Sebastian Stockman: Walking the Ivy tightrope

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Now this is the team we thought we had.

This is the team that beat Georgia Tech and Iowa St., the team that gave Illinois a run for its money. This is the team that swept the Big 5.

The Penn men's basketball team generated most of its preseason hype after the season had already begun, with its impressive showing in the Las Vegas Invitational.

And just like that, the buzz about this team turned from ambivalent to exceedingly positive. Penn started to get some national attention from ESPN columnists and Associated Press pollsters. The Quakers weren't just going to win the Ivy League -- they were going to strangle it on their way to playing Cinderella in the NCAA Tournament.

In that light, then, last night's 62-38 drubbing of Princeton might have looked like par for the course. Three Quakers starters scored 17 points apiece, while junior forward Ugonna Onyekwe posted a double-double by pulling down 10 boards. After the first six minutes Princeton was never really in the game, and the Quakers left with their second-largest margin of victory this season -- all on their archrival's home floor.

Most years, especially one in which the Quakers had shown so much early promise, a game like this would have served to cement the Red and Blue atop the Ivy League leaderboard, without too much to worry about until the next Princeton matchup the first week of March.

However, three Ancient Eight losses have muddled the championship picture for the Quakers. A home loss to Columbia can muddle a lot of things, it seems -- like the importance of the Penn-Princeton series.

"There's still a lot of basketball to be played [this season]," Princeton coach John Thompson III said last night. "Every game is a playoff game."

But then Thompson added a kicker.

"One loss doesn't necessarily mean more than any other loss," he said.

Huh? Granted, coaches often say this kind of thing -- but one gets the feeling that Thompson actually means it.

Anyone who has followed the Ancient Eight for any length of time knows that there are usually just two Ivy League games a year that matter: Penn-Princeton at the airplane hangar and Penn-Princeton at the Palestra.

Coaches at either school could talk all they want about the importance of the other Ivy games, but when the schools combine for 40 of 45 Ancient Eight championships, people tend to stop listening. This game was certainly still big for the Quakers.

"For as important as a game as this was coming in, this is as big a win as we've had this season," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said.

It was the Quakers' biggest win because their backs are against the wall. In yet another strange twist, this game effected no change upon the Ivy standings. Princeton is still second at 5-2, Penn is still in fourth at 4-3, and Yale... Yale is still leading the pack at 7-1.

The Quakers can't afford to lose another game, and no one realizes that more than Dunphy.

"We have no margin for error," the coach said of the team's seven remaining league contests.

Indeed, even if the Quakers should win out --ÿa scenario which would include home wins over Yale and Princeton -- they could still be 11-3 and tied with the Tigers for second place behind the Elis.

The last time these three schools were involved in deciding the Ivy League championship was the 1998-99 season, when the Quakers lost just once on their way to the title.

That loss, of course, was either "The Miracle at the Palestra" or the "Black Tuesday" game, depending on which side of the Delaware your school sits.

In that game, the Quakers' 33-9 halftime lead somehow became the Tigers' 50-49 win.

In fact, there were shades of that game tonight. The Tigers made just six first-half field goals and were trailing 24-9 with under seven minutes remaining in the first half. The memory of that game probably accounts for why no one left until just under four minutes remained in the game.

"That will be a ghost forever," Dunphy said when asked to compare the first halves of last night's game and the Palestra debacle. "I've said it so many times about that particular team. We didn't finish the game out, but that team had such character and integrity that they wound up winning the rest of their games."

The Quakers won the league that year thanks in part to a 61-58 double-overtime loss the Tigers suffered at the hands of the Elis immediately after their Palestra comeback.

But now, for the first time in who knows how long, Quakers fans might actually be forced to root for Princeton to beat Yale, and not the other way around.

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