Penn picked up a potentially season-changing win on Saturday night.
By downing Cornell at the Palestra, 92-86, the Quakers (13-11, 5-4 Ivy) are now tied for third in the league and control their own destiny for an Ivy Madness berth. The win over the Big Red (15-7, 5-4) was also Penn’s first against a team considered a serious contender for the Ivy title.
The Quakers beat Cornell at its own game: a shootout. Penn hit 11 threes on 23 attempts, none bigger than the one sophomore guard George Smith hit off a feed from Lucas Monroe with 11:10 remaining to tie the game at 62.
After a few empty possessions for both teams, junior guard Clark Slajchert hit two free throws after he was fouled while shooting a three with 10:41 to play, which put the Quakers ahead for good.
Penn is now multiple games over .500 for the first time since the 2019-20 season. There will be plenty for the team’s fans to chew on before a Feb. 11 contest at Harvard, such as the fact that …
1. Penn played far from its best and still won.
The Quakers committed many of the same mistakes which caused them to get run out of the gym the first time they played Cornell a month ago.
They repeatedly left Cornell’s secondary shooters wide open and allowed the Big Red to put up 42 attempts from distance. They gave up 13 offensive rebounds, which helped generate many of those open looks.
Penn also committed 14 turnovers, many of which seemed like the product of the team rushing to get into sets after it burned a lot of shot clock breaking Cornell’s press. The Red and Blue also missed 13 free throws, which helped the Big Red put together one of their trademark runs, a 17-1 spurt in the first half.
Despite all that, the Quakers managed to hang tough, in part because …
2. Clark Slajchert had his best game in a month.
Though Slajchert is surely frustrated that he missed three free throws — those misses lowered his season average against Division I opponents below 90% —, he posted his first game above the KenPom breakeven offensive efficiency mark of 100 points per 100 possessions since Penn’s January 2 Ivy opener against Brown.
But he can take heart in getting to the line at all. Slajchert hit two treys on three attempts and was fouled while shooting three-pointers twice, an apt imitation of James Harden.
Slajchert put up a final offensive efficiency number of 106 points per 100 possessions. It’s not quite the level he was performing at earlier in the season, but it was enough to get Penn over the line.
3. The ceiling for Penn’s offense looks extremely high.
Though turnovers generated by the press were an issue throughout Saturday, Penn’s offense on the whole provided plenty of great moments. Junior Jordan Dingle had another great night in his campaign for Ivy Player of the Year honors: 27 points on 17 shots, plus seven rebounds.
Senior forward Lucas Monroe, who had a sneaky-good game on Friday, was Penn’s most efficient player, with a KenPom offensive rating of 157 points per 100 possessions. Monroe scored 12 points on eight shots thanks to his rebounding skills, which created plenty of tip-in opportunities. The senior finished with 13 total boards, six of which came on the offensive glass.
In fact, every Penn player save for junior forward Max Martz finished above the KenPom efficiency breakeven barrier. Martz, whose efficiency has been highlighted on this site before, came up on the wrong side of three-point shooting variance on Friday and missed five decent looks.
Cornell tried repeatedly to double Dingle outside the arc and to double Martz and sophomore forward Nick Spinoso on post touches. But Penn found a way through.