One is brash and outspoken, the other a quiet leader. But basketball and a desire to win have made Penn co-captains Matt Langel and Michael Jordan nearly inseparable. It is March 2. The Penn men's basketball team has thoroughly dismantled the Princeton Tigers, outscored them 44-22 in the second half and sent their archrivals packing to the tune of their worst home loss since Jadwin Gym opened in 1969. A stream of red and blue pours onto the court as the visiting Penn fans realize that the Princeton fans, their "Safe-ty school!" cheers long since died out, have raised the white flag. The Orange and Black supporters march out of Jadwin, a gym that is two parts geodesic dome and one part basketball court, with their heads limp against their chests. Flash bulbs pop, tears of joy flow and the euphoric members of the winning team take turns cutting down the net, hugging and smiling for the cameras. The NCAA Tournament awaits. But to Michael Jordan, waxing reflective eight months later, the win at Princeton is just another 'W'. "No," says Jordan, when asked if the win over Princeton still lingers as the sweetest victory of his college career. "I love to win," he says matter-of factly. "I love to compete, I hate to lose and I love to win. Every win to me is important. Did I enjoy cutting down the nets at Jadwin? Yes. Did I enjoy beating Yale here? Yes." Matt Langel, Jordan's backcourt mate going on four years, relaxes down the hall. Just a bounce pass away, through one door, past a Kobe Bryant poster and through another door, sits Langel. And he doesn't believe Jordan. "You need the win at Yale the same as you need the win at Princeton and they're all the same game to win the championship, but winning it up there was extra special, and whatever [Jordan] says is politically correct, but to win it up there against them -- it's the way it works," Langel says. "It's us vs. them and you always have to win those games. "To do it up there, at Princeton, with their fans standing there watching you cut down their nets was something that not only will you never forget but it was something extremely special? something awesome." But whether or not you believe Jordan about the Princeton game, believe him when he says he loves to win. Last year, he and Langel led Penn to a 21-win season -- the most victories for the Quakers since Penn's last great backcourt, Jerome Allen and Matt Maloney, ruled the Ivy League with an undefeated fist. They are two guards, two teammates, two people, who have converged at Penn from highly dissimilar paths. This is the story of Michael Hakim Jordan and Matthew James Langel. One is a fiery court general, an excitable point guard who "tells you you're playing like a bitch if I think you're playing like a bitch" because "I'd expect you to tell me if I was playing like a bitch as well." The other is a keep-to-himself shooter, a quiet leader with a deadly outside jumper. One came to Penn three years ago expected to step in as the central figure of the offense, a top-200 recruit with an all-around game courted by John Calipari. The other was an All-South Jersey high school scorer, but at the same time a skinny freshman merely expected to compete for minutes, but who wound up pouring in 18 in his second college game. But perhaps that game, a 100-58 blowout of Lehigh on December 7, 1996, was an indication of things to come for both; still wet behind the ears, Jordan scored 20 points and had three steals in 20 minutes while Langel drained 5-of-6 three-pointers. One listened to the Wu-Tang Clan as a freshman; the other listed Phil Collins and Genesis as his favorite musicians when he entered Penn in '96. One is all tattoos and tough exterior, an emotional in-your-face player from Philly's tough Germantown section ready to play a full 45 minutes in an overtime win over Temple. The other is an upper-middle-class suburban kid from New Jersey who lettered in golf, a two-guard who appears sleepy-eyed but can stun you with a shot from the outside or a deadly runner -- he hit game-winners over Harvard, La Salle and St. Joe's last season. But they have become inseparable backcourt mates; they are both roommates and friends. And they are two of the main reasons that Penn prepares to open its 1999-2000 season tonight at Kentucky, poised to repeat as Ivy champs amid fan chatter of a possible top-25 ranking and NCAA tourney run. "We come from different backgrounds," Langel says. "He's from the heart of the city and I'm from suburban New Jersey. And if you look at us, we're not really similar types of people." Langel and Jordan first crossed paths seven years ago in a blowout win for Abington Friends in a Friends League matchup with Moorestown (N.J.) Friends. Jordan was an Abington newcomer, splitting time between varsity and JV after transferring from Germantown High and repeating his freshman year. Langel was a Moorestown Friends freshman and varsity starter averaging 12 points a game; he would transfer to Moorestown High at the end of the season in search