Round two for Penn and Crimson

When Penn hosted Harvard earlier this season, Brian Grandieri rescued his team from defeat by scoring a clutch four points in the final minutes. But the lasting memory from Penn's 73-69 victory was not Grandieri's heroics.

Instead, it was the first half tussle between Penn's Justin Reilly and Harvard's Evan Harris that led to Reilly's exit with a gash in his head. The two players were entangled and both fell to the ground, though it seemed Harris was the one doing the throwing.

When Harris got up and appeared ready to attack Reilly, the Quakers bench nearly cleared, leading to the ejections of Brennan Votel and Andreas Schreiber.

But the Quakers insist the incident was blown out of proportion and that there will be no bad blood when the teams meet tomorrow in Boston.

"That was one little incident, they got tangled up and there was way too much made out of that," coach Glen Miller said.

Grandieri called the episode "a freak accident."

That game also represented Harvard's best road effort of the Ivy season. The Crimson (6-18, 1-7 Ivy) are 0-5 on the road in league play, but the loss at the Palestra was their only road loss that came by under double digits.

In that game, Penn was plagued by its inability to slow down penetration, especially by Crimson guard Jeremy Lin. Tyler Bernardini believes that to keep Crimson guards on the outside Penn must not over-commit on their jumpers.

"You have to respect [Lin's] jump shot so sometimes you can run out and be a little off balance," the freshman guard said. "If we can close out on balance hopefully we can stop some of that penetration."

The Quakers (9-15, 4-3 Ivy) struggled in their only two Ivy road games, losing by double digits to both Columbia and Cornell. Their struggles away from West Philadelphia have to be a concern, especially considering that Harvard has proven to be a much better team at home.

Just last weekend at Lavietes Pavilion, the Crimson looked like they would knock off undefeated Cornell, as they led by five with under a minute to go. The Big Red stayed perfect in the Ivies, though, with a 6-0 run to escape with a one-point victory.

Penn comes into the weekend coming off one of its best performances of the season, a 78-65 win over Yale. The Quakers, trailing by one at the half, blew the Bulldogs out of the building in the second.

Miller said one of the keys to the victory was that his team was able "to get out and run a little bit more against Yale and dictate tempo."

The Quakers hope to keep that high-paced offense going this weekend. The game has potential to become a rapid back-and-forth affair, as the two teams turn the ball over more than anybody else in the Ancient Eight.

The determining factor could be which team is able to best capitalize on giveaways.

"Easy buckets I feel, are always the key," Bernardini said, adding that Penn's transition offense has to begin on the defensive end.

"Any time we can get them to miss shots and maybe miss long, we can get the ball out and we can go."

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