CONFIDENT PENNEY LENDS A (HOT) HAND
Wisconsin State Journal
Madison, Wis.
Nov 26, 2000;
They wouldn't have been necessary had the University of Wisconsin men's
basketball team maintained its intensity, but the Badgers made several key
plays in the closing minutes to hold off Northern Illinois in their home opener
Saturday.
However, the biggest play in UW's 68-64 victory over the Huskies happened
long before the unexpected photo finish.
It came 3 minutes into the game, when UW's Kirk Penney found himself open in
the left corner, cocked his right wrist and drained a 3-point bomb.
The shot was pure, hitting only net, but it wouldn't have mattered to Penney
if it had rattled around the rim, kissed off the backboard and dribbled through
the hoop.
After going 0-for-Tennessee on Tuesday, Penney's first basket of the season
was so welcome the normally reserved sophomore guard briefly stepped out of
character.
"I don't know if you saw my reaction," he said, "but I gave a
little fist-pump there. I was happy. If it had missed, I'm sure I would have
been OK. But it was good just to make that first one and get the ball
rolling."
Get the ball rolling, indeed. Penney sank six of his nine shots and scored
15 points against Northern Illinois. He was 3-for-4 from 3- point land, an
indication that his 0-for-16 shooter's nightmare in UW's season-opening loss at
Tennessee was the exception rather than the rule.
With support from his coaches and teammates, Penney was able to put his
personal shutout behind him quickly. Saturday, he again looked like the
confident New Zealand Olympian who led the Badgers in scoring in the two
exhibition games with a 15.5 average.
"The couple days after Tennessee I just tried to get rid of it,"
Penney said. "It's a long season and I got it out of my head. At the time,
after the game, I was pretty disappointed with myself. But it's gone. It's
away."
That's good, because Penney might be UW's most important player this season.
Graduation claimed outside shooters Jon Bryant and Duany Duany from last year's
NCAA Final Four team and Penney looks like the only player on the roster
capable of filling the void.
Saturday, Penney filled that void. He took the same shots he took against
Tennessee, only this time they went in.
"Obviously, he was down on himself," said senior guard Mike
Kelley, who was also 3-for-4 from 3-point range Saturday. "But he's a guy
who knows his role and his role is to continue to shoot. We were confident he
was going to do that. I think maybe our confidence helped him and he's got a
lot of confidence himself. He went out there and he took the shots and he made
them."
UW coach Dick Bennett doesn't worry about Penney's shooting as much as he
does Penney's defense. However, it is a sign of Penney's importance as a scorer
that his occasional defensive lapses didn't land him on the bench against
Northern Illinois.
Unlike last year, Bennett doesn't have a lot of options when it comes to
shooters. That is particularly true as UW tries to weather the eight-game, Shoe
Box-related suspensions for Maurice Linton and Travon Davis.
Kelley's first priority is defense, starting guard Roy Boone isn't a pure
shooter, junior-college transfer Ricky Bower is still overmatched by the
major-college game and freshman Freddie Owens hasn't yet perfected his shot
inside 60 feet. If Penney isn't hitting, the Badgers are in trouble.
"We need Kirk on the floor because he's our only real shooter,"
Bennett said. "We're pretty fragile. We have to have him on the floor. As
hard as we played down in Tennessee and as well as we played against their big
lineup, if Kirk has any kind of game down there, we're going to win that one.
Today, he did shoot the ball and probably was a factor in our being able to win
this one."
That's the good news. The better news is that Penney never flinched. A good
shooter needs a bad memory, and Penney showed Saturday that his stroke is fine,
and so is his ability to cope with inexplicable nights like the one he suffered
through at Tennessee.
"You saw how it goes against Tennessee when we're not hitting the
outside shots," Kelley said. "Today, I think Kirk's outside shooting
certainly helped us maintain a lead and take it. (A big reason) we ended up
winning this game is because he had a hot hand."
Now, UW needs it to stay hot.
