Wins over Crimson, BigWins over Crimson, BigGreen will tie Penn withWins over Crimson, BigGreen will tie Penn withUCLA at 50 consecutiveWins over Crimson, BigGreen will tie Penn withUCLA at 50 consecutiveconference victories For 27 years, John Wooden prowled the sidelines for the UCLA Bruins, amassing 620 wins and 10 national championships. Those milestones, among others, earned him the title "The Wizard of Westwood." This weekend Penn coach Fran Dunphy has the chance to go one up on the legendary Wooden, as Dunphy's team goes for its 50th consecutive win in conference play. Wins over Dartmouth tonight at the Leede Arena and Harvard on Saturday, would tie the record UCLA set from 1970 to 1974 in the Pacific 10 and allow for the coronation of Dunphy as "The Wizard of West Philly." Despite the fanfare surrounding the team's current 48-game winning streak, Dunphy has remained characteristically low-key about the possibility of surpassing the great Bruins teams of the '70s in the record books. "I haven't thought about anything but the fact that this is going to be a real challenging weekend," Dunphy said. "We never even talk about it with the team. We only have control over when we go to Dartmouth on Friday night and Harvard on Saturday night. That's what we're thinking about right now." Whether or not Dunphy and his charges choose to ignore the hype surrounding the winning streak, those outside the Penn basketball program have certainly taken notice. The quest, which began with a win over Cornell in the last game of the 1991-92 season, has generated interest from the Ivy League offices on up to those of the NCAA. Although the NCAA does not currently list consecutive conference victories in its book of official records, its head statistician, Gary Johnson, has vowed to create such a designation should the Quakers' run role past the half-century mark. What makes Penn's assault on the record books all the more impressive is that every game the team plays in the Ivy League bears incredible importance, as the Ancient Eight has no postseason conference tournament to decide the its representative to the NCAA championships. Each game in which Penn has stepped on the court in the past four seasons against an Ivy foe has had serious ramifications for the team's NCAA tournament ambitions. "One of the truly impressive things about their streak is that with no conference tournament, the pressure to win is more intense than any other league," said Jeff Orleans, executive director of the Ivy Group, the governing body of Ivy League sports. Orleans hailed this year's team's accomplishments as especially noteworthy, considering the loss of last year's five starting players. "Losing the kind of talent and cohesion Penn had, as well as the depletions of the past few weeks, I hope people realize what an exceptional group this is, both on and off the court," Orleans said. Streak or no streak, this year's team understands that the two games they it play this weekend mean just as much, if not more, than any of those which preceded them. "Right now, we're concerned about winning games, and if the streak just happens to coincide with that, that's great," Quakers co-captain Tim Krug said. "We have to win these next two Ivy League games, not to set a record, not for the streak, but to get to our final goal, which is to get to the NCAA tournament." Without a doubt, this weekend will provide the sternest challenge to the Quaker's Ivy supremacy, with last year's league runner-up Dartmouth anxiously awaiting a rematch on its home floor. This year's version of Big Green basketball boasts some impressive talent, including scoring phenom Sea Lonergan and seven-foot center Brian Gilpin, who last year exploded for a career-high 22 points against Penn at the Palestra. Dartmouth's dynamic duo has picked up right where it left off last season. Lonergan is again leading the Ivies in scoring, averaging 18.5 points a game, while Gilpin has been a force in the paint, blocking more than two shots a game. However, if those two were all the Quakers had to fear as they headed into New Hampshire, they would have a vastly easier time. Among the other players who could give Penn fits are sophomore guard P.J. Halas and junior pointman Kenny Mitchell. If left unchecked defensively, Halas has the range to make it a very long night for the Quakers. On the other side of its Ivy League double dip, Penn will march into Harvard's Briggs Athletic Center. That is the same gym in which Penn narrowly escaped with a victory two seasons ago, when Krug blocked a last-second potential game-winning Harvard drive to the hoop. Facing some of the Ivy League's top individual performers, does not seem to have the Quakers rattled, though. "We don't make changes for anybody. We let other people worry about what we do," Krug said. "If we play like we've been playing the last seven or eight games, I think we'll be fine."
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