PHILADELPHIA — There are losses, and then there are capital L “Losses” that are so embarrassing and so complete that they force you to reevaluate your priors about the team you cheer for.
The 86-69 beating Penn took at the hands of Saint Joseph’s on Friday night at the Palestra falls into the latter category.
The Quakers (2-2, 0-1 Big 5) were never seriously competitive against the Hawks (3-1, 2-0) in their sole nonconference home game against a premier opponent. The Hawks used a 14-2 run early in the first half to break a 9-9 game wide-open, then tacked on a 15-2 run midway to expand its lead to a high of 32 points.
As of early Saturday, Penn has fallen nearly 75 spots in KenPom’s rankings in less than two weeks of play, plunging from 186 to 260.
Red flags abounded on Friday, starting with how …
The Quakers were utterly physically overwhelmed.
Penn actually outshot the Hawks on the evening, putting up a respectable 47.4% field goal percentage to its opponents’ 46.4%.
What killed any chance the Quakers had of hanging around was the team’s inability to rebound against a Saint Joseph’s team that boasts three NBA prospects. The Hawks outrebounded Penn by a 43-26 margin and gathered more offensive rebounds (20) than the Red and Blue had on the defensive end (18).
You can fix mental mistakes and failures of execution with coaching, but you can’t coach up athleticism in the season. Penn committed 13 turnovers on the evening, a large portion of which could be chalked up to the Hawks’ athletic advantage stymying the Quakers’ offensive actions.
The best example came early in the first half when senior forward Nick Spinoso waited at the top of the arc for someone to come free or cut, but no one could get loose. It was obvious that a poke-away turnover was coming, and sure enough, the Hawks’ Derek Simpson snatched the ball and hammered it home for a breakaway dunk.
It’s hard to imagine at this moment how Penn can physically compete with the remaining top-100 teams on the non-conference schedule, including Villanova (more on that later).
The two-big offensive experiment may already be coming to an end.
A big surprise on Friday evening came when Penn released its starters and Spinoso wasn’t in the lineup, replaced by senior wing George Smith in favor of a smaller lineup around sophomore big Augie Gerhart.
Gerhart wound up playing just 12 minutes, while Spinoso put up an efficient 7-for-8 shooting performance in 19 minutes off the bench.
After the game, Penn coach Steve Donahue told CityofBasketballLove.com, “We’re trying to figure out what’s the best for us going forward — maybe some with two bigs, and maybe four guards at times.”
The biggest concern this writer has had with Penn’s start to the season is that the Quakers go through stretches without offensive cohesion. Some of that is to be expected with so many new pieces in the rotation, but it would not be a good sign if Penn abandoned the two-big approach Donahue talked up in the offseason after just four games.
Perhaps some help could come from freshman big Michelangelo Oberti, who got his first nine minutes of NCAA action on Friday. Oberti put up four points and had a nice moment in the second half when he fooled Saint Joseph’s big Justice Ajogbor to get an easy bucket for his first career field goal.
Misery loves company.
As terrible as Friday was, Penn was never going to be a serious contender for an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament. November and December for the Quakers are going to be about figuring out a rotation and plan of attack that works so that come Ivy play, these types of performances don’t reoccur.
The Quakers’ Tuesday night opponent, Villanova, does not have the luxury of time. The Wildcats entered the season with a ton of pressure to put up an at-large-caliber resumé early on to save coach Kyle Neptune’s job.
Villanova’s start thus far, which includes a lifeless offensive performance in a Friday loss to Virginia, may have already killed those hopes.
This was the type of worst-case scenario that IHO outlined in the offseason when Penn’s Tyler Perkins revealed that he would transfer to Villanova. Perkins currently occupies one of the most tenuous positions a player can have in the NIL era of college basketball: a reserve role on a non-NCAA Tournament power conference team.
Right now, the base-case scenario is that Villanova will muddle along, Neptune will be fired, and a new coach will look to clean house, forcing Perkins to either accept a limited role for a coach who didn’t recruit him or transfer to his third college in three years.
A Penn win at the Finneran Pavilion, unlikely as it may be, would make that outcome significantly more likely.
I don’t want to be delusional because a result like this is really ugly, but I don’t think there is a team in the Ivy League that can out-physical Penn in the same way that St. Joe’s did, so I’m not sure *how* much we learned on that front.
The start has been disappointing. Also, comrade Wenik, please stop citing KenPom rankings until December. They factor in the last several years of your program, which, while somewhat relevant for Penn and the Ivies, isn’t something for most teams these days and thus can be somewhat thrown out. Regardless of KenPom rn, we can tell that Penn has a bunch to work on.