Two Marks for Quakers to defend

His brother-in-law may get the notoriety, but Brown coach Craig Robinson fancies himself an agent of change.

It started in his own gym, where he morphed Glen Miller's run-and-gun system into the deliberate march of his alma mater.

Now, he wants change at the top; no team other than Penn and Princeton has won the Ivy League in the past 20 years.

And like Barack Obama, Robinson is on the home stretch to make it happen.

It may not be his Bears that wear the crown, but with a win at the Palestra tonight, he can help make sure it won't be the Quakers (8-14, 3-2 Ivy).

With two Ivy losses, Penn sits perilously close to elimination, but coach Glen Miller hopes he's found a lifeline in freshman Tyler Bernardini. Penn's leading scorer is slated to return after missing his last three games due to a concussion.

He's returned just in time for a Battle of the Concussed - Brown forward Mark MacDonald has missed several games with a similar injury. Penn's porous interior defense against Princeton on Tuesday might leave the senior - who's never beaten Penn - licking his chops.

"We did a good job of covering Princeton's actions to take away the three, but we gave up a lot of dribble penetration and low-post play," Miller said.

But another senior Mark, leading scorer McAndrew, will draw just as much attention.

In Miller's last year at Brown, McAndrew averaged two points a game.

In his last four games, he's averaging over 20.

The Bears have a clear edge in experience and their offense is of the methodical Nassau variety, but Penn knows it has faced both of those before.

"When we were preparing for Princeton, we prepared for Brown all week too," said Aron Cohen, the most recent of the guards to step up in Bernardini's absence. He scored 14 points against the Tigers on Tuesday.

"They use some of the same actions we faced the other night," Bernardini said.

If the freshman guard can regain his form from before he took a hard fall on Feb. 4, he may prove the key to stopping Brown's first ever road sweep of the 'P's.

But after a full week off, that may not be a safe assumption, especially given his inconsistency: His last five point totals have been 20, 7, 16, 5 and 20.

Penn may need contributions from the supporting actors, although they have hardly been models of consistency: After Andreas Schreiber poured in a career-high 23 Saturday against Cornell, he played just seven minutes three days later against Princeton.

The most reliable asset may be the old Palestra magic - that mysterious force that's kept a so-so team's 24-game home Ivy winning streak alive.

"At any moment, those guys can turn it around," Brown's Robinson told the Providence Journal.

"It's very hard to win at the Palestra."

But with nine games still to play, and all of them likely must-wins, Bernardini knows the Quakers can't just rely on the ghosts in his home building.

"Going up to New York and dropping two games, we started to realize that we've got to start getting it into gear," he said.

"Or we're going to be out of contention."

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