Quakers uproot Cornhuskers, 90-80

Men's hoops wins first tourney game in decade UNIONDALE, N.Y. -- The Penn men's basketball team has heard it so often over the past year it has made them sick. This is not a typical Ivy League team. But last night, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the Quakers finally liked hearing being called atypical for an Ivy team. Because they won at the Big Dance. And how. The No. 11–seeded Quakers had perhaps their best shooting performance of the season last night, and they definitely picked the perfect time and place, as they bombed and ran their way past sixth-seeded and No. 22–ranked Nebraska, 90-80, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in front of a partisan crowd of 16,204 here at Nassau Coliseum, most of which were decked out in Red and Blue. Penn will face Florida tomorrow at Nassau Coliseum for the right to travel to Miami to face the winner of the Connecticut-George Washington matchup. The win was a postseason first for the Ivy League in the last decade, as Penn effectively shed the label of Ivies that come close, but not close enough in the NCAA Tournament. The victory, coupled with a loss by the College of Charleston, also means that the Quakers (25-2) now are proud owners of the longest winning streak in the country. "It's an excellent win for us," said Penn coach Fran Dunphy of the Quakers' first postseason victory since 1980. "It's as good a win that we have had in a long time, quite honestly. "We worked hard to get to this point, to get into the tournament. When you win a tournament game, it just sets you apart," he added. Penn was able to coast to the victory by beating the Cornhuskers (20-10) at their very own game -- the fast break. Nebraska ran its patented up-tempo, helter-skelter offense, but the Huskers had only one problem -- they could not hit the broad side of a barn from outside the three-point arc (0 for 10 in the first half, 3 for 20 overall). Nebraska's constant misses and subsequent Quaker long rebounds gave Penn the opportunity to run. And unlike Nebraska, Penn was not missing on this night, especially right out of the starting gate. The Quakers hit six of their first seven shots to race out to a 15-4 lead only three minutes into the contest. That early run was a microcosm of the entire game, as four Quakers hit shots in the spurt, illustrating the balance in the Penn scoring attack that was to haunt Nebraska for the entire game. Senior captain Barry Pierce began the scoring with two lean-in jumpers. Junior Matt Maloney struck gold with a rainbow from the outside. Pierce converted a layup on a fast break, and was fouled. Junior guard Jerome Allen then connected from long distance. Junior center Eric Moore then hit a layup by filling the lane on a break opportunity. Penn 15, Nebraska 4. Timeout. At that point, a Penn fan probably couldn't tell whether this was Nassau Coliseum or the Palestra thanks to a gargantuan roar from more than 10,000 Penn faithful. "We were getting back really quickly [on defense]," Pierce said. "We were not taking our time, especially after a made basket, or even when we missed it. I think we aggravated their offensive assault." Despite the early bulge, the game was far from over at the 17-minute mark of the first half. There was still a game to play, and with Nebraska's firepower on offense, an 11-point lead could have gone up in smoke faster than you can say "Piatkowski." The Huskers were calling out "Piatkowski" all night, as their game plan consisted of looking early and often for senior Eric Piatkowski, Nebraska's unanimous all-Big Eight selection and go-to guy on offense. And although the Huskers did find Piatkowski open often, he could not find the basket as much as he would have liked in this, his final collegiate game. He went 10 for 22 on the night (0 for 6 from three-point land), good for 23 points, which is a respectable total. But the majority of those points came when the game was well in hand for Penn. "We just couldn't knock down the shots tonight that we hit in the past," Piatkowski said. "It wasn't our day. Sometimes you're hot and sometimes you're not. We just didn't hit the shots." While Piatkowski was off his game, none of the nine Quakers Dunphy sent out on the floor could say the same. Overall, Penn shot a phenomenal 51.5 percent from the field for the entire game, led by Pierce's 11-for-15 performance (25 points). Even seldom-used Donald Moxley, who received four minutes of quality time, was on his game, hitting his lone shot -- a fallaway jumper from the corner -- with five minutes left in the game to restore the Quaker lead to 14 points, 79-65, just as it looked as if the Cornhuskers were poised to make a final run. That's just the way it went for Penn here last night -- everything was working. The Quakers piled up some of their most impressive stats of the season. Four players scored in double figures. Both Maloney (12 points, 10 assists) and Allen (18 points, 10 assists) registered double-doubles. All five starters grabbed at least five rebounds. Penn only turned the ball over 10 times on the night. The Quakers clearly were making the right decisions in the framework of what Nebraska was giving them. Even on the rare occasion Penn's choices were poor, things still worked out for the best for the Quakers. Case in point: with nine minutes left in the first half, the Cornhuskers had trimmed Penn's lead to a precarious three points. On the Quakers' next possession, Moore stepped up at the top of key and launched a trey that banked in off the backboard, to give Penn a 26-20 lead. Nebraska would never be closer than six points the rest of the way. "I didn't call backboard, but it went in and it still counted for three points," Moore said. That's just the way the evening went for the Quakers -- everything they did went their way. "When we got [the lead down] to six, we had a chance and then self-destructed again," Nebraska coach Danny Nee said. "[Penn] bent but did not crack?. They really executed and are a quality basketball team." "Anytime you're going to beat a team like Nebraska at this time in the season you are going to need guys to step up," Dunphy said. "We just had a real good effort from a lot of people and that is what you need to win a game like this." One of the reasons Penn got solid efforts from a lot of people was because of Nebraska's porous defense. The Huskers' matador style of play on the defensive end allowed the Quakers many easy opportunities to score in the framework of their transition game. Most notable on the Penn fast break was Moore. The 6-foot-7, 230-pound center showed cheetah-like speed running up and down the court. And his effort was rewarded, as Allen and Maloney constantly found the streaking forward in the lane for easy buckets. In a six-minute span in the first half, Moore (15 points on 7-of-10 shooting) scored 11 points, eight on layups in the transition game. While Nebraska tried time and time again to run on offense, it failed miserably in an effort to get back on defense, making Penn's choices easier than it had expected them to be coming into the game. "Coach [Dunphy] was stressing how Nebraska was [on offense]," Moore said. "But we like to push the ball when we get a chance as well." "A lot of Eric's points came in the transition game," Maloney said. "He just got out there and we were finding him. He was running the floor well and he made the shots." That can be said for just about everyone wearing the Red and Blue. And if they continue to hit shots tomorrow against Florida, then the wins will continue to come. Making the Quakers even more of an atypical Ivy League team.

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