NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- They call it "Survival." It's the defense the Penn men's basketball team works on at practice. Penn coach Fran Dunphy demands the Quakers make three straight defensive stops or the drill keeps going. Against Brown Friday night, when they were up by three points with 20 ticks left on the clock, the Quakers employed this frenetic, all-or-nothing defense. It worked, too. The Bears got two looks from three-point range, one good one from Patrick Powers and one more desperate attempt from Brown's go-to-guy, senior Earl Hunt. After Hunt's miss, arms got tangled and bodies crashed to the ground and Penn's Jeff Schiffner came away with the ball. Game over. "We were out there yelling 'One stop survival,'" Penn point guard David Klatsky said after Friday's game. "And that's what we did." That's exactly what they did -- survive against a very determined team in a loud and hostile arena. And that's exactly what the Quakers have done, and what they will do all the way to -- and, who knows, maybe even into -- the NCAA Tournament. This Penn team is a veteran, senior-laden one that will not fold against tough teams on the road. Not this year. Last season, the Quakers lost a nip-and-tuck game at Yale. Two seasons ago, Brown edged them out. This weekend, Penn played against the best team Brown has had since its 1986 championship season and a Yale team that played with heaps of emotion on senior night. "We're not 6-6 [in the Ivy League] if we played like that all season long," Yale coach James Jones said after Saturday night's game. Penn made some mistakes, yes. The 33 weekend turnovers are one thing that Dunphy would like to erase quickly from his memory. And there were times, too many times, when Penn went on hair-pulling, fingernail-biting scoring droughts. But good teams, like Penn, make up for their mistakes. Take, for instance, Andrew Toole's performance. Toole would be the first to say he played poorly this weekend. Penn's first team All-Ivy point guard scored just nine points in 55 minutes in the two games. Two of those points, though, sealed the Quakers' first victory. With the Quakers up a bucket with just under two minutes left in the game, their offense stalled. Nobody could find a good look. Toole, then, took a pass from the post, drove right and threw up a baby floater. When the ball swished through, you could literally hear the air being sucked out of Brown's packed Pizzitola Center. Dunphy hinted that Toole's knee could have been hurting more than he's letting on -- but that he's too proud to admit it. However, a player of his caliber won't stay quiet for long. "I think the fact that we have a lot of experience... helps us in all these tough situations," said Penn forward Koko Archibong, one of six seniors on this year's squad. "It helps us to stay poised and stay focused and not panic." Archibong is another 2002 first team All-Ivy who's been struggling as of late. But this weekend, he came alive. He was perfect from the field Friday and hit clutch three-pointers in both games to ensure two Penn victories. Two victories that last year's version of the Quakers, or even this team earlier this season, may not have gotten. "We're just chugging along to get to that goal of Ivy champions," Archibong said. "We're doing all the right things now to make these statements to the rest of the league -- and whoever else we end up playing after that." That's another thing. These seniors have been to the NCAA tournament before. This time, there's no settling once they get there.
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