Out of the frying pan, into the fire

By Zachary Levine

Senior Staff Writer

zlevine@sas.upenn.edu

Think of it as a warm-up for the Ivy League season.

After blowing out Navy 79-58 in Annapolis last night, the Quakers will have less than 48 hours to prepare for a team that presents vastly different looks and challenges from the ones they faced against the Midshipmen.

It's not the 24-hour turnaround that the Quakers will face six times during the Ivy League season, but it's close.

After the Navy game, scouting players boils down to "just kinda on your own, just looking at ESPN," senior forward Mark Zoller said.

ESPN would tell the Quakers that the Fordham Rams are coming off a 79-59 loss to UMBC.

But nobody on the roster except the freshmen will need ESPN to remember what the Rams are capable of doing.

Last season, the Quakers went up to Rose Hill Gym in the Bronx and limped out with a 78-63 loss. Fordham erased a big first-half lead and turned a close game into a rout with a 12-0 run midway through the second.

Now, Fordham sits at 4-3 with two of the losses coming at the hands of ranked teams. The Rams fell to No. 23 Maryland Wednesday night and now-unranked Tennessee in the Preseason NIT (the other loss being an NIT consolation game defeat at the hands of Belmont).

Unlike the Navy team the Quakers took apart last night, the Rams do much of their work underneath the basket.

Leading that charge is Bryant Dunston, a player with whom the Quakers are quite familiar. The junior went off for 20 points and 12 rebounds in Fordham's win over Penn last year.

Dunston, a 6-foot-8, 233-pound bruiser, leads the Rams with 7.7 rebounds and 2.6 blocks per game and is second with 12.6 points.

"He played really well last game, but I think we'll be really prepared to play him," Zoller said.

Dunston is one of four Rams players who are averaging double figures in the scoring column. Junior guard Marcus Stout leads the team with 13.9 points per game, while freshman guard Brenton Butler and junior forward Sebastian Green rank third and fourth, respectively.

Greene could to be coming into his own for the Rams, as the junior from Germany is coming off a career-high 20 points against Iona.

Notes: This is the eighth meeting between Penn and Fordham, an Atlantic 10 team. The Rams have won five of the first seven. Since the beginning of the 2002-03 season, the Quakers have seven losses in 13 games against the Atlantic 10 and the same seven losses in 56 games against the Ivy League.

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