Penn men’s basketball let a chance to effectively clinch an Ivy Madness spot slip through its fingers on Saturday at Yale, as a stretch of poor offense flipped a halftime lead into a deficit the Quakers could not overcome in a 74-70 loss.
The Quakers (13-11, 6-5 Ivy) took a 40-35 lead into the halftime locker room on the back of strong shooting performances from TJ Power and Michael Zanoni. But the Quakers went scoreless for the first minutes of the second frame as the league-leading Bulldogs (21-4, 9-2) went on an extended 10-0 run.
Penn got a couple of looks at open threes for the lead late in the second half that would not go down. Yale went on to effectively end the game after Bulldogs wing Isaac Celiscar hit a tough stepback midrange jumper over the outstretched arm of Power to take a 70-66 lead with 16 seconds to play.
The Quakers entered Saturday as sizable underdogs and outperformed their expectations (Yale closed as a 9.5 point favorite) and still sit in third place in the Ivy League standings. A successful homestand next weekend will secure Penn’s first trip to the conference tournament in three years.
What did Penn fans learn from a tough afternoon?
The interior defense wasn’t good enough.
If you had told a Penn fan that Yale — one of the best three-point shooting teams in Division I — would have shot 6-for-26 from distance on Saturday and that the Bulldogs would have been without Ivy Player of the Year favorite Nick Townsend, they would probably expect the Red and Blue to win.
But even with Townsend unavailable due to a concussion, Penn got carved up inside by the Bulldogs. Yale shot 60% inside the arc on 35 attempts. The Bulldogs only outrebounded the Quakers by three, 38-35, but gathered 12 offensive boards, many of which were high-leverage.
Penn only blocked one Yale shot, while the Bulldogs tallied six rejections on the other end of the floor.
It’s hard to see an immediate fix Penn can deploy to resolve the structural advantage Yale has on the interior if a third matchup between these two teams happens in March.
Augustus Gerhart had a big impact.
Gerhart barely played in the first half as the Quakers built a lead thanks to two early fouls. Once the big man got back in the game, however, he did his best to pull Penn back from the brink.
The junior scored eight points on perfect 3-for-3 shooting, extended several offensive possessions with hustle tip-outs and finished with a team-high KenPom offensive rating of 171 points per 100 possessions.
Gerhart hasn’t been the type of big this year who you can just chuck the ball to in the low post and expect a bucket from, but his motor and sheer effort make him a very useful player.
Next weekend is season-defining.
If the Quakers miss Ivy Madness, they will have no one to blame but themselves. They have lost four conference games by a combined 12 points, two of which have been to teams ahead of them in the standings.
Penn has been nearly perfect at home this season. KenPom has the Quakers as a seven-point favorite at the Palestra on Friday against Dartmouth, which trails Penn by one game in the league standings.
Win that game, and the Quakers will secure the head-to-head tiebreaker against the Big Green. Lose, and things will get very, very stressful.
I don’t think I’ve watched a worse sports broadcast this year. Awful camera cutaways, not knowing the best player was out for a full half, thinking there was a foul when there was a timeout or out-of-bounds call or vice versa. Consistently wrong.
Anyway, if they lose to Dartmouth, I’m going to be on the news.