Penn rebounded from Saturday’s loss to Kentucky with one of its cleanest and most efficient performances of the season. The Quakers scored 1.2 points per possession and hit 12 three-pointers in a 78-68 win over Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference favorite Howard at the Palestra.
Penn (7-5) took a series of early punches to the mouth from the Bison. Howard started the game on a 7-0 run and then added a 15-2 flurry midway through the first half to build a 28-17 lead.
Clark Slajchert almost singlehandedly flipped the game around for the Quakers. Slajchert scored all 20 of his points in a stretch that spanned the final eight-plus minutes of the first half and first two minutes of the second half.
The senior put Penn ahead for good with 1:34 to go in the first half when he drained an open three from the right wing through heavy contact from Howard guard Isaiah Warfield during his follow-through. Slajchert finished off the four-point play at the free throw line, then added another three 29 seconds later off a slick feed from freshman Sam Brown.
Penn fans have plenty of happy Quakeaways to hold onto as the team heads into a long layoff for finals, starting with how …
The Quakers handled extended pressure well.
It looked for a second early on like Penn’s game Monday would be a repeat of its sloppy first half against Maryland Eastern Shore, when the Red and Blue gave the ball away 12 times in the first half alone.
The Quakers’ second possession wound up as a live-ball turnover from freshman Tyler Perkins, which created a runout that ended in a Bison three-pointer.
But Penn eventually navigated Howard’s full-court run and jump press with ease. Perkins specifically made a nice escape out of one halfcourt trap.
The Quakers wound up generating a bunch of open looks from deep when they escaped the traps. It goes to show just how strong Penn’s current starting five of Perkins, Slajchert, Sam Brown, George Smith and Nick Spinoso is. At any given time, there are four players capable of shooting threes at a high percentage on the floor.
Double-team someone at your own risk.
Clark Slajchert looks bound for All-Ivy First Team honors.
When Jordan Dingle, the nation’s second-leading scorer, entered the transfer portal this offseason, it became apparent that Slajchert was going to need to become Penn’s alpha scorer.
In a column dashed off after Dingle revealed his intention to leave, this author wrote for Ivy Hoops Online: ‘It’s not fair to expect Slajchert to average 20 points a night, but could he average 15 to 18 points? That’s certainly possible.’
So far, Slajchert is exceeding that projected range. He’s averaging 19.2 points per game and is shooting 50.9% from the floor. He’s already taken and made more three-pointers than he did over the course of his entire 2021-22 sophomore season.
What’s even more surprising is that thus far, Slajchert is outperforming Dingle — now at St. John’s — in almost every meaningful offensive metric.
Per KenPom, Slajchert has an offensive rating of 115.2 points per 100 possessions, a 57.6% effective field-goal percentage (a stat that weighs three-pointers more heavily than two-pointers), an assist rate of 19.6% and a turnover rate of 17%.
Dingle has an offensive rating of 104.5 points per 100 possessions, a 51.1% effective field-goal percentage, an assist rate of 8.6% and a turnover rate of 20.1%.
Take those numbers with several grains of salt. Slajchert has a slightly higher usage rate, and Dingle has played against a harder slate of opponents.
What they do show, though, is that Penn has functioned offensively just fine without Dingle.
Howard is an easy team to cheer for.
The most memorable moment of Monday night’s game came after the final buzzer sounded. Former Penn guard Jelani Williams — now a graduate student at Howard — joined his former teammates in the singing of “The Red and Blue” before the fans.
Bittersweet day for me having a road game in the Cathedral. Wasn’t the result we wanted, but it was great to be home. Very blessed to lace em up at the Palestra one last time. Much love for the Red and Blue ❤️ https://t.co/nSPSSCuVlj
— Jelani Williams (@_JWill5_) December 12, 2023
Williams embodies so much of what Penn basketball is about. He battled through three ACL tears and a season canceled due to COVID to finally play on the Palestra floor in the 2021-22 season. He served as the team’s emotional leader that year, battling through a bad finger injury to return in time for the Ivy tournament.
When Williams was forced to transfer after that season due to Ivy League limitations on graduate students competing in athletics, he vowed on Instagram that he would play in the NCAA Tournament, then followed through on that promise when he hit the game-winning free throws to clinch Howard’s MEAC tournament title last season.
It was fantastic to see Williams play on the Palestra floor one last time. It was also fantastic to see his teammate, ex-Harvard star Seth Towns, playing again.
Towns suffered a career-altering severe knee injury during the 2018 Ivy tournament final against Penn at the Palestra. At the time, no one realized that the newly minted Ivy League Player of the Year would never suit up for the Crimson again.
You can still see the lasting effects of that injury in the form of a large brace that Towns wears. But you can also see that Towns’ shot is as good as ever.
It would be nice to see both players again come March.
My hope for Ivy play is that Clark can maintain this leap. He’s more consistent and his decision-making is that of an upperclassmen. He showed signs of this last nonconference season, but the Ivy play was messy. If the Quakers are getting to Levien in March, he’s going to be big, because as good as the freshmen are, they are going to have peaks and valleys.