AT COURTSIDE: Quakers overcome all obstacles

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Much like the U.S. Postal service, neither rain nor sleet nor snow -- and boy, was there snow -- slowed down the Penn men's basketball team this weekend against Brown and Yale. For much like the crafty mailman, a bumpy, weather-beaten road poses no obstacles to this experienced group of Quaker hoopsters. They both always seem to deliver. Much has been made of how this year's Penn team is a grizzled bunch of veterans, and this sort of experience is an invaluable resource to have when the Quakers venture outside the friendly confines of the Palestra. And that was never more obvious than against the Bears and Elis. Penn played some of its finest basketball of the season on its first Ivy road weekend. And while it is true that talent can single-handedly win ballgames -- and everyone knows that the Quakers are talent-heavy -- it is maturity that will carry a team to a perfect league record. For where a young, skilled team may be picked off on a certain evening, a talented, experienced group will always have an edge. And maturity is just what this year's Quaker team is all about. "This is one of those groups that is very mature and very business-like," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. Case and point: Friday night's game against the Bears. Penn, which arrived in Providence Thursday night, missed the beginning of the snowstorm. But Princeton did not. The Tigers decided to wait until Friday morning to leave for their game that night against Yale, and because of the snow the game was postponed to Sunday. The Ivy League has a rule that if one weekend game is postponed, then all games have to be cleared to continue by the league office. So the Quakers did not know until 2 p.m. Friday they would be playing four hours later. No problem. Behind tenacious defense and a lightning-quick offense, Penn ran away from Brown to start the second half. Don't let the final 79-59 margin fool you. The Quakers led by 33 points midway through the second half before Dunphy emptied his bench in the easy victory. It seemed as if all the uncertainty of whether the game was going to be played at all actually raised the Quakers' level of concentration. "We came out ready to go," Dunphy said. "Sometimes when the distractions hit, we seem to get more focused. As bad as the weather was [Friday] and there was some conjecture about whether we would play the game?they were ready and obviously they showed it." Not all Ivy teams can say they were ready for the hand Mother Nature dealt, especially second-place Princeton. The Tigers, who did not leave until Saturday morning for the trip to Brown, stopped at Yale to practice, then promptly got stuck in a major traffic jam on I-95, arriving at the Pizzitola Center only a few hours before tip-off. Was Princeton a little discombobulated? They lost 71-68, so conventional wisdom would suggest so. But the first-place Quakers firmly believe they would have been ready to play against anyone -- no matter where, no matter when. "I think that if they would have postponed the game to tomorrow, or next week, I still think that we would have been ready to play," junior guard Jerome Allen said after the Quaker victory Friday night. "We wanted to play today, but we had no control over it." But the distractions were not over. Because of the snow, the Quakers could not travel to New Haven Friday night. They had to scramble for hotel rooms as they shacked up in Providence for the second-straight night, and left bright and early Saturday for the trip down I-95 to Yale. Most teams don't like to travel on game days, but the Quakers were forced to alter their very structured weekend due to Mother Nature. No problem. Penn blazed out of the starting gate against the Elis thanks to the sizzling shooting of Allen, who made four straight rainbow jumpers from behind the three-point arc. Because of that start, the Quakers raced out to a 19-6 lead six minutes into the game and never looked back. Penn has no control over the weather, but as Allen and the rest of the Quakers showed, what they have had control of is every Ivy League basketball game in recent memory. "[The team] didn't get involved with [the distractions]," Dunphy said. "We just talked about, 'We're here, let's play. Let's take care of our business.' I think it's our style not to make to big a deal out of anything that goes on?.That's going to come with a mature group that has been through as much as these guys have been through." Get the picture yet? Penn will let nothing get in the way of its march to a second-consecutive Ivy League title. Nothing will get in the way of the Quakers' desire for a repeat appearance in the NCAA tournament. Not a long road trip. Not a foreign arena. Not 50 feet of snow. Not a mixed-up travel schedule. This team is all business. "They just take care of their jobs," Dunphy said. "It's a mature group. They want to get back again to the NCAAs. That's the big goal and that's in the back of their minds constantly."

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