After painful losses, the Ivy beat goes on

With painful losses to Harvard and Princeton behind them, the Penn Quakers move on for road games against Cornell on Friday and Columbia on Saturday.

"You can't overlook them thinking about Harvard and Princeton," said Penn swingman Tyler Bernardini. "You have to take every weekend for what it is. If we lose these games this weekend, it doesn't matter whether we won or lost those games."

Last weekend, Penn suffered a double-overtime loss to Harvard at home, and followed that with a defeat at Princeton on Tuesday that required an extra session.

Penn is in fourth place in the Ancient Eight with a 3-2 record. The Quakers trail first-place Princeton (5-0), Harvard (5-1), and Yale (4-2), which Penn downed at home Jan. 28. Columbia is 3-3 in the league, and three-time defending champion Cornell is 1-5 with a new cast.

Before Penn went down, 62-59, in overtime at Princeton, Quakers assistant Mike Martin drew up a tricky play that freed Bernardini for a game-tying three-pointer at the end of regulation.

With all of the action on one side of the court, Bernardini sneaked away to the opposite corner. A crosscourt pass from senior Zack Gordon was right on the money, and so was Bernardini's shot.

"It was perfect, and I did the easy part," said Bernardini, who knotted the score at 56 and made the extra period necessary. "They told me to get out of there. I set a down screen, and went over to the weak side. Everybody was worrying about the strong side and the ball. It was a great play design. I was just worried about getting my feet set and staying in bounds."

It happens to the best of them, and Penn freshman Fran Dougherty had his turn when he failed to convert a wide-open layup that would have tied the Princeton game with six seconds remaining in overtime.

The 6-foot-8 Dougherty, an Archbishop Wood grad, chipped in with seven points and seven rebounds to go with a block and a steal.

"I came right up to him after the game and told him it doesn't come down to that," guard Zack Rosen said. "I missed a layup. He just so happened to miss one at the end, so it's magnified. He played his butt off for us tonight."