NEW YORK CITY — There were sublime stretches of play, infuriating periods of disjointedness and everything in between. In the end, it added up to Penn men’s basketball getting the split it needed to stay in contention for Ivy Madness during its only true road back-to-back of the season.
The Quakers (10-10, 3-4 Ivy) let a winnable game against Columbia slip through their fingers on Friday, 72-67. With their backs against the wall, they rallied the next night against the stylistic nightmare that is Cornell, 91-81, recording their season-high scoring total against a Division I opponent in the process.
Penn built a lead of as much as 23 points against the Big Red (10-10, 3-4) in the first half, saw that advantage shrink to as little as two as points as Cornell’s shooting progressed to the mean, then strung together an 11-1 run to restore order.
A night earlier, the Quakers were playing from behind from the get-go, but rallied to take two brief second-half leads on the Lions (14-7, 3-4) after a fastbreak layup from Augustus Gerhart and a three-pointer from TJ Power. Both times, the Lions immediately responded with go-ahead threes.
Penn has emerged from a road-heavy first half of the Ivy League schedule just a game out of third place in the league standings. If the Quakers hold serve at home, they should (should being the operative word) return to Ithaca in March for the league tournament.
What did Penn fans learn from a weekend that kept the team’s postseason aspirations afloat?
The Quakers are developing real offensive depth.
Penn was a top-heavy team in the earliest stages of the season, relying on both Power and senior wing Ethan Roberts to carry the scoring load.
The surest sign that this Quakers team is improving is that it is finding ways to succeed offensively even when its stars have off nights. Roberts finished with KenPom offensive ratings below 100 points per 100 possessions on both Friday and Saturday.
No matter. Penn got great minutes from the aforementioned Gerhart on both Friday and Saturday and withstood Cornell’s second-half push thanks to a tremendous effort from point guard AJ Levine.
Gerhart finished a perfect 6-for-6 from the field on Saturday, imposing his will on a Big Red team that is one of the shortest in the country. He added eight points and five rebounds on Friday against Columbia.
As for Levine? He immediately responded with an and-one layup after Cornell had cut the Quakers’ lead to two and had a personal 6-0 run earlier in the second half which began after he absorbed a flagrant foul elbow to the face from the Big Red’s Josh Baldwin.
Penn still hasn’t played a complete 40 minutes this season.
The Quakers lost to Columbia on Friday in large part because they came out sloppy and disorganized on offense, spotting the Lions a 25-12 lead in the first half. Penn was playing from a negative game script the rest of the way, which gave it basically zero margin for error.
On Saturday, Penn came out on fire and looked like it was going to run the Big Red out of their own gym. The Quakers were the beneficiary of some Cornell shooting luck, but there was nothing lucky about the way they operated their offense to generate wide-open threes and looks at the rim.
Penn made Saturday’s second half stressful when it got sloppy on offense once again, as careless turnovers helped the Big Red get into their transition offense and back in the game.
The Quakers are still in a relatively decent position to qualify for the postseason, but they’d be 6-1 and in first place in the league standings with more consistent play.
Penn still is a resilient team despite that lack of consistency.
The Cornell game brought back horrible memories of some of the worst collapses of the Steve Donahue era (like at Princeton in 2023), but the Quakers never faltered even when Cornell had all the momentum and Newman Arena was ready to explode.
Credit goes to Levine, Roberts, Power and freshman Dalton Scantlebury, who all responded with big buckets and never seemed fazed by the pressure.
Similarly, the Quakers showed a lot of heart climbing all the way out of the hole they dug themselves on Friday night. Sophomore big man Michelangelo Oberti — who has barely played all season — deserves special mention for providing nine good minutes off the bench in the first half of that game, steadying the ship as Penn’s interior defense teetered.