Seifter | Quakers need more inside presence

The Penn men’s basketball team had no business losing to a Marist team that finished 1-29 last year and had lost 21 consecutive non-conference games.

The Quakers are improved from last season, but they are still frustratingly inconsistent — not only between games, but within them. Penn has far too commonly fallen into lackluster stretches, like the end of the Manhattan loss and a 14-possession scoreless streak against Marist.

The inconsistency appears to stem from the recurring theme of Penn’s lack of an inside presence other than senior Jack Eggleston.

“First and foremost, we have to play inside-out and make shots in the paint going towards the basket,” Penn coach Jerome Allen said. “It’s a long game, you’re not going to continue to make three-pointers as we did in the first couple minutes. It’s kind of like fool’s gold.”

Against a Marist team that is hardly physically intimidating, the Penn frontcourt totaled just 18 points and 22 rebounds. Of Penn’s 60 field goal attempts, 22 were from beyond the arc, leading to a paltry 36.7 percent shooting night from the field. While the Red Foxes scored a slightly higher 39.6 percent of their shots, they outrebounded the Quakers, 40-32.

“I think I gotta take a lot of blame for that. I didn’t establish myself in the low post,” Eggleston said. “I wasn’t strong enough inside.”

But subtracting Eggleston’s numbers, Conor Turley, Fran Dougherty and Mike Howlett had just 10 points and nine rebounds in a combined 41 minutes.

The lack of inside presence also manifested itself in an 18-point free throw disparity. While Marist shot 24-for-27 from the charity stripe, Penn hit just six free throws on 13 attempts.

“We were settling for a lot of outside shots,” said Tyler Bernardini, who scored a team-high 18 points. “I know Jack is trying to take some of the blame, but a lot of it falls on us not looking in, not holding the ball long enough for them to get inside of the zone.”

But who can contribute on the inside?

After missing the team’s first seven games with an injury, Howlett is just getting his rhythm back in limited playing time. Senior Andreas Schreiber was not with the team due to a reported “injury” (I don’t buy it, but Allen didn’t comment).

At this point in his career, Turley probably is what he is: a hard worker and banger inside, but not really a skilled offensive player in the post.

Freshman Cam Gunter isn’t ready yet, as evidenced by his raw play during limited minutes in the Villanova and Pitt games.

So that leaves freshman Fran Dougherty as the player who most needs to step up to complement Penn’s stalwart in Eggleston.

That’s a tough task for a first-year player, but until the Quakers can find more consistency in the post from him or someone else, they will continue to live and die by the number of shots that happen to fall.

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