Ryan Kelly: Tearing up the script

We sportswriters are a fairly odd bunch.

Among our many quirks is the fact that we love to fit whatever we cover -- athletes, coaches and teams -- into familiar formulas. Anyone who peruses the back page of a newspaper can, with some practice, determine what these scripts are.

So when the Penn men's basketball team stumbled to a 2-3 start in Ivy League play almost three weeks ago, and the odds of an imminent collapse seemed about on par with what they would be in a marathon game of Jenga, it appeared as if the Quakers would fit themselves into a script that we scribes have historically relied upon as an old standard -- the one starring the classic underachievers, a group devoured alive by teams that, while inferior in talent, are simply hungrier.

After all, Penn had stormed through its non-conference schedule. Its worst loss, deficit-wise, was by seven to an Illinois squad ranked second in the nation at the time. At the outset of conference play, the visions of Ancient Eight domination -- the likes of which the world had not seen since the days of Penn's MJ --danced through the heads of Quakers' fans everywhere.

Soon enough, those visions were snuffed out of existence, replaced with the sight of Columbia and Yale fans rushing courts in celebration of upset wins over Penn. One could feel the dreaded "U" word on the tip of the tongue.

No, not "Ugonna" -- "underachievement."

There are two flaws in this script, however. One is that, as most everybody paying attention to Ivy League now knows, the Ancient Eight is remarkably tougher this year than in seasons past. Last year, the conference as a whole finished 28th in overall RPI. This year, it is currently ranked 13th.

The second flaw, and, in many ways, the far more important one, is that when it comes to Penn as a team, it was not yet ready to be fit into the mold of the underachiever.

Instead, as the past few weeks have borne out, the script should look something like this -- young team has success early, adversity threatens to crush it and its dreams, young team overcomes setbacks, comes together as a unit and learns how to win.

Add some explosions, and you've got a winning movie pitch for Jerry Bruckheimer.

Though Penn fans may not have realized it at the outset of the Ivy League season, this team was relatively young. As freshmen, juniors Ugonna Onyekwe, Koko Archibong and David Klatsky may have had significant roles on the 2000 Quakers, which went 14-0 in a complete domination of the Ancient Eight. But it wasn't really their team two years ago, and it didn't become their team until last year.

In part, growing pains short-circuited last season's title hopes. And despite the non-conference success at the beginning of this season, those pains seemed to carry through to the beginning of Ivy League play in January and early February, when winning crossed the line from being nice to being absolutely essential.

But at some point after Yale's close victory over the Quakers on the night of Feb. 8, a transformation occurred -- the Quakers clicked. Penn beat Brown by 10 the next night and went to Princeton two days later and trounced the Tigers by 24.

"I knew we wouldn't fold," Klatsky said. "The personalities on this team wouldn't let it happen... we realized that you can't take days off."

Penn has not lost since, and it has shown that it has learned how to win Ivy League battles either by 38 points or by coming from behind and squeaking out a win against a tough foe, as it did against a worthy Yale team Saturday night. Players like Onyekwe, Archibong, Klatsky and fellow junior Andrew Toole have crossed an experience and confidence threshold, performing as individuals and as a unit the way that was expected of them.

Due to their slow start, however, the Quakers are not out of the woods yet, by any means. They still have to win the rest of their games to fend off both Princeton and the Elis. This is the only likely route to the NCAA tournament.

But even though Penn is in the thick of this tense three-team race, one must admit that -- to bastardize the words of former New York Times sportswriter Roger Angell -- while Ivy League perfection is admirable, this is a lot more fun.

"That was great, going 14-0 [in 2000]," Klatsky said. "But now we're playing against teams that are good. Yale, Brown and Columbia -- those teams are more interesting now. It feels like more of a real conference."

No matter how the Ivy League season unfolds and ultimately concludes, it's been both mighty interesting and entertaining to watch Penn overcome adversity and develop into a winner in the way it has.

Will the boys in Red and Blue make the jump from winner to champion?

I can't wait to see how this script turns out.

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