A poor couple of minutes late in Friday’s game may have cost Penn a chance at one of the greatest upsets in NCAA Tournament history, but the Quakers can take solace in the fact they made one of the top teams in the nation sweat through a First Round game in its back yard. Now the Quakers’ takeaway from the 2005-06 season won’t be the poor second half of the Ivy season, but rather the near misses against Texas and Villanova — the latter without Steve Danley — and the respectable showing at Duke. Penn will go into next season knowing it can compete with the best in the land.
Between drawing one of the top teams in the field in a virtual road game and the way Penn regressed the final month of the season, there wasn’t much reason to expect a close game last night. But despite an off night by Ibby Jaaber, the Quakers were right there down the stretch, having a chance to take the lead with just over five minutes left. When all was said and done, it was the best NCAA Tournament performance by an Ivy League team since Princeton’s narrow Second Round defeat at the hands of Michigan State in 1998.
How close was Penn to history? Jaaber shot 5 of 19 from the floor after coming into the game hitting a 53.9-percent clip on the season. If he has even a slightly below average shooting night, Penn probably pulls off the shocker. And if Fran Dunphy doesn’t call that unfortunate timeout to break his team’s momentum with a chance to take the lead late in the game, who knows what happens.
But despite the what-ifs and the tough loss, for the first time since 1994, Penn’s NCAA Tournament performance has sent it into the offseason on a positive note. The league will be tougher next season, as young Brown, Columbia, Yale, and Dartmouth rosters mature. Princeton loses its top player in Scott Greenman, but it’s a safe bet that the Tigers will perform much better outside the league next year. Cornell and Harvard both suffer some big graduation losses, but each program has highly regarded recruits on the way expected to help fill those holes.
Meanwhile, Penn is facing an eerily similar situation to Princeton two years ago. Like the 2004-05 Tigers, the Quakers return an All-Ivy guard and forward and four of five starters — with the only graduating starter being its senior point guard — from a team that lost to Texas in the NCAA Tournament. And like that Princeton team, Penn will be heavily favored to repeat in 2006-07, with talk of a potentially special season. And if Dunphy leaves for Temple as expected, the similarities will be uncanny, with a new coach inheriting a talented and experienced team. And like Joe Scott in 2004, the new coach likely would be making a homecoming — either as a former Penn assistant (Fran O’Hanlon or Steve Donahue) or a former Quaker player and assistant (Fran McCaffery).
Of course, Princeton’s shocking collapse in Ivy play that year proved that no preseason favorite — no matter how unanimous — is ever safe. Penn fans would do well to keep that in the back of their minds as they construct their offseason fantasies of the upcoming season.
