Playing its third game in a three-day span, Penn men’s basketball simply ran out of gas against one of the better teams it will face this season.
Penn shot a grisly 32% from the field in a 77-60 home loss to Hofstra that rounded out the fourth edition of the Cathedral Classic.
Penn (5-3) managed to hold a two-point halftime lead against the Pride (5-3) that disappeared within the first minute of the second frame. Hofstra drained some shots and generated a modicum of offensive flow, while the Red and Blue struggled to play with pace and generate open looks.
Any chance the Quakers had at a comeback died shortly after the under-eight media timeout. Sophomore forward Lucas Lueth missed a free throw that would have pulled Penn within nine of Hofstra. Though senior wing Ethan Roberts corralled the offensive rebound, the Quakers couldn’t get a shot off and committed a shot clock violation.
At the other end of the floor, Penn got an initial stop, but Hofstra’s German Plotnikov drained a killer three after an offensive rebound. What could have been a four-point possession wound up as a three-point swing in the opposite direction.
The Quakers will surely be watching Monday night’s contest between Temple and Villanova to find out their opponent in the Big 5 title game next Saturday. Until then, they’ll be thinking about how …
The point guard position remains a work in progress.
Though the Quakers have plenty of offensive plus factors, they still need to find ways to generate consistent dribble penetration from their guards, which will help take pressure off wing and forward scoring duo Ethan Roberts and TJ Power.
Roberts put up a team-high 16 points on Sunday despite taking a physical beating, while Power scored 10 points on 10 shots a day after playing all 40 minutes against La Salle. Both of those men have had injury issues in the recent past, and any breakdown due to overuse could deliver a fatal blow to Penn’s Ivy hopes.
Starting point guard AJ Levine had an up-and-down weekend, which closed on a down note. The sophomore finished with a KenPom offensive rating of nine points per 100 possessions in 19 minutes and went 0-for-5 from the field. He’s a good on-ball defender and solid distributor but is still looking for his first double-digit scoring effort of the season.
More opportunities could be coming for Jay Jones. The freshman didn’t score from the field but was a net offensive positive; he finished with a KenPom offensive rating of 112 points per 100 possessions.
There’s a path to more efficient paint scoring.
The Quakers, though seven games against Division I opponents, are shooting 45.3% inside the arc, which ranks 320th nationally.
Part of the reason for that figure is that there’s no one player on the Penn roster to whom you can toss the ball on the low block and expect them to back their man down and score, a la AJ Brodeur.
What has worked for the Quakers — and did a little bit on Sunday — is big-to-big passing initiated by TJ Power. The junior forward has developed a nice rapport with freshman Dalton Scantlebury. When Power draws a double team in the low post, he’s consistently found Scantlebury open roughly eight feet from the basket.
The one-handed push shot Scantlebury puts up from that spot on the floor works more often than not.
During Penn’s failed comeback attempt, Power made a similar pass to junior big man Augustus Gerhart, but Gerhart’s shot rimmed out. That’s a moment, though, where you can ignore the result of the shot and praise the process which generated the open look.
The weekend was an overall success.
Penn’s predictive metrics took a big hit on Sunday — a 17-point loss on your own floor will do that — but the Quakers did much more good than bad over the weekend.
They showed on Friday and Saturday that they could adjust to in-game adversity and develop effective countermeasures to an opponent’s initial schematic advantage.
The Quakers got standout performances on two different days from their newcomers, proving that Penn can find ways to score and win even if Roberts has an off night or two.
One red flag the weekend did show was that Penn — despite a large roster size — might have some depth issues. The only new faces who got playing time when the outcome of a game was in doubt were Jones (already discussed) and junior wing Niklas Polonowski, who made cameos on Friday and Saturday.