of a more demanding program. It was not a particularly memorable first meeting, hardly the basis on which legends are forged. They didn't even discover it until recently, when Langel was going over some old high school newspaper clippings. "We weren't as good as Abington, so I started and got a lot of experience, I think I averaged like 12 a game my freshman year," Langel says. "I don't think I had too good of a game, I think I had five or seven points. But Jordan's in the boxscore as well, although I think he just got the garbage minutes coming in off the bench and made a couple layups. "We went back and laughed about it a little bit, we're both in that box score. That was long before we ever knew we'd be playing here together, that's for sure." But if it sounds like Jordan had an inauspicious start to his career, the meeting with Moorestown is hardly the beginning. As the owner of what he calls "one of the more famous names in the world," if not the most famous, Jordan found it particularly tough around age 12, when he couldn't even make a layup. "When I was little, I sucked. I couldn't play at all," Jordan says. "I played football, and I got the 'wrong sport' jokes and then I switched to basketball and it got even worse. I wasn't good and people would just talk smack all the time." But Jordan kept at it, really devoting himself to the game for the first time as a summer league player in 1990. "I could drive really well but I could never finish the layup, I couldn't use the left hand," Jordan says. "But I just worked hard every day, played with the older guys. I'd practice with my team, then practice with the next age group up." By the time he hit high school, he was spending his summers working out with John Hardnett -- the commissioner of the Sonny Hill League's Hank Gathers College League -- at the Gustine Lake rec center. "While other people were out partying and stuff, we were in the gym sweating," Jordan says. But that's not to say Jordan was a lock Division I player by the time he hit high school. While his work ethic might have been unmatched, his skills were hardly of the nonpareil variety by his freshman year. Jordan was cut from the JV as a frosh. "I went to the coach to talk to him about playing varsity and the coach was like, 'I already have my team,'" Jordan says. "So I went to try out for the JV team and there were four guys from the same neighborhood. Tryouts -- you go up and down and the coach tries to evaluate you and everyone's trying to get on the team. I never got the ball, I never scored -- pretty much they were playing buddy ball. I ended up getting cut." Jordan can laugh about that season today, knowing that he is one of the top guards in the East and the preseason favorite for Ivy League Player of the Year. He can smile when he talks about "just playing the rec league that year" and transferring to Abington Friends the next year. As a sophomore, he started; his junior year he was "the go-to guy." By his senior year, he was an all-state selection and had college coaches drooling. But he never expected to wind up at Penn. "I knew the Ivy League schools, but I never thought I'd be going to an Ivy League school when I was in high school." Langel, on the other hand, seemed to have his career mapped out from an early age. While Jordan was still experimenting with football, Langel was in the backyard with his dad, John, honing his jumper. "[My dad] played college basketball at a Division III school in Ohio -- Marietta. He was a pretty good athlete in his day, no superstar or professional or anything," Langel says. "My dad has spent a lot of time with me working on the fundamentals of my shot." Growing up in a Voorhees, N.J., neighborhood chock full of athletes, Langel was no stranger to the world of professional sports. What started out as work on the side -- doing neighborhood friend Ron Jaworski's contract with the Eagles -- has turned into more than just a hobby for John Langel, a labor lawyer with the Center City firm of Ballard Spahr Andrews and Ingersoll. Langel now represents, among others, Doug Collins (well known for his on-court relationship in Chicago with another MJ), Nets GM John Nash and the U.S. women's soccer team. While Jordan may not have expected to end up at Penn after not making the Germantown JV squad, Langel -- who grew up with former Princeton guard and '99 Ivy Player of the Year Brian Earl watching their dads play together in rec leagues -- seemed to have found a perfect match in Ivy League power Penn. "A good combination of good basketball and good academics was something I wanted, and Penn just happened to be the perfect fit," Langel says. "It's close to home for me, so my family could get to see me play, just 20 to 25 minutes depending on traffic. Everything, the guys on the team, it all seemed like it was going to be a good fit." While Langel's dad is a near-ubiquitous fixture behind the Quakers bench both at the Palestra and on the road, Jordan's mother, Alice, will most likely not be