, LaTasha Colander-Richardson, Nanceen Perry and Marion Jones finished first in a time of 1:27.46, shattering the previous world record of 1:28.15 set by an East German team in 1980. The achievement was notable both for the long-standing nature of the record and also for the fact that it fell in April, early in the season for most world-class athletes. "As soon as we found out who all was running, each of us spoke to one another and were whispering to each other, 'OK, do it now,'" Jones said. "We can get this record. We know what we're all capable of running, and let's just put it together." Another world record was supposed to be in danger on Saturday. In the Olympic Development 4x1,500, a Kenyan Puma team that boasted a slew of sub-3:40 1,500 runners looked like a lock to eclipse the record time of 14:38.8. Unfortunately for the fans at Penn, however, three key members of the squad set to be anchored by Bernard Lagat were unable to acquire immigration visas in time for the Carnival. The race was still a joy to watch. In the third leg of the relay, a squad made up of Arkansas alumni was in the lead, and when Phil Price handed the baton cleanly to ultra-charismatic Seneca Lassiter, it looked like the Razorbacks were in control. An outstanding 3:40.8 anchor split by Matt Holthaus of the Reebok Enclave team made things very interesting. As he and Lassiter headed into the final curve, the Arkansan enjoyed a relatively comfortable lead. Always the showboat, Lassiter extended his hand to the cheering crowd in a Babe-Ruth-like gesture of victory. Things almost took an embarrassing turn from there, as Holthaus closed hard and nearly made Lassiter the goat. The Arkansas team won by a thin margin of .24 seconds, 14:52.13 to 14:52.37. "He's definitely the hometown favorite, and he's got such great speed, we knew that this would be a great race in front of an appreciative crowd," Price said of Lassiter. In the sprint relays, the contest was -- at least according to the heavily Caribbean-leaning grandstands -- essentially USA vs. Jamaica. Chants for and against each country dominated Franklin Field during the marquee races between the world's fastest humans. At the end of the races, the dominant chant was "One-two," meant to emphasize the fact that American teams usually took first and second in every featured event. In the 4x100 men's relay, USA Red edged just past USA Blue to take the victory in a time of 38.22. The Jamaicans took third in 38.96. On the women's side the story was the same. America went one, two, with the islanders in third position. The script read the same in the 4x400, with USA taking top honors in both and with Jamaica crossing the line in the three spot.
(04/26/00 9:00am)
Although the folks at home might miss out on the flavor of the nation's loudest, most raucous track and field event, a national television audience will get a chance to watch action from the 106th Penn Relays. USA Track and Field announced last Wednesday a first-ever event that will pit America's finest track athletes against top international competition in a relays-only format. Using the Saturday of Penn Relays as a staging ground, ESPN will televise a series of intercontinental battles -- ominously titled "USA vs. The World -- on Sunday, April 30 from 4 to 5 p.m. Michael Johnson, Marion Jones, Maurice Greene, Inger Miller and Gail Devers will headline the event, which will feature five relays of international importance: the men's and women's 4x100 meters, the men's and women's 4x400 and the men's 4x1500. It's the hope of USATF that in this, an Olympic year, the tape-delay broadcast will prime the American public for the Sydney Games in September. "USA vs. The World is a new concept for our sport," USATF CEO and track luminary Craig Masback said in a press release last week. "With its deep heritage and 40,000-spectator crowds, the Penn Relays provides an ideal setting. It is a tremendous opportunity for our athletes." The USA vs. The World format is not only a convenient way for the Carnival to get back on the tube. It's also being billed as an opportunity for America's track athletes to begin the stretch run of preparation for the Summer Olympics in September. Two USA teams will enter into each of the featured relays. "The concept is basically to have the Relays serve as a U.S. Olympic training sight for the relay teams," Penn Relays Director Dave Johnson said at a press conference last week. In the pool for the 4x400 are Tyree Washington, Antonio Pettigrew and Michael Johnson, who were all part of the USA quartet that set a world record in the event in 1998. Pettigrew also ran the second leg of an Adidas team that won the 4x400 in 1999 at the Relays. Veterans Jerome Davis, Angelo Taylor and Calvin Harrison will also be on hand at Franklin Field to face teams from Jamaica, the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago. Michael Johnson, whose wife is very close to giving birth, is clearly in tip-top shape this spring. In his very first race of the season, the defending Olympic champion ran the fourth-fastest time in the 200 in history. The women 4x400 teams at Penn look like definite challengers for the gold Down Under. Shanelle Porter, national indoor 400 champion Suziann Reid, Kim Graham, Michelle Collins, 1996 Olympic 400 hurdles bronze medalist Tonja Buford Baily and former world champ Jearl Miles Clark will all appear on 33rd Street. In the 4x100 races, the Americans will turn hold the crowd captive as well. World record holder Green leads a pool that includes 1996 4x100 silver medalists Jon Drummond, Tim Montgomery and Tim Harden. On the female side, the U.S. will boast Devers and her 1996 Olympic teammates Chryste Gaines, Inger Miller and two-time world champion Marion Jones. With the financial support of GMC Envoy, Nike and the U.S. Air Force, this event brings the Relays back to television after a one-year hiatus. CBS televised portions of the Carnival in a two-hour, tape-delay special in 1996, '97 and '98, but the network's contract with the Relays expired two years ago. Last year, there was no TV coverage of the event, and the three-year stint for CBS marked only the second time that the Relays had been televised in their vaunted history. In 1966, ABC featured segments of the Philadelphia event in the very first telecast of Wide World of Sports.
