City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Once the college basketball season begins, teaching often gives way to coaching. The six weeks of preseason practices, not to mention the summer workouts preceding them, are largely spent on the little things: learning plays, spots, situations. For the freshmen and transfers, it’s about getting acclimated to a new system and a new way of life; for the rest, it’s continuing to work on every aspect of their games to advance their careers.

Then the season begins, and it’s nothing but film study and game preparation, hours in the trainers’ room and weight room. There’s no ability to step away and evaluate, little time for second-guessing or experimentation. Add in the typical rigors of a class schedule, and it’s a grueling four months for all involved.

For that reason, Penn’s 10-day break between Wednesday night’s loss to Temple and next Saturday’s home game against D-III Ursinus couldn’t have come at a better time. The 77-73 loss to Temple, though it was certainly a good effort by the Quakers, was the program’s fourth in a row after getting off to a 4-1 start.

“I love these 10 days,” first-year head coach Steve Donahue said afterwards. “This is our first chance to go back and talk about what we need to work on, what we need to get better (at).”

Over the first 26 days of the basketball season, Penn played nine games, an average of one every three days. And considering this is a program with a new head coach and his new system relying on seven or eight underclassmen in its rotation, the Quakers need all the time to work on themselves they can get.

The biggest challenge Donahue has ahead of him is getting a winning reputation back at a school that was once known for it, at a program that’s still amongst the NCAA’s top 15 all-time in wins. Over the eight seasons before this one, Penn’s only had one winning record, with four years where the Quakers couldn’t even reach double-digits in victories.

“We’re fighting three really bad seasons in a row and not too many (good ones) over the last eight,” Donahue said. “Right now we walk out of the locker room and we’re not exactly sure how we’re going to win. I think they figured it out tonight (against Temple) a little bit in terms of how we’re going to play, how we’re going to defend, how we’re going to compete.”

Clearly, Donahue is still finding out what he has on his roster. He’s begun to switch up the starting lineup after going with the same starting five over the first seven games, taking out freshman point guard Jake Silpe in favor of sophomore forward Dan Dwyer in game eight against George Mason before putting in sophomore point guard Darnell Foreman in place of Dwyer against Temple.

Silpe, who came in very highly regarded out of Cherry Hill East, hasn’t quite settled in yet, averaging 3.6 ppg while shooting just 25 percent overall and 11.1 percent (2-of-18) from 3-point range. So against Temple, it was fellow freshman Jackson Donahue who got big minutes late, hitting four 3-pointers in the second half to keep the Quakers in the ballgame. Dwyer, who saw 10 minutes over the team’s first six games, suddenly played 27 against Navy and 24 against George Mason before seeing just two minutes against Temple.

Next week, it could just as easily be reversed. Only four players--Darien Nelson-Henry, Sam Jones, Antonio Woods and Matt Howard--are scoring in double figures, and have consistent roles locked up for the remainder of the year. For everybody else, it’s up for grabs.

“I don’t think we’re a program right now that can say there’s your starters, here’s your reserves,” Donahue said. “I tell these guys, every day in practice matters. So Jackson Donahue deserves a shot because he played really well over the last two weeks in practice. Danny Dwyer beat out Mike Auger. Until we start to figure that out, then we’ll have this kind of rotation.”

When the Quakers do get back onto the court for a meaningful game, it will be against a Division III opponent, Ursinus; Donahue’s alma mater is playing in the Palestra for the first time since 1928, but that shouldn’t make much of a difference. Three days later, they travel up 33rd St. to Drexel’s Daskalakis Athletic Center.

At some point late next week, Donahue and his staff will turn their attention to the Bears and then the Dragons, and begin figuring out what his lineups and rotation will look like for those contests.

But until then, it’s time to learn.

“These 10 days are walk into practice, here’s what we drill and here’s how we play Penn basketball,” Donahue said. “So you don’t have to worry about how’s this team we’re playing guard the ball screens, there’s none of these. It’s just, we get better, and that’s what I love the 10 days for.”