Two wins gets M. Hoops back to .500 mark

Second half euphoria at the Palestra leads to back-to-back Penn wins. Reaching for and achieving the .500 mark for the first time since December 8, the Penn men's basketball team put together back-to-back Ivy League victories against two Ancient Eight cellar dwellers last weekend. At 9-9 overall and 3-1 in the conference, Penn relied on two quality second halves to put away the Lions Friday night 70-63 and the Big Red (6-12, 3-3) Saturday night 79-68. Getting off to a sluggish start against Columbia (6-11, 1-4), the Quakers found themselves in a tight contest at the half, 29-26. Things didn't get much better for the Quakers in the early going of half number two. Columbia, spurred on by their captain Gary Raimondo, who scored four quick points, went on a 7-0 run to jump out ahead of the Quakers 33-31. "We did not play well," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said, referring to the entire contest. "I want to give Columbia a lot of credit for that. I think a large part of us not playing well is that Columbia did a good job of shutting down our perimeter game." Dunphy was right on the money, because the Quakers attempted just one trey in the second half and were only 1-8 from downtown all night. This is a far cry from the 18 three-point attempts Penn usually averages per contest. With Columbia shutting down Penn's perimeter game (especially Penn co-captain Garett Kreitz, who finished the night with only five points on 1-for-8 shooting), the table was set for Penn center Paul Romanczuk to have a big night. A sluggish first 20 minutes for the junior was followed by a 15 point outburst in the final half. With 16:08 on the clock, Romanczuk hit Penn's initial bucket courtesy of a nice driving layup. He then proceeded to score the Quakers' next five points, knotting the game at 38 with a little over 13 minutes remaining. "We tried to take advantage of what the defense gave us," Dunphy said. "Paul had a nice second half but we we should have been able to get him more looks than he had." One reason Penn needed big performances from Paul Romanczuk and point guard Michael Jordan was due to what Dunphy called his team's "countless mental errors." The Quakers only committed 11 turnovers Friday night, but Jordan, who had five of them, was not pleased with his game. Despite pouring in 20 points to go along with six assists against the Lions, the sophomore felt he let his team down and almost cost Penn the game. "I played really dumb tonight," Jordan said. "I let my team down." When asked what in particular had frustrated Penn's leading scorer, he replied, "every time I turned the ball over." Overcoming his mistakes, Jordan, along with his mates, strung together a 12-1 run with seven minutes remaining, extending their lead to 12 and putting the game out of reach. "Well, I thought we missed a couple of cribbies [easy ones] down low," Columbia coach Armond Hill said. "Penn was already in the penalty so any fouls we committed led to foul shots and that contributed more to their run than scoring any baskets out of their offensive did." Aware of how grueling the Ivy League's double headers can be, Romanczuk commented after the Columbia game how a performance a la Friday night's would not be acceptable two straight contests. But his words did not translate into a solid first half on the following evening when Cornell came to town. On Saturday night, Penn turned in another bad start. Following a quick three by Quaker Jed Ryan, Cornell held Penn to 37 percent shooting from the field the rest of the half and the Red and Blue found themselves trailing the Big Red 34-31 at the midway point. In particular, Kreitz found himself in another hole, going 0-5 from the field and 0-4 from downtown. Upset with his play and his recent shooting slump, the veteran guard snapped out of his five-game funk -- in which he has only hit 21 percent of his attempts and seen his average dip three points from 14 to 11 -- and netted 18 points in the second half to guide the Quakers to an easy victory. "I think I finally just woke up," Kreitz said. "At halftime, coach Dunphy said I just have to start making shots and that was enough. I think I just needed to hear that." Within the initial seven minutes of the second half, Kreitz had 10 points on three of three shooting, including a beautiful drive down the baseline for a reverse layup. As usual, Kreitz's energy and intensity fired up his teammates. Jordan finished the game with 23 points -- 16 of which came in the first half, keeping Penn in the contest -- and Romanczuk had another good second half scoring 14 of his 21. Most of the Quaker's damage came from the charity strip. Penn went to the line 33 times in the final 20 minutes. Romanczuk who went to the line 18 times on the night, took 14 trips alone to the charity stripe in the second half connecting eight times. But the Quaker who had the best performance at the foul line was Kreitz, who traveled to the stripe 11 times and nailed every one of them. Penn's foul-shooting plus Romanczuk down low triggered a 15-3 run with about 13 minutes left and Cornell never recovered.

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