Franklin & Marshall's defense — which was of hound-the-dribbler, clog-the-passing-lanes, bump-the-cutter, get-a-hand-up-on-the-shooter quality — looked familiar. And with good reason.

The Dips have seen what it's supposed to look like, having watched video of some of F&M's better teams from the past. (And presumably there was some available on DVD, as opposed to VHS. It hasn't been that long since F&M was good.)

Now the current players are trying to do a reasonable impersonation.

They managed to do that in the first half of Saturday afternoon's 84-76 Centennial Conference victory over Muhlenberg in Mayser Gym, building a 16-point lead and then fending off the Mules during a second half that devolved into shirts-and-skins quality.

So it is that the Dips are 2-0 in the conference, 6-0 overall, records that also used to be commonplace. But this is a team coming off a 12-13 season, which followed an 8-17 season, which followed a 13-12 season.

"We want to get back to the level they were at," said Clay Scovill, the junior guard/forward from Manheim Township. "We feel we have something going here. We take it one day at a time. That makes us dangerous. We're not cocky, because we have to go out every day and prove we're back."

One stop at a time, too.

Scovill, who paced the Dips with 17 points Saturday, moved from York to Township when he was a sophomore in high school. He attended "a decent amount" of F&M games, he recalled.

"I didn't grow up here," he said, "but I knew about the tradition."

Now his teammates — most of whom are younger and from even farther afield — are getting up to speed.

"We've looked at the history," said Anthony Brooks, a sophomore guard from Orlando. "We've seen the tape. We feel we're not as good as they were, but we're taking a step in that direction."

Especially at the defensive end.

"We've watched tape," Brooks said again, "and we all feel we can be that."

"We're definitely progressing," coach Glenn Robinson said. "We're capable of being a very, very good defensive team."

Robinson said he and his assistants trot out the old video "as often as we can, which ends up being not all that often. We like them to see how teams have been successful. This is a team of young players (aside from the single senior on the roster). There's nobody to demonstrate. There are so many ways to learn. The best way is by playing alongside somebody who knows. We don't have that luxury. We have to show them every other way we can."

Something seems to be sinking in, because the Dips limited the Mules (1-1, 3-2) to 36.7-percent shooting in building a 45-29 halftime lead. Unable to work the ball inside to their exceptional big man, Peter Barnes — he scored just eight of his 24 in the half — the visitors too often settled for contested 3-pointers, and wound up missing 10 of 12 from the arc before the break.

And while the Dips' leading scorer, center James McNally, sat out the half's last 15:08 after drawing his second foul, others stepped up — most notably sophomore guard Steve Tolliver, who came off the bench to notch all 12 of his points in the first 20 minutes. That included a four-point play, and two other triples; he went 3-for-4 from the arc, and is 11-for-18 from there to date.

McNally finished with 16 points, and freshman point guard Georgio Milligan fashioned a big-boy stat line of 15 points, nine assists and five steals, one that was diminished only slightly by his five turnovers.

Brooks, who described himself as "a good wingman for our star players," made one good decision after another in late-game press-break situations.

He accumulated many of his nine assists then, to go along with eight points and three steals.

Spencer Liddic finished with 19 points off the Muhlenberg bench.