Senior Rob Belcore notched two critical steals against Dartmouth 33 seconds apart to help preserve their Ivy title hopes on Feb. 24, 2012.
Credit: Maegan CadetThe latest installment of our “Remembering Penn basketball” series features former DP sports editor Mike Wisniewski (C ’13).
My first taste of covering Penn basketball came in the 2011-12 home opener against Temple. The Palestra was packed and rocking, and Zack Rosen’s 27 points and seven (!) three-pointers almost led Penn to the monumental upset. Tyler Bernardini was off the whole night but had a chance to erase it all with a wide-open, game-winning three he clanked off the back of the rim at the end of regulation.
But my most memorable moment came covering the Dartmouth-Harvard road trip later that same year. Penn barely beat Dartmouth on Friday — winning by three thanks to a Rosen three-pointer with just three seconds left — and we had planned to drive to Boston that night after filing our stories.
A snowstorm ended up stranding us in Hanover, which ironically had not seen a snowstorm yet that winter even though it was late February. The only hotel in town was closed, and we ended up sleeping in the common room of a Dartmouth dorm, where some students were kind enough to lend us pillows and blankets for the night. The next day, my car had been towed (we parked in the first place we could after nearly spinning out on the road several times). After we finally found it, we just drove it off the lot (sorry New Hampshire, I’m never paying those tickets).
That night in Boston, Penn pulled off a huge upset with a one-point win over Harvard. It was probably the most exciting game I’ve ever covered. That high school gym packed with Harvard fans thought they had the Ivy title in the bag, which the Crimson eventually won — but not that night, thanks to Bernardini’s “Taking Charge” heroics. My co-editor decided to write his postgame column focusing not on the win over Harvard, but on our long journey (and the team’s) just to get to that point.
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Remembering Penn basketball: former DP editor David Burrick
Remembering Penn basketball: former DP sports editor Jeff Shafer
Remembering Penn basketball: former DP sportswriter Andrew Todres
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