(04/19/00 9:00am)
The Quakers have been like lions the past two Marches -- going 5-2 in 1999 and 4-3 this year against stellar competition. Those auspicious starts have not translated into successful trips through the meat of the Ivy schedule, however. Penn has been lamblike in April. The Red and Blue went 1-5 last April and are 1-4 thus far this season with games against powerhouse Syracuse and Delaware left to play. The second month of spring has been the foil of coach Marc Van Arsdale's team over the past two seasons, preventing Penn from putting together the top-notch Ivy year that seemed imminent after the head man led his team to a 6-6, 3-3 campaign in 1997, his very first season in West Philadelphia. Van Arsdale is a friendly, down-to-earth person with a seemingly genuine concern for each and every one of his players. He looks and sounds the part of a perfect player's coach. He is highly regarded by his peers, and his teams have shown definite flashes of brilliance -- cracking the national top 15 in '99 and '00. But they have yet to put it all together. They have yet to seriously challenge for an Ancient Eight title. Last spring, the Quakers looked golden as March drew to a close. They captured attention in the lacrosse world by defeating a highly touted North Carolina team, 14-7, in their second game of the year and shut down Yale, 7-2, to open Ivy play. Carrying a No. 14 national ranking and a 5-1 record, the Red and Blue traveled to the green pastures of Harvard University to take on the Crimson on March 27. Penn walked away from Cambridge with a heartbreaking 10-9 defeat in overtime and its first Ivy loss of the season. And things just got more gut-wrenching from there. Penn wound up on the short side of all but one of its remaining Ivy games. And to make Quakers fans wince, Brown's 10-6 win over Penn was the only one of the team's four Ivy losses that was decided by more than one goal. This string of razor-thin margins was highlighted by a 9-8 loss to Princeton, the closest league game that the Tigers have had throughout the course of their current 29-game Ivy winning streak. In short, it was enough to make a Red Sox fan sympathize. Penn fought hard, went shot-for-shot with some of the best programs in the country. But balls just didn't bounce its way. And Penn was denied a .500 Ivy League record for the eighth time in nine seasons. The '99 team was a complete package. With a defense anchored by four-year starting goalie Matt Schroeder and always reliable defenseman Ziggy Majumdar, the Quakers were able to send back most of what teams threw at them. The Red and Blue offense usually purred like a kitten as well. The shooting of first-team All-Ivy and honorable mention All-America selection Pete Janney coupled with the deft passing of Todd Minerley helped Penn outscore its opponents, 139-119, while going just 6-8 on the year. Schroeder's graduation and the departure of Majumdar and fellow workhorse Brett Bodner prompted questions about the Penn defense, but the same offensive nucleus returned this season to galvanize a similarly encouraging March. In Penn's first regular season contest on March 4, Janney's four tallies and Minerley's pair of scores paced the Quakers past Notre Dame, 10-7, catapulting the Quakers to a No. 12 national ranking. Quality wins against Bucknell and Lafayette followed, but those victories sandwiched a frustrating 11-10 loss to Yale over spring break. March 25 brought a 15-12 loss to Harvard that, much like the Yale game, got out of Penn's reach early. The Quakers roared back late, but the comeback fell short. April 1 brought a different problem. Penn led early on against Cornell but then collapsed down the stretch, losing 16-7. A tough win over Dartmouth helped things yet was outshined by losses to Princeton and Brown. Perhaps the epitome of Penn's troubles this spring came against Villanova on April 12. 'Nova prevailed 15-14 in two overtimes, but that was after Penn's Billy Reidy's apparent goal with five seconds left was called off after he landed just inside the crease. It just seems like the stars are never right for things to go the Quakers' way as the weather gets balmy.
