Stumble in the 'Jungle': Quakers outlast men's hoops

The heart was there, but it just wasn't enough.

Despite a heroic second-half effort from hobbled senior forward Mason Rocca, the men's basketball team failed to contain a hot-shooting Penn team, losing 55-46 last night in front of 7,385 raucous fans at Jadwin Gym.

As a result, the Tigers (13-9 overall) fall to 5-2 in the Ivy League, two games behind the first-place Quakers (14-7, 7-0 Ivy League) and must now rely on another Ivy League team to blemish Penn's record before gaining any hope of an NCAA Tournament berth.

"It puts us out of control and we have to hope Penn loses — which is not likely," Rocca said. "It's real tough."

Turning point

Rocca led a hard-fought Tiger rally that saw Princeton cut a seven-point deficit to 40-38 with just under six minutes remaining. But two Quaker free throws, one layup and a Frank Brown three-pointer later, the Tigers were faced with an insurmountable nine-point deficit.

Any hopes of a final comeback were dashed by two Penn blocks, two Princeton turnovers and poor shooting — a condensed allegory of the entire game. Poor shooting plagued the Tigers all evening, as the Penn defense clogged up the middle and held sophomore center Chris Young to 3 of 10 shooting and 11 points behind a hard defensive effort from substitute big man Oggie Kapetanovic.

"Part of it was their defense, and part of it was we couldn't execute," Rocca said. "We didn't hit shots and we just didn't act as a cohesive unit out there."

The Tigers ended the night shooting a woeful 28.8 percent from the field and a 4 of 17 performance from three-point range. Contrast that to the blistering effort from the red and blue, who shot 50 percent on the evening on a multitude of quick jump shots that resulted from effective Quaker screens.

"We're thankful for the win — I thought our defense was very good," Penn head coach Fran Dunphy said. "I thought we played real hard and relatively smart."

Guard Michael Jordan led the Quaker attack with 14 points, and was helped out by a confident performance from freshman Ugonna Onyekwe, who poured in 12 points, putting an emphatic end to the game with a breakaway 360-degree dunk that sent the Tiger faithful home smarting.

The Penn defensive effort was evident throughout the game, a physical style that resulted in few uncontested Tiger shots. Rocca matched that level of physicality, but not offensively. Yet he rebounded from an 0 for 5 first-half shooting performance that began and ended with a pair of blocked shots to take command of the offense and give the Tigers an opportunity to win the game.

Rocca finished the night with 16 points on 25-percent shooting, but grabbed a game-high 14 boards and boosted the level of intensity, playing a total of 33 minutes on a badly aching ankle. He was projected earlier in the week to only play 15 minutes.

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"It's great, I look at the stats and I see 4 for 16 but I didn't see that when I was watching the game — he gave us a chance to hang in there," head coach Bill Carmody said.