Penn’s flickering postseason aspirations were officially snuffed out on Saturday night after the Quakers endured another heartbreaking loss, this time in overtime to Harvard at the Palestra, 79-78.
The Quakers (7-17, 3-8 Ivy) managed to lose despite having free-throw shooters heading to the line with a three-point lead twice in the final 11 seconds of regulation. But both junior wing Ethan Roberts and senior wing George Smith missed their one-and-one front ends.
Harvard (10-14, 5-6) forced overtime after Penn guard Sam Brown deflected a Crimson home run pass into the arms of senior guard Evan Nelson, who drained a contested three over Brown’s outstretched arms with a second to play.
The Crimson took the lead for good when freshman Robert Hinton converted two free throws with 26 seconds to play in overtime. Penn missed three game-winning shot attempts in the final 12 seconds of OT, with senior big man Nick Spinoso missing a desperation hook shot off the front rim just before the buzzer sounded.
Here’s what we learned from another devastating defeat:
These losses all follow a familiar script.
Just like in Penn’s earlier losses to Brown at home, at Yale and against Princeton at home, the Red and Blue came out disorganized and sloppy against Harvard, mounted a furious comeback to take a late lead, then fell apart in crunch time.
Penn spotted the Crimson leads of 16-2 and 21-4, forcing coach Steve Donahue to burn two timeouts through the game’s first two media timeouts. The Quakers probably could have used that second timeout down the stretch.
The Quakers also started out shooting 1-for-10 from deep and finished the evening 3-for-14 from three-point range. Poor distance shooting has also been a core component of Penn’s season-long struggles.
The biggest single factor which influences the result of close games is luck. There’s no coaching fix or teachable skill which can affect where a deflected home run pass lands. But it’s mystifying how these kinds of losses happen again and again.
The seniors went down fighting.
Playing on the Palestra floor for the final time, both Nick Spinoso and George Smith delivered performances worth remembering.
Spinoso put up a career-high 24 points on 17 shots and finished with a KenPom offensive rating of 124 points per 100 possessions. Smith scored eight on five shots and recorded a KenPom offensive rating of 118 points per 100 possessions.
There were several moments in which the two showed the great rapport they have built with one another, most notably a tic-tac-toe passing sequence from Brown to Smith to Spinoso which led to an and-one layup which closed the Harvard lead to three points.
It’s hard to see how Penn will easily replace either senior’s production next year.
Augie Gerhart had a solid night.
Gerhart had a productive evening as Penn’s primary backup big. He tied a season high with a KenPom offensive rating of 168 points per 100 possessions and scored 12 points on five shots, his first double-figure scoring effort of the season.
Penn color commentator Vince Curran made a solid point on Saturday’s broadcast that Gerhart and Spinoso have very similar skill sets, which makes it hard to play the two together.
Assuming the roster doesn’t totally turn over in the offseason, Gerhart will probably get the first crack as the starting “five” next season.