Cagers Fall at Penn, 73-63, For First Ivy Defeat of Year

Co-captain Mark Harris called it a "learning experience." Freshman forward Joe Carrabino took one look at the Crimson's 19-31 foul shooting, sadly shaking his head, "Look at the free throws, free throws, free throws, what a joke..."

At UPenn last night the Crimson never quite got moving, and fell to a very deep Penn squad, 73-63, at the Palestra in Philadelphia.

The loss decisively snaps the Crimson's 8-game win streak, the longest such skein since the miracle year of 45-46 when the Crimson ran 13 in a row and enroute to a 20-3 season.

The Crimson are now 12-5 overall and tied with Penn for second in the Ivies at 5-1. Tomorrow night, the squad seeks to get back into the league race when it faces first-place Princeton at Jadwin Gym.

The Quakers took control of the game early and never let up except for a brief stretch at the end of the first half. After the Crimson controlled the opening tap--Tom Mannix scored the first two points of the contest with a 20-ft. jumper--Penn ran off a string of 8 straight points. Fouling a Don Fleming jumper, which pulled the Crimson to within 4, Harvard never got as close as 6 points again.

Crimson coach Frank McLaughlin analyzed the game in his characteristically cogent style. "From the start we never really got into the game. We never executed. They controlled the tempo...We called two times-outs early...but we were never there mentally...."

Penn coach Bob Weinhauer, a strict and ill-humored taskmaster on the bench but affable and engaging in person--offered similar insights, "I'm very happy with the way our kids came out of the box and jumped all over them. That decided the game right there."

The Crimson made a run on the Quakers in the last few minutes of the first stanza and closed the gap from 35-22 to 37-30 with just 4 seconds left in the half.

Penn captain Ken Hall took care of the apparent shift in momentum, though, by taking the inbound pass and driving the length of the floor to sink a down-the-middle lay-up at buzzer. "That hurt," Mannix said wistfully after the game. "If he hadn't hit that and we had hit the first half of the second half we would have been down by 5."

The second half opened with a Penn basket--a 15 ft. Paul Little jumper--and the Quakers eventually increased the lead to a game-high 17 with 5:37 left to go. A quintet of Crimson reserve men outplayed the Penn irregulars, closing the gap to the final ten-point margin.

The Penn defense and the crowd--which, at 4158, Weinhaur called the largest crowd he has ever seen at a Penn home game--proved decisive. "We couldn't make the passes that we had been making (in previous games)," Mannix said of the Penn defense. They're very quick, and they were over-playing the passing lanes."

No Second Visit

Jr. forward George White, who has been playing very well lately, and saw action in the second half, said of the crowd: "We weren't used to the hostile crowd and it rattled us in the beginning," adding, "And we never got started."

Crimson forward Donald Fleming led all scorers with 19 points.