paying too many visits to Penn's historic gym this season. "She came a lot my first two years and we didn't win, so she assumed it was her. She didn't come last year and we won," Jordan says. But he admits that she might be better off not going, as she has her hands full with his six younger siblings, five of them boys. "She has to take care of my brothers," he says. "I'm the oldest of seven. My little brothers look up to me, they respect me." At first glance, Jordan, a Sociology major, and Langel, a Whartonite with a Management concentration, seem like an odd match. Penn center Geoff Owens, who entered with Langel and Jordan in the fall of '96 but still has another year of eligibility remaining, can easily point to the striking differences between the two Penn co-captains, both in their on-court skills and approach to leadership. "Mike's aggressive, he's a slasher. Matt's a shooter. You look at their games," says Owens, who shares the apartment with Langel, Jordan and Quakers wide receiver Brandon Carson and is part of the self-proclaimed "triple threat" alongside Jordan and Langel. "Matt's like 6'5", Mike's six-foot, quicker. They have so many contrasts and then personality-wise Mike's really loud and is really a vocal leader, and Matt's more of a lead-by-example kind of guy. There are just so many contrasts between them." But Langel and Jordan's first real impressions of each other -- '92-93 Friends League basketball aside -- are strikingly similar. Jordan first remembers watching Langel as a senior, when the two had both already committed early to Penn. "So I'm watching this guy and I'm checking him out and he's having a hell of a game, he's ballin', and I was like 'Yeah!'" Jordan recalls. "And I'm talking to my teammates and going 'Yeeaah, he's going to Penn, that's my backcourt mate.' So I was happy when I first saw Matt play. I'm happy that he came to Penn and that we came together." Langel has vivid memories of playing with Jordan in the Media (Pa.) Summer League prior to their freshman year at Penn. "Right away you could tell what kind of a player he was, that he was competitive, that it seemed like his team would always win," Langel says. "The kind of player who would make big plays at big times, and the kind of guy you want on your team." As different as they may seem, their two styles of play have definitely proved complementary in the Quakers backcourt. "He has the really nice outside shot, and he can shoot it from all over the place," Jordan says. "I get to the basket, I can penetrate pretty well and dish, so I think we complement each other very well. And sometimes we reverse roles, where he penetrates and kicks out to me." But don't just take Jordan's word for it. Ask Temple coach John Chaney. At the post-game press conference after Penn shocked then No. 6 Temple 73-70 in overtime, Chaney admitted that the threat of Langel's 25-foot bombs forced the Owls out of their famed matchup zone. In fact, Temple's nightmares of that November night at the Palestra begin with Langel connecting on an NBA-distance three and end, 45 official minutes later, with Jordan draining two clutch free throws -- his sixth and seventh points of the overtime. Jordan hits the winning shots. Penn's Michael Jordan. MJ. It is almost tired now, overplayed among the local media but still a novelty to the country, a new publication or TV station discovering him with every win. Like any 22-year-old college student would, Jordan enjoys the occasional Sports Illustrated mention, the USA Today article, the TV spot -- he appeared alongside Villanova's Bryan Lynch dribbling footballs at the Palestra to promote the Penn-'Nova football matchup on Comcast. "It makes my mom proud," Jordan says. "She goes and tells everybody, 'See my son? Did you see my son on TV?' That's pretty cool." But he is no glory-seeker, no publicity hound. While he has had plenty of years to come to terms with being Michael Jordan, basketball player, sometimes, he wishes he could just be plain old Mike. "I have a problem in that sometimes people just talk about you who don't know you. It's like, why am I the topic of your conversation, when I don't know you, I've never spoken to you? Just because I'm 'Michael Jordan' people assume certain stuff about you. That's just not cool, but I guess you just have to live with it," Jordan says. "Some people think it's funny, to be in dining services or on the Walk and friends I know will be like, 'Oh my God, it's Michael Jordan.' And that's embarrassing. "When I meet people, I don't say Mike Jordan, I'm just like, 'What's up? I'm Mike.' And then they're like, 'Oh, you're Mike Jordan.' Know me as Mike before you know me as Mike Jordan -- I always prefer that." Langel, normally the straight man to frenetic wiseguy Jordan, knows exactly what gets his teammate's goat. As if programmed, Langel stops mid-interview and unprompted, nursing an ankle injury while Mike is out on the Palestra court, and begins, in jest, his soliloquy. "That's pretty much the only reason