The “bye week” didn’t do Penn much good.
Playing at home after a 10-day layoff, the Quakers saw their losing streak hit four games after an 86-78 loss to Navy in their opening game of the Cathedral Classic Invitational.
Penn (2-4) came all the way back from a 12-point deficit in the second half when Augie Gerhart finished off a nice high-low post pass from Sam Brown to give the Quakers a 51-50 lead with 9:04 to go.
It turned out to be Penn’s only lead of the night. The Midshipmen (3-4) responded with three straight three-pointers, capped off by a corner shot from Navy’s star, Austin Benigni.
Familiar problems for Penn reared their ugly heads again on Friday, starting with how …
Penn’s three-point defense was utterly wretched.
Navy entered Friday shooting 28.4% from deep against Division 1 opponents, according to KenPom, 304th in the country.
That figure didn’t matter one bit. The Quakers consistently failed to rotate to Navy’s shooters or contest their shots, leaving Midshipmen shooters wide open in the process. Navy wound up draining 15 threes on 32 attempts.
Poor three-point defense characterized Penn’s collapse in the defensive rankings in 2023-24, and it hasn’t gotten any better this year.
Unless and until the Quakers find some way to limit opposing outside shooting opportunities, they will be viewed as one of the worst defensive teams in the country, and deservedly so.
Outside shooting remained poor.
It’s not fair to judge a team’s three-point shooting ability based on one game, but Penn had a bad day at the office on Saturday.
The Red and Blue shot 7-for-29 from deep, their second consecutive game shooting 25% or worse from outside on at least 28 attempts.
Penn finished in or outside the top 100 nationally in three-point shooting percentage against Division I opponents the last two seasons. The Quakers entered Friday ranked 222nd, and that number will get worse once KenPom updates.
One reason for optimism about Penn’s offense, though, is that …
Ethan Roberts and Nick Spinoso were both fantastic.
Roberts poured in a career-high 33 points on Friday. Though he finished 2-for-8 from deep, it didn’t matter. The junior wing was pretty much unstoppable when he slashed to the basket, finishing 9-for-10 on shots from two-point range. Virtually all of those were at the rim.
For as much (justified) criticism has been levied at coach Steve Donahue’s recruiting, he picked up an absolute steal when he landed Roberts in the transfer portal.
Senior big man Nick Spinoso also had an excellent night, finishing with a 16-point, 13-rebound double-double. It was particularly nice to see Spinoso have a handful of excellent finishes at the rim with his non-dominant right hand.
There isn’t a lot to like right now about how Penn is playing, but the Quakers do have two upperclassmen performing at a high level.
If you’re gonna give up a lot of open 3s, you can at least limit the total attempts. Yet the Quakers are giving up more attempts in addition.
Coach Donahue obviously knows how important 3pt rate is, so this isn’t a prior era where we are playing a different sport. Maybe just a skill issue *gulp*
Haven’t seen this big a disaster against the US Navy since *is yanked from the comment section with a cane like in an old-timey cartoon*