PHILADELPHIA — The earliest chapters of Penn’s season are still being written, but it’s going to be pretty hard to top what the Quakers put on the page Saturday at the Palestra.
Led by a 29-point effort from junior forward TJ Power, Penn erased a 15-point deficit in the second half and withstood a frenetic final few seconds in a 73-71 triumph over Big 5 rival La Salle.
The Quakers (5-2, 3-0 Big 5) used a string of threes and fadeaway jumpers from Power to draw close to the Explorers (3-5, 0-3), then finally drew ahead for good after Power one-touched a pass on a runout to an open Ethan Roberts for a corner three with 3:56 to go.
La Salle got a decent look at a game-tying shot in the dying moments of the game, but freshman big Dalton Scantlebury contested a baseline jumper from the Explorers’ Josiah Harris and Power got in the mix on the glass to ensure La Salle had no chance at a buzzer-beating putback.
Penn is now a win over Hofstra away from a clean sweep of its own in-house multi-team event, the Cathedral Classic. Saturday’s win followed a somewhat similar script to the Quakers’ Friday triumph over Merrimack, mostly through how …
Coaching adjustments made a massive difference.
For about 30 minutes of game time, La Salle looked like it was going to cruise to victory because of the way it dominated the rebounding battle and paint.
The Explorers finished the evening with a plus-nine rebounding margin and grabbed 19 offensive boards; per KenPom, La Salle grabbed north of 46% of all available offensive rebounds.
Penn tightened things up defensively by throwing out a 1-3-1 zone. The new look devised by coach Fran McCaffery and his assistants seemed to confuse the Explorers and got the Quakers into better position to compete on the glass. Though there were a few moments where La Salle was able to get the ball into the middle of Penn’s zone and generate open threes, the Explorers shot just 6-for-23 from deep.
The other tweak which made a big difference was the coaching staff’s decision to insert little-used freshman Jay Jones at point guard midway through the second half. Jones hadn’t played since a five-minute garbage time appearance in the Nov. 11 loss to Providence, but it’s safe to say he’ll play a bigger part in the rotation after what he pulled off on Saturday.
In just 12 minutes of action, Jones logged a KenPom offensive rating of 174 points per 100 possessions. He scored seven points, including a banked-in three which gave the Quakers a four-point lead with a little more than 90 seconds to go.
Jones also corralled a loose ball and started a tic-tac-toe passing sequence on the runout which set up Roberts for his go-ahead three.
TJ Power deserved a long ice bath postgame.
It will be interesting to see how Power looks on Sunday against the Pride after he played all 40 minutes against the Explorers. He has played in 87.5% of the team’s minutes against Division I opponents, per KenPom, which ranks 38th nationally.
The Quakers, frankly, needed every single one of those minutes from Power. Roberts had a rough go of it on Saturday and finished 3-for-14 from the field. The primary concern with Roberts is physical as opposed to performance-based. He showed up this weekend with marks of cupping treatment on his right shoulder; shoulder issues affected the senior wing during Ivy play and limited his offseason activity.
Power, fortunately for the Quakers, has proven himself more than capable of stepping up as Penn’s alpha option. There are very few players in the mid-major ranks with Power’s combination of size and smoothness. He was a matchup nightmare on Saturday, able to create his own shot anywhere he wanted to on the floor.
There have been fans of high-major teams who have mocked Power’s career progression, from a five-star recruit to a mid-major starter by way of limited roles at both Duke and Virginia. There is zero doubt, though, that Power has found a level at which he can dominate. Quakers fans should be grateful the junior chose to play under McCaffery.
The final seconds were shambolic.
Penn is extremely fortunate that it got the stop it needed in the dying seconds on Saturday, or the tone around the Quakers would sound a lot different right now.
The Quakers squandered numerous chances to give themselves a stress-free ending. Roberts missed the front ends of one-and-ones which could have given the Quakers a four-point lead twice in a span of two-seconds. Jay Jones missed the back end of a one-and-one with seven seconds to play that also could have given Penn a four-point advantage and effectively ended the game.
It’s not fair to dump on players for missed free throws. They happen. Roberts made a winning play by corralling his own rebound on the first missed one-and-one front end, while Jones put himself in position to ice the game by intercepting an Explorers pass.
What was inexcusable, though, was the mental error that gave La Salle one last chance to tie or win the game. The Quakers were inbounding the ball under their own basket after La Salle committed a lane violation while trying to intentionally miss a free throw.
Roberts was tasked with inbounding the ball and passed along the baseline to Jones, who had run out of bounds. The issue with that play is that you can only pass to another inbounding player after a made basket. The error gave La Salle a free possession when a clean pass would have won the Quakers the game.
It’s safe to say McCaffery was furious with that sequence.
Zone is a coward’s way out: If you want to win a real game, man-to-man defense is the only way.