Prior to Tuesday's game, Zack Rosen receives a commemorative basketbal from head coach Jerome Allen for becoming Penn's all-time assists leader. Allen previously held the record. (Penn Athletics)
Before the 2011-12 basketball season began, many people liked to say that senior Zack Rosen could go down as one of the best Penn basketball players never to win an Ivy League championship.
That is certainly true. But the real truth is that statement doesn’t need any kind of qualifier.
Championship or no championship, Rosen will go down as one of the best Penn basketball players ever. Period.
And he has a big fan in another one of the great guards in Penn history: athletic director Steve Bilsky W’71.
“He’s such a wonderful player who’s made himself good by an incredible amount of work,” Bilsky told the Gazette shortly before Penn lost to La Salle in Tuesday’s Big 5 matchup. “You’d like to see him get rewarded from a team standpoint [with a championship]. Certainly he’s getting rewarded as an individual.”
Before Tuesday’s game at the Palestra, Rosen got one of those individual honors as he was presented with a commemorative ball for setting the program’s record for career assists, which was previously held by Penn head coach Jerome Allen, who had 505 in his career.
Barring something unforeseen, Rosen will also soon pass Allen on the all-time scoring list. Allen finished his tenure at Penn (from 1992-95) with 1,488 points and Rosen already has 1,420, with 15 games still to play.
In fact, if Rosen stays on his current scoring pace, he’ll end up third on the all-time scoring list, behind only Ernie Beck (1951-53) and Ugonna Onyekwe (2000-2003), who finished with 1,827 and 1,762 points, respectively. (Beck’s feat is even more remarkable when you consider freshmen weren’t eligible to play on the varsity team back then.)
And Rosen will also rank very high in other categories, including three-pointers made, three-point field goal percentage, free throws made, free-throw percentage and minutes played.
“Honestly, I think he’s had a career that I don’t think many people envisioned prior to him coming here,” Allen said. “He’s been great for us. Obviously with a place with such great history and great tradition, and all the great players who have played here – for him to stand at the top of the list says a lot about him and his dedication.”
Rosen has gotten plenty of accolades throughout his college career but is really starting to get a lot more attention on the national stage this year. The senior point guard currently ranks third in Division I in free-throw percentage (92.4) and is also among the nation’s leaders in three-point percentage, assists per game and scoring.
Recently, Rosen was selected as one of 20 semifinalists for the Bob Cousy Award (given to the nation’s best college point guard), and at least one former college hoops analyst is projecting the Penn guard as a future first-round pick in the NBA Draft.
“I’ll use one word to describe him – magical,” said teammate and friend Rob Belcore. “What do you want me to say about the guy that hasn’t already been said? I was looking over the Bob Cousy Award candidates with him and I was like, ‘You should just call this the Zack Rosen contest or something.’ Zack’s doing stuff that hasn’t been done here at Penn before. How else can you describe someone going around and breaking records everyday? There are no words to describe it.”
So statistically, Rosen is in a class by himself. Leadership-wise, the three-year captain is perhaps as vocal as anyone who’s played at the Palestra before him. And those that know him best say his work ethic and desire is off the charts.
So does that make him the best guard ever to play at Penn?
Well, here’s where the whole thing about championships comes back into play because just look at what some of Penn’s great guards of the past were able to accomplish.
Beck led the Quakers to their first NCAA tournament (1953) and Jeff Neuman led them to their first Ivy League title (1966). Dave Wohl and Bilsky teamed up in the backcourt during the Quakers’ incredible perfect regular season (1971) and Tony Price took them to the Final Four eight years later. Allen and Matt Maloney were the guards when Penn won 42 straight Ivy League games (and the program’s last NCAA win) over three seasons (1993-95) and then Michael Jordan and Matt Langel came around and captured back-to-back titles (1999-2000). And most recently, Tim Begley and Ibby Jaaber won three Ivy championships apiece.
“Penn has a history of guards leading their team to championships,” Bilsky said. “So I think if Zack can do that, he’ll be right up there – because that’s really how you measure any player but particularly a guard. He still has a lot of important play left.”
But where will Rosen rank if Penn slips up when Ivy play begins this Friday and he ends up departing without a ring?
It will be an unfortunate thing for a player that’s done so much for the program, sure. But it won’t be because of anything he’s done wrong and it certainly shouldn’t diminish his legacy.
Zack Rosen is one of the best basketball players ever to wear a Penn uniform – and that’s where the discussion should end.
