PHILADELPHIA — Merry clinchmas, Quakers fans.
Penn ended its three-year Ivy Madness drought with a weekend sweep at the Palestra of Dartmouth and Harvard. The Quakers (15-11, 8-5 Ivy) are locked into the three seed and a rubber match with Harvard (16-11, 9-4) in two weeks.
Unsurprisingly, the road to that aforementioned sweep was anything but linear. The Quakers needed to erase halftime deficits against both Dartmouth (11-15, 5-8) and the Crimson. On Friday, junior forward TJ Power pretty much singlehandedly carried the team over the line against the Big Green, dropping a career-high 38 points as the Quakers notched a closer-than-it-looked 80-71 win.
One night later, Penn played an excellent half of complementary offensive and defensive basketball to flip a 31-21 Crimson halftime lead into a 64-61 triumph.
Of course, any game against Harvard these days has to come with some late drama. The Crimson had a wide-open shot from deep to tie the game at the buzzer for elite shooter Tey Barbour after senior guard Cam Thrower slipped and fell while attempting to either foul or guard the Harvard guard.
Any Penn fan who’s been around long enough to remember the “Bryce Aiken game” in 2019 had to expect Barbour’s shot was going down. But maybe — just maybe — Barbour’s shot clanging off the rim is a sign that things have truly turned around for this program.
What else could Penn fans hold onto from one last successful homestand?
The team’s defensive improvement is not a mirage.
For as much as fans of power conference schools loved to malign Fran McCaffery for the relatively poor defensive metrics of his teams at Iowa, the head coach has worked wonders on the Quakers in his first season.
According to BartTorvik.com, Penn ranks 105th out of 365 Division I teams in overall defensive efficiency since the start of 2026. KenPom has Penn ranked 137th in overall defense after the team finished the 2024-25 season ranked 323rd.
You can chalk part of that up to a little bit of progression to the mean. Penn is allowing opponents to shoot 39.2% of their field goal attempts from deep this season, per KenPom, which is identical to last season’s team. The difference is that not as many of those shots are going down. Penn’s opponents last year shot 37.4% from distance, which put the Quakers 348th nationally in three-point defense. This year, opponents are shooting 32% from long range, which puts Penn 65th nationally.
But what can’t be attributed to chance is how Penn’s defensive turnover rate has crept up from 13.4% last year (352nd nationally) to 17.1% this year (155th nationally). On Saturday, the Quakers forced 19 Harvard giveaways and came out in the second half of both the Dartmouth and Harvard games with visibly higher levels of defensive engagement.
Sophomore point guard AJ Levine’s defensive prowess has been mentioned plenty of times on this website, but sophomore forward Lucas Lueth deserves a special shoutout after what he put on tape on Saturday.
The 6-foot-7 Lueth has a NBA body and elite wingspan and used every inch of it on Saturday night. McCaffery rolled with a smaller lineup that had Lueth at the “five,” and it went a big way toward limiting the Crimson to a 0.85-point-per-possession performance.
Lueth’s ability to guard “one” through “five” at the Ivy League level will make him a valuable asset for years to come.
Penn’s best players stepped up when it needed them the most.
On Friday night, Power pretty much was Penn’s offense. The 38 points he scored was the fifth-best mark in program history, but what was especially impressive was how the junior forward got there.
Against Dartmouth, Power broke out some moves fans haven’t seen yet, including a lefty power jam for his first dunk of the season and an incredible spin move in the lane through four Big Green defenders to score his final two points of the evening. The two-time transfer also shot 9-for-14 from deep over the course of the weekend. His 46.2% three-point shooting clip in conference games is the best in the Ivy League, per KenPom.
McCaffery asked Power — by necessity — to play all 40 minutes on Friday night, so it was no shock that he looked gassed at times during the Harvard contest. Despite that, Power still drained three threes in the second half to help Penn chip away at that 10-point deficit.
On Saturday, Penn needed senior wing Ethan Roberts to will the team across the line in his final game at the Palestra. Roberts, in a performance reminiscent of his 31-point showing against Saint Joseph’s back in November, scored the Quakers’ final eight points against the Crimson, draining a pull-up jumper and adding a series of acrobatic layup finishes at the rim.
Roberts finished with a team-high 21 points on Saturday night. If Roberts and Power both play up to their ceilings in two weeks, the Quakers will have a legitimate shot to win two games and reach the NCAA Tournament.
No matter what happens from here on out, the season has been a success.
As of Sunday morning, the Quakers sit 170th in KenPom after opening the season ranked 278th. They have sealed an Ivy Madness bid despite being picked to finish seventh in the Ivy League’s preseason poll.
Penn has already won more conference games this season (eight) than it has in its prior two seasons combined (seven). By any objective measure, the Quakers are one of the most improved teams in Division I.
The program’s recruiting has also turned around overnight. Prized three-star guard and wing recruits Ethan Lin and Isaiah Carroll are both making deep runs in the New Jersey state playoffs for their divisions. It’s fair to expect both young men will be legitimate contenders to seize some of the open minutes Roberts will leave behind after he graduates and transfers for his final season of college eligibility.
You’ll notice that starting guard Michael Zanoni — who is listed as a senior by the university — wasn’t mentioned as a graduate transfer in that last sentence. McCaffery said postgame, per the Philadelphia Inquirer, that Zanoni is expected to return next season.
Losing Roberts, who is the emotional center of this year’s team, will hurt. But if all goes well from a player retention standpoint, the Quakers will return four starters in the fall, including an Ivy Player of the Year favorite in Power.
Of course, the story of this season still has a few chapters left to be written.