PHILADELPHIA — Brilliant performances from Penn’s two best upperclassmen helped the Quakers finally put an end to their four-game losing skid.
Junior wing Ethan Roberts dropped a 23-point, 10-rebound double-double, while senior big man Nick Spinoso seriously flirted with a triple double in a 77-64 win over Maine at the Cathedral Classic Invitational round robin on Saturday.
For the Quakers (3-4), the win over the Black Bears (4-4) was their first victory over a credible Division I opponent all season. Penn’s offense looked crisp for long stretches on Saturday, a welcome change from the early-season clunkiness that has been all too common.
Penn never trailed after the 14:14 mark of the first half but got pushed into a tie at multiple points in the second half. The Quakers drove in the dagger with a 10-0 run that pushed their lead from one point to 11 around the final media timeout of the game. An open Dylan Williams corner three off a swing pass from Roberts pushed Penn’s lead to 68-57 with 3:37 to go and effectively ended the contest.
For the first time in a few weeks, it’s all happy Quakeaways, such as how …
The Quakers’ defense put up its best performance of the season.
By all objective measures, Penn still has a lot of work to do on the defensive end of the floor. Out of 364 Division I teams, the Quakers rank 354th defensively in KenPom and 360th in BartTorvik with preseason priors removed.
On Saturday, they did a decent job tightening up their biggest weakness: allowing opponents to jack up open threes with impunity. Playing almost the whole afternoon in a 2-3 zone defense, Penn limited Maine to just 14 three-point attempts after allowing Navy to launch 32 threes in Friday’s loss.
The Black Bears did hit six of those 14 attempts, but teams can live with a high opponent shooting percentage if it’s on low volume.
What Penn did really well on Saturday was dominate the glass. The Quakers grabbed 39 boards and finished with a +18 rebound margin. Overall, Penn held Maine to 0.98 points per possession, per KenPom.
Saturday wasn’t an instant solution to Penn’s defensive woes. But it was a good start.
Penn’s offense was successful, though perhaps not how originally envisioned.
The Quakers put up 1.18 points per possession on Saturday, their second-best performance of the season from an efficiency standpoint.
Penn succeeded offensively despite another relatively rough evening shooting from deep: the Quakers shot 6-for-18 from three-point range.
What made up for that performance was a relentless showing on the offensive glass and smart cuts. The Quakers grabbed 43.3% of all available offensive rebounds and shot nearly 52.8% from two-point range.
Though sophomore Sam Brown had another tough outside shooting day (0-for-4 from deep), he looked better as a slasher and finisher than he has all season. Brown repeatedly drew contact and wound up making 13 free throws on 14 attempts.
One particularly pretty play came when Brown dove to the basket across Spinoso’s field of vision while the senior big man held the ball at the elbow. Spinoso hit Brown with a slick behind-the-back pass for what would have been an easy layup. Brown was fouled and converted both free throws at the line.
Brown finished with 19 points, while Spinoso put up 14 points, nine rebounds and eight assists.
There is a resiliency about this team, even if things have been rough in the early going.
This isn’t the time or place to discuss Steve Donahue’s overall performance as Penn’s head coach, but one point undoubtedly in his favor is that he has consistently recruited young men who play hard for one another and support each other.
There’s no sugarcoating it: Penn has been through a lot the past few weeks. That’s why it was so nice to see how fired up the bench and coaching staff got with every big play the team made down the stretch on Saturday.
It was also nice to see senior Eddie Holland III at the Palestra on Saturday cheering on his old teammates. Holland left the team prior to the start of the season to focus on his academics and has committed to play at Howard as a grad student next season.
Ideally, Penn can use Saturday’s win as a moment to build on with Ivy play approaching.
This was an encouraging performance in a number of ways. Even though yet another opponent shot >40 percent from 3 against them, they limited Maine to just 14 attempts from range, compared to 18 from the Quakers. Mazzulla Ball principles are in full force.
Shot quality is obviously important, and it’s a large reason why teams are shooting NCAA-leading percentages against the Quakers. But if they can just limit some of the 3-point attempts they’ve surrendered, I think they’ll improve defensively, especially since (sorry to Bucks-post) the opposing 3-point percentages have been unsustainable.