Quakers set for more road work

Thursday was getaway day for the Penn basketball team, which left for Providence, R.I., and Friday night's Ivy League contest against the Brown Bears.

It will be the Quakers' fourth straight road game in conference play. Their visit to Yale on Saturday will add to the string of away games.

Penn, 9-12 overall and on a four-game losing streak, is 3-4 in the Ancient Eight after facing each team in the league once. The Quakers are beginning the second half this weekend against the two squads they opened up successfully against at home in late January.

Penn, which fell at Yale and won at Brown last season, hasn't defeated the teams back-to-back on the road since 2004. At the Palestra last month, the Quakers prevailed over the Bulldogs, 66-58, and took an 80-78 decision from the Bears in overtime.

Brown is 9-13 overall and 2-6 in the Ivy. Yale is 12-10 and 5-3.

Chasing the coach. Penn point guard Zack Rosen needs 11 assists to break into the top five all-time at Penn in that category. The career leader? Quakers coach Jerome Allen with 505.

Rosen, a junior, has 377 assists going into Penn's game at Brown. He finished with 139 assists as a freshman and with 124 as a sophomore. Going into the Quakers' last seven games this winter, he had 114 assists for an average of 5.4 per game. At that rate, Rosen could have about 412 assists at the end of the season, with a year left to collect the 93 needed to match the record.

Closing in on 1,000. Swingman Tyler Bernardini has 968 career points, despite missing all but two games in 2009-10 with a foot injury. Though he is a 12-points-per-game scorer, a 32-point weekend is not out of the question for the 6-foot-6 Bernardini.

Penn or Princeton? Like a number of other players on both teams over the years, Penn freshman Miles Cartwright was recruited by both the Quakers and Princeton.

Penn coach Jerome Allen landed the Van Nuys, Calif., product. The 6-3 guard, who is averaging 11.3 points per game, is vying for Ivy League rookie of the year honors.

"The Palestra, maybe," Cartwright said about the edge Penn had in recruiting him. "There is history in there, and I liked the direction Coach Allen is taking the program. Penn was definitely a better fit for me."