PHILADELPHIA — That Penn lost to Yale in its first matchup against the overwhelming Ivy League favorite should not have come as a shock to anyone.
But it’s the way the Quakers fell at home that should leave a frustrating taste in fans’ mouths.
Penn (9-9, 2-3 Ivy) played well below what it was capable of in a 77-60 loss to the Bulldogs (15-3, 4-1). The Quakers missed plenty of shots they normally hit and put up a season-worst 0.9 points per possession. On the other end of the floor, Yale scored 42 points in the paint, which more than made up for Penn’s admirable efforts to force turnovers and limit the damage from the Bulldogs’ elite outside shooting attack.
The Quakers held several leads throughout the first half but gave up an extended 12-2 run heading into the break which gave Yale a relatively comfortable 10-point edge. Penn had several chances to cut the Bulldogs’ lead to one possession early in the second half but never put any serious game pressure on Yale.
Penn’s defeat was expected, but it now puts a tremendous amount of pressure on next week’s road back-to-back against Columbia and Cornell. Both of these teams are right alongside the Quakers in a six-car pileup that separates second and seventh in the league standings by a single game.
A sweep would be devastating to Penn’s hopes of making Ivy Madness in its first year under Fran McCaffery.
What did fans learn from an underwhelming afternoon?
Free-throw shooting is a big red flag.
A big reason why the Quakers were unable to make Saturday’s contest competitive down the stretch was the team’s terrible afternoon at the charity stripe. Penn shot 11-for-18 from the line and its free-throw shooting percentage as a team against Division I opponents has now dipped below 70%, per KenPom.
AJ Levine — who was otherwise superb — and Ethan Roberts both had particularly frustrating days. Roberts missed a free throw that would have cut the Yale lead to three points early in the second half, while Levine misseed the front end of a one-and-one that could have trimmed the deficit to six later.
Penn has already gotten burned in a critical late-game situation once this season by inopportune free throw shooting struggles (think back to the December collapse against Rutgers). It could be a major problem for this team down the stretch.
Levine was another major bright spot.
On a day when Penn’s big three of Ethan Roberts, TJ Power and Michael Zanoni had relatively off performances, Levine did his best to keep the Quakers in the game.
The sophomore point guard scored a team-high 17 points and added seven assists and four steals. Levine has now scored in double figures in six out of his last seven games and looks like a far more confident and aggressive player than he was at the beginning of the season.
Levine’s biggest highlight came early in the first half, when he dropped Yale guard Trevor Mullin to the floor with a nasty dribble move, drained an open three-pointer, then performed New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson’s signature three-point celebration on his way back down the floor on defense.
Moments of pure joy like that need to occur more often.
The atmosphere was fun.
This may seem like a silly thing to put in an article, but it was particularly heartening to see that roughly 150 students or so — maybe a little more — showed up to watch on Saturday. The overall attendance number was 2,806, which topped the figure for the Quakers’ November win over Saint Joseph’s by more than 400 people.
That 2,806 is far from a sellout, but Penn hasn’t done much to justify the Palestra being full in recent years.
The composition of Penn’s student body has changed a lot since the basketball team’s glory years. But if the product on the court is a winning one, the overall university community will become invested in the program.
Fans can look at rival Princeton as a model. The Tigers were selling out Jadwin Gymnasium during the 2023-24 season when they were one of the best mid-major teams in the country.