About the only good reason to attend the men's basketball weekend games was to watch its seniors play for the last time. They still have a road trip through New York next weekend, and they'll still play at the Palestra once more against Princeton over spring break. But Saturday night was their last real hurrah, the Class of 2009's final chance to put on a show for the Penn community, to give it something to be proud of. And they did, with a victory over Brown that the fans probably needed even more than they did.
I wanted so badly to be happy for them. But let's face it: Didn't the victory only feel good because ending a streak of five straight conference losses at home, seven overall, each more humiliating than the last, is enough to give everyone a huge dose of relief? Of course it did. And was that catharsis enough to erase all the frustrations that preceded it? Of course not.
But most of all, who in their right mind would have wanted the seniors' big send-off to happen like this - a sloppy victory against a last-place team in the midst of a lost season destined to be remembered as a disappointment?
Playing for pride is nothing to scoff at, but how much pride can come from beating a team that came into the game with one conference win and 11 losses? Kevin Egee, Cameron Lewis and Brennan Votel have put in four years of sacrifice and struggle to be the best basketball players they could be; hadn't they earned more than this?
It seems unfair that those three (along with two classmates, Tommy McMahon and Aron Cohen, who were forced to leave the program because of injuries) will not leave behind any real legacy, at least not one that most Penn fans will care to dwell on.
In my mind, their best moment came four years ago, when they were promising freshmen on a team that nearly produced one of the greatest NCAA Tournament upsets ever against second-seeded Texas. The next year Penn lost just one Ivy game and won a third straight league crown. But then it waved goodbye to the once-in-a-decade duo of Ibrahim Jaaber and Mark Zoller.
Harsh as it may sound, it's been all downhill since then.
The Glen Miller era suffered through a surprisingly nasty sophomore slump last year, losing Darren Smith to injury in the first game. Next thing you knew, the team was getting a press-conference scolding from Brian Grandieri, scoring 30 points against Florida Gulf Coast, losing all four Big 5 games and finishing third in the Ivies behind champion Cornell, which is now a virtual lock to repeat this year.
So how are we to account for this severe two-year slump and the seniors' role in it?
It's useless to play the parlor game of blaming one thing or another. There was the coaching change that ended 17 years of continuity. There was the loss of Jaaber and Zoller. There were injuries galore. There was a gradual disappearance of go-to players - and therefore, of leadership - on the team. And there were what can only be called bad breaks.
Who's to decide what exactly has held Penn back? And who's to say whether the program has been regressing for just two years or since 1994, when Penn last won an NCAA Tournament game?
The only generalization to make is that this year's seniors are essentially victims of circumstance. That doesn't mean that their time at Penn has been less meaningful, to them personally or to the program, than that of their predecessors. On the contrary, stewardship of a rebuilding process is just as vital to Penn's long-term health as anything Jaaber or Zoller had done.
History has proven time and again that all teams' talent levels ebb and flow. Some stars that graduate are replaced seamlessly, but sometimes they leave gaping holes that the up-and-comers are unprepared to fill. In these cases, rediscovering how to win inevitably requires a year or two of trial and error.
Egee, Lewis and Votel were forced to be custodians of this chaotic process. Of course, that meant their own on-court aspirations would never be realized. Their legacy, therefore, should not depend on this season. It should depend on the role they have played in helping today's newbies - Tyler Bernardini, Zack Rosen, Harrison Gaines and others - become the Jaabers and Zollers of tomorrow.
Tragically, that's not how history tends to judge. When things come full circle and Penn starts winning again, the Class of 2009 probably won't get any credit for laying the foundation. And just like the game in which they waved goodbye to Penn, they deserve better.
Andrew Scurria is a senior International Relations major from Wilmington, Del., and is former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is scurria@dailypennsylvanian.com
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