Penn has a clear path to an Ivy Madness berth after pulling off one of its best Palestra homestands in years.
The Quakers (13-10, 6-4 Ivy) have a tight grip on third place in the League standings after using a late surge to rally past Columbia on Friday, 76-67, and following that effort up with an 82-76 triumph over Cornell in a game that was played within a possession for much of the evening.
Penn, by virtue of its head-to-head sweep over Cornell (12-11, 5-5), is effectively two games ahead of the Big Red with four to play. If the Quakers just go .500 in their remaining contests, they’ll be two steps away from their first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 2018.
It’s a position that few outside observers expected Penn to be in, given its opening KenPom ranking of 275 and consensus seventh-place pick in the Ivy preseason poll.
But now? The Quakers look like an ascending team in its first year under Fran McCaffery, who has taken a team which consists almost entirely of players he did not recruit and turned it into one of the most improved teams in the country.
How much so? We’ll get into that now, starting with how …
AJ Levine had a transcendent weekend.
I admit that I have written about Levine ad nauseum the past few months, but that is a direct result of the way the sophomore point guard has elevated his game in league play.
Levine racked up 11(!) steals in two games this weekend. Three of those came in the final minute of the Columbia contest alone, when the Quakers were clinging to a one-possession lead after trailing virtually the entire night. Levine gave Penn the lead for good against the Lions with a slick wrap pass through multiple defenders to freshman big man Dalton Scantlebury for an easy bucket in the lane with 1:03 to go.
On the next possession, Levine was in an isolation situation against Columbia’s Kenny Noland, who had already hit six three-pointers in the game. Levine, in a stand reminiscent of his game-saving shutdown of Princeton’s Dalen Davis a week before, stripped Noland, which led to a runout layup for senior wing Ethan Roberts.
Per KenPom, Levine now ranks 29th in all of Division I in steal rate. A certain commenter on this website likened Levine’s play down the stretch to prime Chris Paul, who just retired this past week.
As for me? I’m going to start calling Levine “The Glove of the Ivy League.” I think Gary Payton can appreciate that.
Different faces are stepping up.
The surest sign of Penn’s improvement these past few weeks is that the Quakers are finding ways to win when their plan A or plan B isn’t working.
On Saturday, the Quakers had one of their worst shooting performances of the season, going 3-for-20 from deep against Cornell. That’s usually a recipe for disaster against an elite shooting team like the Big Red.
Big men Augustus Gerhart and Dalton Scantlebury, who combined to score 25 points on 10-for-14 shooting in Penn’s road win against Cornell a few weeks ago, were nonfactors this time around and collectively attempted just a single shot from the field.
So how did the Quakers win this time around? By exploiting their overall physical advantage through their guard play instead. Penn wound up attempting 41 free throws in the evening.
The most heartening effort that night came from freshman Jay Jones, who scored a career-high 17 points off the bench and earned KenPom game MVP honors with an offensive efficiency rating of 150 points per 100 possessions.
The free throw line has been a nightmare for Jones much of the season, but he came through with nine makes on 11 attempts from the stripe. He’s starting to look like a key piece of the Quakers’ future.
This team is starting to look directionally good defensively.
McCaffery’s Iowa teams were criticized for their defense throughout his tenure, but the coach has the Quakers seemingly pointed in the right direction.
As of Sunday morning, Penn ranks 163rd in overall defensive efficiency. The Quakers finished 323rd last season in the nightmare campaign that got Steve Donahue fired.
There are still some issues visible through the eye test. Sometimes Penn throws double-teams that leave a secondary shooter wide-open or gives up a few too many offensive rebounds. But at the same time, you can see sustainable paths to success.
The biggest and clearest change has come in the Quakers’ improved turnover rate, which can be partially attributed to Levine. Penn ranked 352nd in Division I last season in turnover rate and presently ranks 174th, generating giveaways on 16.9% of opponents’ possessions.
We’ll get a better sense of how this team truly stacks up defensively now in a Saturday road game at league leader Yale. The Bulldogs scored 1.16 points per possession in a 77-60 win at the Palestra in late January.