Penn started its three-day homestand for the Cathedral Classic off right Friday with a convincing 77-65 win over Merrimack — even if it didn’t play out the way Quakers fans might have expected.
The Quakers’ (4-2) offense looked stagnant and disjointed for long stretches, clearly disrupted by the Warriors’ (2-5) aggressive 2-3 zone. Instead of folding, though, the Quakers found another way to win.
Instead of relying on finesse and outside shooting, Penn won by exploiting a size mismatch and physically overpowering Merrimack. The Warriors are one of the shortest teams in Division I, with no rotation player standing taller than 6-foot-8.
The Quakers responded by scoring 50 points in the paint and a plud-14 rebound margin. They took control of the game with a 10-0 run late in the first which flipped a 30-25 deficit into a 35-30 edge; an inside finish from forward TJ Power off a slick feed from fellow big Augustus Gerhart gave Penn the lead for good.
What could Quakers fans take away from a successful afternoon?
For the first time in a long time, Penn can credibly say it has an athletic advantage over its opponents.
One of the biggest contributing factors to the Quakers’ tailspin last season was its lack of sheer strength. Penn was a bottom-100 team in offensive rebounding, per KenPom, and was the third-worst team in the country at rim protection, with a 4.7% defensive block rate.
The influx of transfers and freshmen new coach Fran McCaffery has brought in have gone a long way towards resolving those issues.
Sophomore wing Lucas Lueth, a transfer from Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had his best game in a Penn uniform on Friday. Lueth’s offensive game is a work in progress, but he is beginning to use his wingspan and bounciness to his advantage. Lueth finished with a career-high nine points, which included a two-handed hammer dunk he created through a nice dive into the lane.
Power recorded his second double-double of the season, finishing with 14 points and 12 rebounds. He added six assists through a string of big-to-big passes, which was the most aesthetically pleasing way Penn generated offense on Friday.
As those two mature over the course of the season, they’ll become stat-sheet stuffers.
Dalton Scantlebury was dominant.
The Chicagoland big man had one of the best games you’ll ever see out of an Ivy freshman, putting up 22 points on perfect 10-for-10 shooting from the field. He added 13 rebounds and three blocked shots, to boot.
Scantlebury gathered eight of the Quakers’ 13 offensive rebounds, a testament to his basketball IQ, floor positioning and ability to fight through box-outs.
The only blemish on Scantlebury’s afternoon was a 2-for-8 showing from the free throw line. He’ll likely have plenty of opportunities to improve his free throw shooting in the future, as Scantlebury now ranks inside the top 80 in fouls drawn per 40 minutes (7.0), according to KenPom.
Coaching delivered Penn to victory.
The Quakers put up a lot of bad tape on Friday despite the double-digit win. They struggled mightily to get the ball into the middle of the Merrimack zone; sloppy post entry passes generated multiple live ball turnovers.
Penn also struggled to generate open three-point looks thanks to the Warriors’ aggressive denials. The Red and Blue wound up shooting just 3-for-12 from deep.
Worse coaches would have kept trying to hammer away at the zone. McCaffery and his assistants, to their credit, recognized that strategy wouldn’t work and reshuffled the lineup to play bully-ball. Starting guards AJ Levine and Michael Zanoni wound up playing just 11 and 16 minutes, respectively.
If the Quakers want to win three games in three days this weekend, they’ll need to get creative. The coaching staff showed on Friday it was perfectly capable of doing so.
Dalton Scantleberry is such a wild name. How does one even shorten it for a nickname? Scant? Big Berry? Dalt?