IS GETTING ITS DRAFT BOARD READY
Originally published March 18, 1994
UNIONDALE , N.Y. - When the Ivy League representative gets to the Big Dance, almost always it turns out to be the Last Waltz.
But not this time.
All season the victims of Penn have limped away in defeat, warning: "This is not your typical Ivy team. "
No, it isn't, and the Quakers hammered home that point last night when they beat up on Nebraska in the first round of the NCAAs.
The Quakers were in control throughout. They played with an assurance you like to see, just short of strutting cockiness.
They played with efficiency and without succumbing to the emotion of the moment, which is, considering the lunacy of this whole thing, rather difficult.
They played a game that said, defiantly but purposefully: "We're pretty darn good and we're going to prove it to you. No brag, just fact. "
This wasn't a Princeton teasing and pestering and harassing a Georgetown, only to die in the end, which is what has happened in most of the nine postseasons since an Ivy team last actually won an actual NCAA tournament game.
This wasn't some slow-it-down-for-a-keep-it-close-moral victory.
No, Penn was on the attack from the start.
The Quakers came out and punched the Big Eight champions smack in the chops, as if to let them know what lay ahead. It was 13-2, Quakers, before the Cornhuskers could even run one of their option plays.
Penn is smart, which, of course, you would expect.
But the Quakers are slick, too, and combative and pugnacious.
There is a mean streak of street ball in them.
They play a sassy defense, they'll run if you think they can't, they'll rain three-pointers all around your head, and oh, yes, Fran Dunphy usually coaches the socks off the other guy, which he did again last night.
Midway through the second half, Tom Butters, the head of the NCAA tournament selection committee, swiveled around and asked: "Where did Dunphy coach before? "
At La Salle, as an assistant, was the reply, and Butters nodded one of those that-young-fellow-is-a-definite-prospect nods, and turned back to the court.
His seat was maybe 10 feet from the Penn bench. He couldn't have helped but be impressed with Dunphy's deportment.
Unlike most of those feeding frenzies on the sidelines, Penn timeouts are orderly and organized and there is only one voice and it is Dunphy's and it is not the incoherent screeching you hear so frequently.
Butters is diplomat enough, polite enough, to try to conceal his surprise. But you knew the Quakers were more than he had thought.
Nebraska eventually caught Penn, at 19-19, and the Quakers promptly fired another burst and accelerated away.
It went like that most of the night. The Cornhuskers would cut the Quakers' lead down to a handful and you could tell from the expressions on their faces they were confident that, any time now, Penn would be caving in.
They're still waiting.
Instead, Penn's response was always another burst, and the Quakers would pull back ahead by 15.
Usually, in the first round of the tournament, talent alone is enough. Higher seeds can get by even on an off-night.
But sometimes a team is better than it is seeded.
Penn is one of those teams, and this is one of those times.
While Nebraska searched vainly for something that might work and settled, instead, for staying with the same old thing, Penn was flitting in and out of a man-to-man defense, and it was the Quakers' zone that befuddled Nebraska.
Especially with Matt Maloney hounding out on the point.
Maloney is known for his sweet stroke, but he is deceptively quick and has the anticipation and the court sense you'd expect from a coach's son. Repeatedly he flicked away passes and led the break-out man with a perfect feed.
No Penn player is more un-Ivy than Jerome Allen, who undressed defenders with his stop-start crossover magic. His moves have Big Time in winking neon.
Nebraska tried to press full court, but it was too late by then.
The Quakers handle the ball like they handle SATs.
Allen is just a junior. Maloney, too. And so is Eric Moore, who is making a glittering career out of beating the other center down the court.
Penn returns almost everyone, in fact.
But that is next season, and the Quakers are not through with this one yet.
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