Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 85-53 loss at George Mason

Penn hasn’t won consecutive games since its 2-0 start to the season in early November. The Quakers will have to wait a little longer to put together a winning streak after familiar problems torpedoed a solid early effort against host George Mason in what ultimately wound up as an 85-53 loss.

For about 15 minutes of game action, Penn (4-8) saw its efficient outside shooting carry over from Friday’s win over Rider. The Quakers started out 6-for-10 from deep and were all level at 23 with the Atlantic 10-contender Patriots with 6:49 left in the first half after senior guard George Smith drained an open transition three from the right wing.

It wound up being Penn’s high-water mark. Penn squandered three chances to take the lead — including a tough-luck moment when junior wing Ethan Roberts just barely missed an open reverse layup following a backdoor cut — before George Mason (8-4) restored order with an extended 12-2 run to end the first half that surely delighted this writer’s father-in-law, a Mason alum.

The Patriots are one of the better defensive teams in the country, and they lived up to that reputation when they held Penn to a paltry 32.2% field goal percentage for the afternoon.

How did it happen? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but …

The Quakers have few options to create open looks at the rim.

Penn’s hot outside shooting in the first half masked an ugly 2-for-13 performance from two-point range in the opening frame. The Quakers wound up shooting 9-for-27 from inside for the game.

Senior forward Nick Spinoso got an interior bucket on his first touch of the game but found it tough sledding otherwise as he battled with George Mason big men Jalen Haynes and Giovanni Emejuru. He wound up fouling out midway through the second half.

The only ways Penn has been consistently able to create good looks inside all season have been from Spinoso post touches, Roberts slashes and backdoor cuts with Spinoso operating as a distributor.

All of those were in relatively short supply on Sunday against a George Mason team that is more athletic than the average Ivy opponent.

Penn will need to find some other way to generate interior looks once Ivy play gets going. The offense struggled severely when Spinoso was off the floor.

Penn has to find a way to get Sam Brown right.

I hate belaboring this point again because I view Brown as an immensely talented and critical piece of Penn’s future, and I do not want to come off as dumping on someone who is clearly trying his best.

But we are nearing the point in the season where coach Steve Donahue may need to think about giving Brown a mental break, similar to when he removed the guard from the starting lineup in February of last season.

Brown responded to that moment with a career-best 26-point performance off the bench against Dartmouth. Right now, though, the sophomore is a long way from showing anything like that.

On Sunday, Brown hit a nice-looking deep three-pointer from the wing in the first half, but otherwise came up empty offensively. He finished with a KenPom offensive rating of 58 points per 100 possessions and has now finished with an offensive rating below the breakeven mark of 100 points per 100 possessions in seven of his last eight contests.

I don’t have a good answer for why a shooter with the reputation Brown has is struggling so much. But the coaching staff needs to find one, or it will be a long Ivy season.

This season is reaching historic lows.

As of Sunday afternoon, the Quakers sat 311th in KenPom. With the caveat that KenPom only has game-by-game ratings going back to the 2010-11 season, that is the lowest Penn has ranked since KenPom’s founding in 1996-97.

If things don’t turn around, a last-place finish in the Ivy League is absolutely on the table. Dartmouth looks far more formidable now after notching a blowout win over perennial America East champion Vermont over the weekend.

The Red and Blue can’t defend the three — their 40% opposing three-point shooting percentage is 360th out of 364 Division I teams — and they can’t shoot the three well, either. The Quakers are shooting 29.3% from deep against Division 1 opponents, 318th in the country.

That gap stands to generate ugly losses against analytically sound teams like Princeton and Cornell.

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