There is no sugarcoating it: It will take a truly special effort for Penn men’s basketball to pick up its first NCAA Tournament win since 1994 when it squares off with Illinois in Greenville, S.C. Thursday night.
The Vegas line opened with the Fighting Illini favored by 20.5 points and was quickly bet up to a 23.5-or-24.5-point spread, depending on where you looked. For context, the biggest outright Round of 64 upset ever by Vegas odds was Fairleigh Dickinson’s triumph as a No. 16 seed over No. 1 Purdue as a 23.5-point underdog in 2023. Purdue was ranked sixth in KenPom at the time, while FDU was ranked 299th.
For the Quakers, the KenPom gap between themselves and Illinois is not nearly as daunting. Illinois is No. 7, while Penn now sits at No. 150 thanks to its Sunday upset of Yale in the Ivy League title game. That comes with the caveat that the gap between the top teams in college basketball and the rest of the sport has grown dramatically in recent years due to transfer portal movement.
There will be plenty more to discuss ahead of Thursday, but to tide you over, here’s an early look at the matchup:
Factors favoring Penn
The Fighting Illini are the worst team in the country at forcing turnovers. That is not hyperbole. They literally rank 365th out of 365 teams in Division I in defensive turnover rate, according to KenPom, generating giveaways on just 11.6% of their opponents’ possessions. Illinois also ranks dead last in defensive steal rate. It might be tough to shoot over Illinois, but Penn fans can enter Thursday reasonably confident that the team can at least try and run its normal offensive sets and won’t be overwhelmed by ball-side pressure.
Much like Yale, Illinois is also pretty pedestrian at limiting opponents’ outside shooting opportunities. The Big Ten team allows opponents to put up 42.2% of their field goal attempts from distance, which ranks in the bottom 100 nationally. If Illinois gets lazy in its scout — and Penn fans have seen that from power conference opponents before — it could open the door for some good looks for both TJ Power and Michael Zanoni through off-ball movement. The Quakers rank 11th nationally in three-point shooting percentage, per KenPom. That’s historically been a recipe for underdogs to hang around.
Illinois is a decent but not overwhelming three-point shooting team as a whole, though it has good individual shooters. The Fighting Illini have two seven-footers who like to step out and shoot in brothers Zvonimir and Tomislav Ivisic, but neither shoots above 31% from deep. Starting shooting guard Kylan Boswell, a transfer from Arizona, is also shooting roughly 31% from deep. As a whole, the Fighting Illini rank 140th nationally in three-point shooting percentage.
There is a little bit of coaching familiarity here, which doesn’t typically occur in these first-round matchups with big seed-line gaps. Quakers coach Fran McCaffery faced off against Illinois coach Brad Underwood 15 times during his tenure at Iowa.
Factors favoring Illinois
It begins with size. The Quakers actually rank 113th in Division I in average height, per KenPom, which isn’t bad. But the Red and Blue are giving up 2.2 inches on average to the Fighting Illini, which are the biggest team in Division I by average height.
That size gap will have a ripple effect on both ends of the floor. For starters, the Ivisic brothers are each shooting over 70% from two-point distance. Both are listed at 250 pounds-plus. Though it won’t be for lack of effort, there is no one post defender on the Quakers’ roster whom you can credibly expect to guard either Ivisic in isolation.
The Fighting Illini also have size in the backcourt. Illinois’ pound-for-pound best player, superstar freshman point guard Keaton Wagler, is 6-foot-6. AJ Levine is certainly athletic and strong enough to hound Wagler around the court, but he’ll be at a six-inch height disadvantage when it comes time to contest jumpers.
McCaffery will also have to find ways to protect Power — who does have a power conference frame — on the defensive end and keep him from getting into early foul trouble, especially when the junior big acts as a help defender.
Though the Fighting Illini actually take a majority of their field goal attempts from long distance, one has to imagine that Underwood recognizes his team is more than capable of exploiting Penn’s biggest defensive weakness — rim protection — and adjusts accordingly.
Another major pressure point Illinois will try to hone in on is offensive rebounding. The Fighting Illini grab 38.7% of available offensive boards, per KenPom, which ranks third in Division I. The Quakers have had a tough time securing long rebounds off missed threes all season and it’s easy to envision a scenario where Penn can force a bad shot or two on a given possession but give up multiple offensive rebounds and scramble-drill threes.
This is the type of game where the Quakers will sorely miss senior wing Ethan Roberts not only for his skills to slash, draw contact and get to the line, but also for the fact that his presence as an on-ball creator could limit how much Illinois doubles Power. Roberts missed this past weekend’s Ivy League Tournament with a recurrence of concussion symptoms, though the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Roberts will be reevaluated for a possible return ahead of Thursday. The Inquirer reported prior to the Ivy League Tournament that Roberts wasn’t expected to recover in time for any postseason game.