(04/05/00 9:00am)
The Quakers pestered Princeton but lost at Old Nassau to give the Tigers their 27th straight Ivy win. The Penn men's lacrosse team may have gotten Princeton somewhat out of its rhythm yesterday afternoon, but the Tigers' beat goes on. By defeating the Quakers, 10-4, at Princeton's Class of 1952 Stadium yesterday afternoon, the No. 4 Tigers extended their Ivy League winning streak to 27 games and upped their season record to 5-1, 2-0 in the Ivies. Although Princeton won both halves of yesterday's contest, 5-2, the Quakers (3-5, 0-4) did a laudable job of disrupting the Tigers when the Ivy powerhouse had the ball on offense. "Our team defense really solidified. Any time you hold a team like that to 10 goals or so, it's a moral victory," Penn freshman goalie Ryan Kelly said. "We can't get used to being satisfied with those, though." Kelly performed pretty well in between the pipes for Penn. He had 15 saves on 36 shots in 59 minutes of action, but he was at a loss when it came to stopping Princeton's B.J. Prager. The sophomore attacker equaled his career high with four goals, which he has now done four times, including last Saturday against Yale. Prager, a quick and scrappy threat with the shortstick, has a knack for darting away from defenders off the ball. He demonstrated this ability by throwing in a quartet from very close range, twice in each half. "You can't ever lose him. He's too dangerous," Kelly said. "We'd lose him, and all of a sudden he'd be right there to put one in." Prager's day might have been even better, had two of his shots not hit the pipe. He has now scored a goal in 17 straight games and 18 of 19 for his career. Due to Penn's tenacious team defense yesterday, however, Prager was the only Tiger to score more than one goal on the day. "In general, I think that both our team defense and Ryan [Kelly] did a good job of holding them to 10 goals," Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale said. "I thought Bill Fowler did a great job on Matt Striebel." Striebel, a junior attacker who plays something of a quarterback position for Princeton, was held to just one assist on the day and scored no goals. This was only the second time thus far this season that he has been held to fewer than two points. Josh Sims, the Princeton attacker with the most points on the team who is now tied with Prager with the most goals at 15, was also held to a mere assist yesterday at Old Nassau. But the Orange and Black did an even better job silencing Penn's big guns. Pete Janney, Penn's leading scorer on the season with 25 points on 14 goals and 11 assists, was held scoreless by the Tigers. Junior middie Kevin Cadin was the only one of the Quakers' four leading goal-scorers to put one in the net. "One of the best things that they do is shutting down a team's attackers up front," Van Arsdale said. Cognizant of this fact, Van Arsdale put Janney in the midfield for much of the game -- drawing some Princeton defensive pressure away from the cage in the hopes of freeing up scoring. Van Arsdale's attempt was obviously unsuccessful on the whole, given the scant four goals produced. Also, none of the four goals scored came from an attacker -- all four came from middies. Cadin, Billy Reidy, Jake Martin and Billy Sofield each notched a goal. "They slid really well and shut us down a lot," Kelly said. "It looked like they were the best team we've seen so far with defensive quickness." The Quakers had numerous promising moments yesterday. After being down 3-0 after the first quarter, the Red and Blue battled back with a flurry on the offensive end. In a span of merely 38 seconds in the beginning of the third period, Martin and Sofield deposited balls in the cage, each off an assist from Todd Minerley to make it 3-2. "I thought we did a good job there," Van Arsdale said. "Todd Minerley fed both of those. We were moving the ball around, which was what we needed to do against a team like that." This was as close as the Quakers would get, however. The Tigers defense collapsed, and Sean Hartofillis and Prager made it 5-2 at the break. Three unanswered Princeton goals late in the third quarter gave the Tigers a six-goal lead and put the final nail in the Penn coffin.
