Quakers love their Valentine's weekend sweep

After making a 20-point comeback in the final 10:18 against Yale Friday, M. Hoops ran over lowly defeated Brown Saturday. Make it three in a row for the Penn men's basketball team. For the third consecutive weekend, the Quakers completed an Ivy sweep over their Ancient Eight foes. On Valentine's weekend, it took one of the most amazing comebacks in recent Penn history -- a 76-69 overtime win over Yale, and a solid victory over Brown, 79-68, to keep the Quakers' seven-game winning streak alive. Against the Elis, Penn (14-9 overall, 7-1 Ivy League) got off to its slowest start of the season. Yale (10-12, 5-5), on fire early on, draining its first seven shots and overall shooting above 60 percent for the first half, jumped out to a 20-6 lead in the initial eight minutes. "We probably were taking ourselves a little too seriously after the La Salle game, and didn't appreciate what this league was about and how important it is to play these games against teams that really want to come into the Palestra and play well," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "I also didn't think we payed attention to detail quite well enough." One Eli who benefited from Penn's rag-tag defense in the first 20 minutes was Emerson Whitley. The Ivy League's second-leading scorer rung up 13 points in the first half on 5-of-5 shooting and had seven rebounds as well. Whitley helped Yale establish a 39-24 lead at the intermission. The senior forward continued his dominance early on in the second half, bucketing eight more points. But at the 15:43 mark with Penn down 20, Quakers junior forward George Mboya entered the game with one mission: to shut Whitley down. The Elis' top gun was blanked for the rest of regulation and overtime. "I think George did a good job on Whitley," Dunphy said. "George has that athleticism about him. He can kind of shut some people down. And I am just going to guess -- without looking at any game film -- that his defense was the catalyst." Good piece of guess-work for Dunphy as his forward Paul Romanczuk admitted moments later that the credit for muting Whitley should go to Mboya. However, the inspired play of Mboya did not reap immediate results. For with 10 minutes remaining, Penn was still down by the same margin, 57-37, and then Dunphy, courtesy of his assistant coach Steve Donahue, made the game's most critical call. The ninth-year head coach decided to go to a trapping defense and Yale fell apart. Over the next six minutes, Penn went on a 17-1 run to slice the lead to four. This streak was at first sparked by two steals by the Quakers' backcourt tandem of sophomore Michael Jordan and freshman Lamar Plummer. Both thefts resulted in Plummer lay-ups. Overall during the final stretch, Penn forced nine Yale turnovers and converted them into 15 points. "We recognized there was a sense of urgency on our part," Romanczuk said. "We stepped up on defense. We started pressing a little bit, which coach doesn't like to do a whole hell of a lot, and we responded well." As Penn trimmed the Yale lead to four points with 4:52 remaining in regulation, the Elis' Charlie Petit hit a big three-pointer to bump the lead back up to seven. At this point Dunphy thought his team might be "cooked." But the Quakers never quit, and Penn ran off seven straight points to end regulation. The Red and Blue actually had a chance to put Yale away in the closing seconds when Romanczuk stepped to the line with 13 seconds left. But the team's leading rebounder only sank one of two, to which he responded: "Thank God I made one." Clearly, heading into OT the momentum was on Penn's side. Despite a crowd of 1,939, the Palestra was as loud as the sold out St. Joe's contest. Having had a quiet 11 points through 40 minutes, Jordan came alive and scorched the Elis for 11 more points in the extra period. "I just figured it was time for me to step up and help my team," Jordan said. "In regulation I was kind of playing like" --long pause -- "trash. So when we got the extra five minutes, I just knew I had to step it up." Opening OT with five quick points for Penn, including a trey right in the face of senior Eli Matt Ricketts, Jordan singlehandedly defeated Yale, which only managed eight points themselves in the final five. "I credit Penn with its quickness and defense," Yale coach Dick Kuchen said. "No, I didn't think Penn would come back. I was looking for our team to put together two halves. But then when Penn had to make an adjustment defensively, it did. And we did a poor job of handling the ball." Frustrated with the sub-par start versus Yale -- a team which Princeton beat by more than 30 the next night -- Penn came out Saturday all business and turned the tables on the Bears (5-17, 2-8). A superb shooting game from senior guard Garett Kreitz -- who finished the game with 33 points, 17 of which came in the first half -- propelled Penn to a 38-24 lead at the break. "I mean the past month I have been shooting like junk," Kreitz said. "I have been very pissed off at myself, excuse my language, but I said tonight 'enough is enough.' That is just the mind-frame I put myself in." Despite the co-captain's career high -- which came on 7-of-11 shooting from downtown -- Brown crawled back into the game, 71-66 with only 2:24 showing on the clock. But with the contest on the line, Quakers' Matt Langel, Jordan, and Kreitz sank 8-of-10 from the charity stripe to put the game on ice.

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