Penn falls to Harvard for its 10th straight loss

CAN YOU make up 30 points in 20 days? The answer for Penn turned out to be no, an emphatic no.

This is the seventh year of the New Ivy Order, long enough to realize it is no aberration. Still, that does not make nights like last night at the Palestra any easier.

Penn was in the game against Harvard for about 12 minutes. Then, the Quakers, as is their custom, started to throw the ball around the old gym. The live ball turnover that leads to fastbreaks has no antidote. The Crimson took all the turnovers and gladly ran the ball to the rim.

It was over way before it was over: Harvard 83, Penn 63.

The Quakers (6-16, 3-5 Ivy) committed 20 turnovers, leading to 24 Harvard points. Penn managed to shoot 47.8 percent and never had a chance to win. Penn has now committed an insane 373 turnovers on the season.

"In my grandma's house growing up, she had this old record player," Penn coach Jerome Allen said. "The needle scratched and just kept playing the same bar over and over and over again. That's what it seems like. It's the same thing over and over again . . . I've been saying it all year. You're not going to win too many basketball games turning it over at the clip we do."

Harvard (21-4, 8-1) is good enough that it doesn't need much help. The Crimson, trying for a fourth consecutive Ivy title, has two 1,000-point scorers (Laurent Rivard, Kyle Casey) and Wesley Saunders closing on a grand. It also has Siyani Chambers, a wonderful sophomore point guard.

"He dominated the game," Allen said of Chambers. "He played at his pace. He played pick-and-roll about as well as I've seen it played this season."

Harvard has won 20 games for a fourth consecutive season, the first Ivy team to do that since Penn did it five straight times from 1970 to 1975.

The Ivy titles that used to belong exclusively to Penn and Princeton have migrated north, first to Cornell 3 straight years and now to Harvard. Princeton did tie for the title that first year of Harvard's run, won the playoff and the NCAA bid. Since then, it has been all Harvard.

Harvard beat Penn, 80-50, on Feb. 1 in Cambridge. It was closer last night, but not close.

Senior Fran Dougherty had 15 points and sophomore Tony Hicks 13 for Penn. Harvard's starting lineup all scored double figures except Chambers, who had nine and controlled the game despite taking only three shots.

JV player Matt Poplawski, also a member of Penn's Ivy champion soccer team, got some run, because of injuries and the score.

"It was a dream come true to be out here," said Poplawski, who scored the game's final points on two free throws.

Harvard plays tonight at Princeton, where it has not won in 24 years. Penn tries to avoid getting swept by Dartmouth for only the second time since 1959.

At Harvard, Alyssa Baron had 21 points and the Quakers beat the Crimson, 63-50, their first win in Cambridge in 10 years. Penn (17-5, 7-1 Ivy League), whose nine-game winning streak is the second longest in team history, plays at Dartmouth tonight.

Harvard (17-6, 7-2) was led by Christine Clark's 18 points.