No matter how often Glen Miller says he hates them, when you're 5-12, sometimes you just have to accept moral victories.
Despite losing by 16 to Temple last night, the Quakers' coach saw his team play with a certain fire that they haven't had perhaps since the North Carolina game.
Just like the 40-point loss to Saint Joseph's, Penn started off slow, down 12-0. But this time the Quakers used a gritty performance to make a game of it in the end. It took some time, but the aggressiveness of some players was encouraging.
On both sides of the floor, Andreas Schreiber had a breakout game.
He had a career-high six rebounds, went 5-for-8 from the floor for 12 points (one short of a career-high) and had two rejections on defense.
More importantly, though, it was the first time we've seen him, or really any of the other big men, play nasty.
"Penn did a great job defensively, and their big guys, I didn't know they were as athletic as they are," Temple guard Mark Tyndale said. "They blocked me and [Dionte] Christmas' shot a little bit. Coach is gonna call us soft tomorrow in film, but they're pretty good."
Schreiber, who played 16 of his 24 minutes in the second half, was wrestling away rebounds with one hand, getting to the line a team-high five times and getting inside for dunks.
"Hopefully that's a confidence-builder for him, because he's certainly lacked confidence in his game," Miller said. "He has the body to play physically, the athleticism to play physically. If he can build off that performance, that can be a good thing."
Tyndale threw down a monstrous dunk over Schreiber in the second half. Some guys might get demoralized after being posterized, but it only inspired Schreiber - he grabbed three rebounds in the next six minutes.
Other guys also stepped up, particularly in the second half. Freshman forward Jack Eggleston played solid defense - including taking a charge and getting a steal - and was tough on the boards, grabbing six.
After missing several easy shots in the first half, he could've disappeared. But instead he came back more aggressive, throwing down a put-back dunk at the end of the half.
As a team, Penn got to the line 18 times (12 more than on Saturday), had nine steals (five more than against St. Joe's) and took 76 percent of its shots from inside the arc (compared to 56 a game earlier).
The Quakers weren't the better team last night, but they were close. And that says a lot, coming off the embarrassing defeat at home against the Hawks.
"We still lost, and you can't have that much confidence from a loss", Eggleston said. "We put together 13 good minutes against North Carolina, and we played alright most of the second half this game. We've shown what we can do in stretches, we just have to put it together for 40 minutes."
For a team that hasn't really put together two solid halves yet this season, 20 minutes isn't that bad. And in the last game before the Ivy season, last night was a good place to start.
Josh Wheeling is a senior economics major from Philadelphia, and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is jw4@dailypennsylvanian.com.
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