If you're a Temple fan, you likely trudged home in a stunned silence, your spirits having fallen into the ground and beneath the tracks on the El and the Broad Street line.
If you're a Penn fan, the joy likely carried you home on the winter breeze, floating up Locust Walk and into the air from the top of the bridge over 38th Street.
What an astonishing night of basketball this was, Penn edging out Temple on three Mark Zoller free throws with 1.4 seconds remaining for a 76-74 victory. It was somehow fitting that Zoller would be the man to stand at the line, forced to deliver the win by himself with the entire arena's eyes squarely focused on him. For it is Zoller who has the deepest ties to the Big 5 of any Penn player, as a St. Joe's prep grad who grew up watching these games from the stands.
Before the game, and in its early minutes, the man with the most wins in Penn basketball history was showered with kindness. There were three standing ovations: when he walked out onto the floor before the game, when he was introduced during the starting lineups, and when a rollout was unfurled which read, "Thank you, Fran Dunphy: 17 years, 310 wins, 10 Ivy titles."
But from there, as Dunphy and Big 5 tradition demanded, it was all about basketball.
It was Zoller who said a few days ago that facing Fran Dunphy would be like "playing your father." So of course, it was Zoller who followed a path blazed by men ranging from Oedipus Rex to Luke Skywalker. No, he didn't literally kill Dunphy; he simply delivered another crushing Temple loss to go with five others this month.
For Penn, it was a character-building win unlike almost any other the current crop of players have experienced, rivaled only by the 18-point comeback to beat Princeton in 2005. It is well established at this point that under Dunphy, Penn lost a number of games in the final few minutes, and often in ways that defied probability, if not belief. This time, though, the tables were turned.
Above all, the 6,103 fans -- not to mention the media and the staffs of both schools -- were treated to a night that reminded all of us what the Big 5 is at its best. This was pulsating, emotional basketball played by two teams and coached by two coaches that knew each other inside and out. It thrust the City Series back into a local spotlight that often refuses to give college basketball the time of day, and gave everyone a night to remember for a long, long time.
