To win a key Ivy League game in February, Penn coach Jerome Allen turned to a play that's been on the board in his office since September.
It worked.
With 1.5 seconds left in overtime, Miles Cartwright looped an inbounds pass from the sideline to an open Fran Dougherty, who scored a layup in the lane to give Penn a 61-59 win over Columbia at the Palestra.
The victory kept Penn (15-11, 7-2 Ivy League) on a track to play for a first-place tie in league play next Saturday at Harvard.
Allen admitted that he "stole the play" from something he saw Butler run last season.
"I liked it," he said. "I didn't expect to use it tonight, but that's what happened."
It's doubtful that most of the 4,103 fans in attendance - as well as Columbia's bench - expected Cartwright and Dougherty to be the protagonists. But Zack Rosen, Penn's do-it-all star, never touched the ball.
Instead, Rosen set a back screen that freed up Dougherty to get to the basket.
Cartwright acknowledged that "everyone in the building knew [the ball] was going to Zack" off the inbounds pass. In part because of that, Columbia's defense collapsed toward Rosen and Cartwright as the ball was inbounded.
"I just threw it up there, and thank God the big fella finished it," Cartwright said.
Columbia (14-12, 3-7) took a 54-53 lead on a pair of Mark Cisco free throws with 31.6 seconds left, giving Penn the ball with the shot clock turned off.
Rosen was fouled driving through the lane with 2.2 seconds remaining. He missed the first free throw, but made the second, tying the score.
In overtime, Penn scored the first five points thanks in part to a pair of Columbia turnovers. With 4.2 seconds left and Penn ahead, 59-57, Brian Barbour tied the game at the free throw line.
Cartwright received the ensuing inbounds pass and raced across midcourt, and Jerome Allen called timeout to set up the game-winning play. A few seconds later, the postgame streamers were flying and Penn's flickering Ivy League title hopes remained alive.
"We're playing for a championship, and we're right there," Cartwright said. "We know every game isn't going to be pretty, but we have to do whatever we can to try to pull out a victory."
