Pick a Rosen highlight: There was the time Penn's senior point guard split two defenders, then split two more before arriving at the rim. There were a couple of the deep NBA three-pointers he specializes in. Late in the game, Rosen was up top and saw Quakers guard Steve Rennard open in a corner, feeding him for a three.
The special part was that Rosen gave it a no-look pass. It wasn't a showboat move. The non-look gave Rennard the split second he needed to get the shot off with a defender flying at him.
"You thought he played well?" Penn coach Jerome Allen asked of Rosen's 28-point tour de force, bringing up Rosen's two turnovers, the time he "over-penetrated" in the first half and got a pass tipped, a crosscourt pass he threw in the second that ended up in the stands.
We'll put "over-penetrated" in quotes because usually when Rosen keeps going past the point of no return, something interesting is about to happen, maybe a little crossover in traffic, then a bounce off a defender. A wiggle through an opening nobody else sees.
"Now it's to the point where I expect it," Allen admitted.
Allen felt it was his task to frame the stakes for his team. Allen had written a letter to "My Fellow Quakers" published Monday in the Daily Pennsylvanian, thanking the student body for its support, getting "college basketball's most storied arena rocking again." He also challenged students who have been showing up to bring three or four friends who haven't been showing up.
"I'm not big on looking for extra motivation," Allen said. "The reality is, you tend to give more when you know other people care. It's not necessarily about yourself.''
When you think Ivy League hoops, Penn-Princeton at the Palestra is as big as it gets. But Allen said he took the pregame talk in Penn's lockerroom in a different direction.
