PHILADELPHIA — Penn men’s basketball stormed out of the gates of conference play on Saturday, using strong shooting across the board to pick up an easy win over Dartmouth, 80-51.
The Quakers (9-7, 1-0 Ivy), never trailed against the Big Green (4-10, 0-1) at the Palestra. A flurry of threes from freshmen Tyler Perkins and Niklas Polonowski pushed Penn out to a 23-9 lead, and the Red and Blue never looked back from there.
Playing without the services of leading scorer Clark Slajchert — who is still wearing a walking boot on his left foot after hurting his ankle against Houston last Saturday, Penn merely shot 50.9% from the field and hit 14 threes on 56% shooting from beyond the arc.
Not bad, huh?
The Quakers got contributions up and down the roster on Saturday, which leads nicely into how …
Reese McMullen had the best game of his career.
McMullen, a junior guard, has made only sporadic appearances in Penn’s rotation throughout his career. The 24 minutes McMullen played on Saturday were a career high.
Penn needs to have its depth players step up in Slajchert’s absence, and McMullen answered the call big-time. He scored 10 points, which marked the first double-figure scoring effort of his career. In fact, McMullen’s KenPom offensive rating of 172 points per 100 possessions was a team high.
McMullen may not be the most athletic player on Earth, but he makes up for it with effort and high basketball IQ plays. Watching McMullen live, it looked from the eye test like he caused a handful of Dartmouth turnovers.
It will be interesting to see if McMullen can seize more minutes as Ivy play wears on.
Penn had its best defensive game of the season.
Granted, Dartmouth has a terrible offense (the Big Green rank 356th out of 362 Division I teams in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom).
But the Red and Blue looked impressive as they held Dartmouth to 0.78 points per possession, according to KenPom. That’s the best defensive efficiency number Penn has recorded against a Division I opponent all season.
There were a few lapses where Penn left Dartmouth shooters open for corner threes, but by and large, the Quakers rebounded well and closed out well on shooters.
Far bigger tests loom ahead — including Cornell, next Monday’s opponent. But for now, the Quakers can pat themselves on the back.
It’s never too early to scoreboard-watch.
Saturday afternoon’s counterprogramming — Princeton’s demolition of Harvard — may prove to help the Quakers in the long run, loath as fans may be to cheer for the hated Tigers.
If Penn wants to secure a spot in Ivy Madness, then its closest direct competitors — Harvard, Columbia and Brown — need to take as many losses as possible from teams like Yale and Princeton that are locks to make it to New York City.
The dream scenario would be for Penn to enter its game against Harvard on January 20th with a chance to bury Harvard in an 0-3 hole and a head-to-head tiebreaker disadvantage.
A truly ideal start to Ivy play and life w/o Clark. To get to Levien in March, just need to take care of business against lesser teams while waiting for the return of Mr. Slajchert.