Angel | Quakers let go, loosen up, and win

HANOVER, N.H.

I didn't see the Dartmouth scouting report, but I doubt Joe Gill's name was on it.

The senior guard's participation is usually limited to a couple of dunks in warm-ups and the ritual "frisking" of the captain during the lineup introduction.

On his best days, he plays a full minute, maybe two in a Penn blowout. Friday was one of those days.

Gill, subbed in for good with 2:30 to play, squared up for an NBA three-pointer with a minute to go and caught nothing but net.

The Penn bench reacted like it had just won on The Price is Right.

It's a liberating feeling, being out of the title race.

***

Dartmouth coach Terry Dunn did not change his expression. Why should he have? It wasn't the first time an anonymous blue jersey had drained a three with a Green defender one step behind.

"Their players that don't usually make threes, made threes," lamented Dartmouth captain Johnathan Ball. To anyone who hadn't just witnessed Penn shoot 12-of-17 from deep, Ball would've sounded like a sore loser.

But hey, he was right.

Justin Reilly's outside game probably hadn't been weighing on Dunn's mind. Andreas Schreiber's three-point percentage (.174) going into the weekend was a fine LSAT score but not so good for basketball. Both hit from deep on Friday night.

"It was . frustrating," said Dartmouth's DeVon Mosley, searching for a word that wouldn't earn him a punishment of some kind.

Penn coach Glen Miller had even less insight. How do you explain a team shooting 70 percent from deep when it had been shooting 30? Getting 12 threes when three weeks ago Dartmouth held Penn to zero threes?

Miller couldn't. In a season that has brought grind-it-out wins at best and 6-points-at-the-half-to-FGCU at worst, a blowout didn't need to come with a detailed debriefing.

"I was surprised with the deficit," he said. "This year, you can never quite trust your team . even that big lead [can be] fool's gold."

***

No explanation necessary for Brian Grandieri, either. Senior year has been as difficult as predicted. After back-to-back championships the last two years, he's carried an entire team on his torn meniscus, for better or worse.

His postgame demeanor has shown it. This season, he went from condescension ("Some time you gotta man up . we don't have those guys yet") to quiet acceptance. Title number three - he missed Penn's 2004-2005 campaign with a torn ACL - is not coming his way.

Friday night, he was liberated to Stage Three. "Tell them about the pushups!" he cracked, cutting off his teammate Schreiber in mid-response. "He was doing pushups [in the bathroom] before the game."

For once, the focus wasn't on trying to extract the Zoller and Jaaber from Reilly and Schreiber.

No Tournament seed to worry about. No scoreboard-watching. On this night, a win over Dartmouth was grounds for celebration, not muted relief.

After all, if the 17th man can hit threes, can things really be that bad?

Sebastien Angel is a junior Political Science major from Worcester, Mass. His e-mail address is angelsd@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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