I'm his roommate and I hang out with the kid. I don't really like him that much but he is Michael Jordan and people are always swarming around him, especially the girls. Man, the girls are always swarming because he's Michael Jordan, so I figure maybe if I hang around him then some of it will rub off on me." After three years of living with Jordan, Langel has a sense of what it's like to be Mike Jordan but not that Mike Jordan. And he does not mind the fact that Jordan gets heaps more attention than any other player at Penn. Langel says that he is "not a guy who's big on media and papers and being recognized." He believes that respect comes from the court, regardless of rankings and TV appearances, and that "the people who really know basketball, when they see the games, they'll know what's going on." Which, of course, is a great attitude to have at Penn, a program with equally as much of a perennial stranglehold on the Ivies but not nearly the attention of media darling Princeton. Because for all the attention he gets now, jealousy would be just plain petty. Michael Hakim Jordan has hardly had everything handed to him in life. And Langel realizes that. "For what he's done, I have complete admiration." The two are immensely competitive. While Jordan is no slouch from the floor -- he's a career 38.2 percent shooter from downtown -- he quickly defers to Langel when it comes to marksmanship. As much of a competitor as Jordan is, he knows when to hedge his bets if there's a team shooting contest. "He's one of the purest shooters that I've ever played with or seen," Jordan says. "If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on Matt." Langel's three-point prowess has even made him somewhat of a post-practice attraction. "Coach Dunph had this Bryce Drew drill," Langel says, "and one day after practice he got me and says, 'Alright, you're going to shoot until you make 50 threes, you're just going to keep shooting and we're going to rebound for you, and I'm going to time it and see how fast you can get to 50." Langel did it in just over three minutes. Of course, while MJ praises Langel's sweet stroke, he knows there is more to a game of one-on-one than a deadly jumper. "If we played one-on-one, it'd be a different story," Jordan says. "I'd win, 10-0. If we were playing make it-take it, then he'd never get the ball." But Langel, who has deceived more than a few teams in the past by showing he can put the ball on the floor and drive to the hoop, steps to his own defense. "10-0 and I wouldn't even touch the ball?" Langel shakes his head. "Man, I think he has a little bit more respect for my game than that. But he's a competitor and he hates to lose." Langel, by virtue of size alone -- he lists at 6'5", while he calls Jordan "basketball six feet" -- has an edge in one on-court category: hang time. "I just want to slam on somebody so bad," says Jordan, so sincere that you actually feel his grounded pain. "I know it's only two points but you know it makes a difference. "My goal is to dunk before I graduate." Jordan claims to have dunked in high school, but Langel -- who averaged a dunk a game in Moorestown's half-court trap style of play -- is skeptical. "He says he dunked in high school. We watched the tape the other day -- he got it in there, barely. He says he hung on the rim and it was bending, but the rim didn't even move." Still, Jordan has been known to throw one down on a hot summer day in the Palestra. It is on those hot summer days at the Palestra, and at Gustine Lake, where Jordan and Langel face some of their fiercest competition. Simultaneously going head-to-head and taking pointers while sharing the court with the likes of Jerome Allen, Eddie Jones, Alvin Williams and others, Jordan and Langel spend their summers honing their games at the legendary Philly workouts run by John Hardnett and Fred Douglas. On the court in the summer, Allen is the teacher and Jordan is the pupil. But it is November now, and Jordan is back on Comcast, talking about how he and Langel could take Allen and Maloney in a two-on-two battle. But Langel knows what Jordan really means. "He was kind of joking," Langel says, admitting he is honored that they are ever even considered in the same breath as the great Penn backcourts of Allen and Maloney, Bilsky and Wohl. "But [he says that] if we were to play two-on-two right now he thinks we'd get 'em. And then he happened to say they haven't played together in awhile." But it is that self-confidence, that winning edge, that is evident in both of them on the court. "We're going down to Kentucky and we think we're better than their backcourt and we think that we're better than their team and we're going to win the game," Langel says. Where, though, does this duo rank among the all-time great backcourts at Penn? Both players are entirely committed to playing professionally after graduation, be it at the NBA level or the lowest of the minor European leagues. "Hopefully that'll be at the highest level, the NBA. If not, then maybe overseas, maybe in the CBA, but still trying to make it to the NBA," Jordan says. Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky, one of the great little guards in Big 5 history, has an opinion on the matter. "This is going to be the critical year," Bilsky says. "If I was looking, as an NBA scout, this is an opportunity for these two guys, because of the schedule that we play, to really show themselves and everybody else that they can play with anybody in the country." But what about the actual question -- can they make it to the NBA? "Ask me in the spring," Bilsky says, "and I'll give you a much better answer." Because, if all goes according to plan, the spring could see the Palestra trophy case displaying some new hardware. As different as they may appear, Jordan and Langel share one thing: a hatred for losing. Coming in as freshmen to a program that had won four Ivy titles in a row, they were contributors on a Penn team that slumped to 12-14. "We wanted [as freshmen] to win three or four championships, but we didn't get the job done," Langel says. The next season they improved to 17-12, but half the hourglass had run out and they still had not beaten Princeton once. "My first two years were very disappointing, because I always won -- throughout my basketball career I've always been in the title game or something like that, and then I came here and we didn't win," Jordan remembers. "We lost a lot my first two years. They were very, very depressing years." And then of course, there was the 50-49 debacle at the Palestra last year, a game in which Penn led Princeton 29-3 and seemed poised to exorcise all the past demons -- only to get the wind knocked out of them with a Princeton dropkick to the chest. Jordan and Langel combined for eight turnovers and one steal, as Penn suffered one of the worst collapses in basketball history. It was a game that should have ruined their season, a game that made weak-stomached fans retire their red and blue makeup kits and had the boys in Old Nassau laughing all the way to another title. But somehow, some way, they willed themselves back into the Ivy race. And Jordan and Langel led the charge as the Quakers snipped away at the Jadwin nets on March 2. Yet that euphoria quickly evaporated, as Penn let an 11-point first-half lead slip away in a first-round NCAA tournament loss to Florida. Jordan and Langel are two guards, two captains, two Penn leaders not willing to accept a mere Ivy title. They have one season left. And they have no plans to waste it. "We always talk about winning our league and going to the NCAA Tournament," Langel says. "But for this team, and the veterans on this team, we talk about, 'Let's win the Big 5. Let's be the best team in the City of Philadelphia,'? And then when we get to the Tournament, we know what it's like now. Let's advance in the tournament, win a couple games and see where that takes us." But whether the season ends with an Ivy title and a run in the NCAAs or a tearful goodbye at the Palestra against Princeton on March 7, the end is inevitable. "I think that when your college career is over it's going to be a little bittersweet," Langel says. "If it's a Sweet 16 game or a regional final game then yeah, it'll make it a little bit better. If it's a Final Four game, I think it'll take away a little bit of the hurt, but we just want to play as long as we can, as long as possible in a Penn uniform." There is a plaque that hangs in the front lobby of the Palestra, and no matter how old you are or how many thousands of games you have weathered, it always sends chills down your spine. It reads: "To win the game is great? To play the game is greater? But to love the game is greatest of all?" And that is what drives this story. This isn't the tearjerking tale of the kid who made it from a neighborhood where many don't. It's not a let's-give-Mike-a-hand type of story because everyone's so glad he's here, anymore than it's the tale of a privileged kid from suburban New Jersey who just so happened to have a killer jumpshot and a dad who knows Doug Collins. To tell it that way does not do justice to Michael Jordan, and it does not do justice to Matt Langel. This is about winning, but more than that it is about determination and unfailing practice, and hour upon hour upon hour spent in the gym. It is about seasons with so many losses you don't want to get out of bed in the morning, and seasons with streaks so sweet you just enjoy life more. It is about practicing free throws until your arms ache and your legs feel like jelly, about heart-breaking losses to Princeton and the sweet revenge of victory at Jadwin. It is about a force so strong -- a love for the game of basketball -- that makes it painfully obvious why this apparent odd couple has become so inseparable. But most of all, it is about friendship. "I'm proud to call Mike one of my closest friends," Langel says. "And I truly believe that he feels the same way."
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