There is perhaps no juxtaposition which better sums up the current state of college basketball in 2026 than the fact that the NCAA’s transfer portal opened up as One Shining Moment was playing to officially close the books on the 2025-26 season.
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 1,500 players have entered the portal. Of course, many of those names were known in the weeks leading up to the stroke of midnight on April 7.
The season has barely ended, but these next few weeks will be critical as Penn looks to protect its current stable of talent and reload with some new faces ahead of its Ivy League title defense. Below are just a few of the questions Quakers fans should be asking ahead of a pivotal offseason.
The Penn men’s basketball team and supporters take in the scene after Penn’s 105-70 loss to Illinois in the NCAA Tournament Round of 64 at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C. on March 19, 2026. (Ian Wenik/Ivy Hoops Online)
GREENVILLE, S.C. — Undermanned and outgunned, No. 14 Penn men’s basketball put up a fight against No. 3 Illinois in the first round of the NCAA Tournament for the better part of a half.
But that was all the Quakers could muster in what wound up as a 105-70 defeat.
The Quakers (18-12) entered Thursday night’s matchup against the Fighting Illini with its two best players compromised. Leading scorer Ethan Roberts had been ruled out earlier in the week after suffering his second concussion of the season, while TJ Power, the hero of last week’s Ivy League Tournament, fell ill in the days leading up to the game and needed what coach Fran McCaffery estimated were four or five IVs to even be able to play.
“TJ wasn’t himself,” McCaffery said during a postgame press conference. The junior forward — who rarely comes off the floor — went back to the locker room twice during the game and was too ill to join his teammates as they showed their appreciation to a strong contingent of Quakers fans.
“When I took him out that last time, I was not going to put him back in the game,” McCaffery said of Power. “It would not have been fair to him.”
As for the action on the court itself? It was no surprise that the size of Illinois, the nation’s tallest team by average height, dictated the game. Penn actually outshot the Fighting Illini in the first half but entered the locker room down 10 points because Illinois had racked up 16 second-chance points and a plus-14 rebounding margin.
The Quakers cut the deficit to nine with about 16:45 to play after wing Michael Zanoni bounced in a straightaway three, but Illinois immediately responded with a 14-2 run which effectively ended the game.
For Penn, the book is officially sealed on its 2025-26 season. What did Penn fans learn from its final chapter?
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:
TJ Power just put up the best individual performance in Quakers history. His 44 points just led Penn to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in eight years. pic.twitter.com/QfnBWFsIlo
ITHACA, N.Y. – Penn men’s basketball is headed to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in eight years after outlasting Yale in overtime, 88-84, in one of the greatest games in recent Ivy League history Sunday at Newman Arena.
The Quakers (18-11) needed a transcendent performance from forward TJ Power to pull off the Ivy League Tournament final upset with leading scorer Ethan Roberts back in Philadelphia, sidelined with a concussion.
Boy, did Power deliver. The junior had a 44-point detonation, which matched Hassan Duncombe for the program’s single-game scoring record since it joined the Ivy League in 1954. Power personally erased what was a four-point Penn deficit with 12 seconds to play by simply dribbling into three-pointers on consecutive possessions.
The last of those threes, a contested shot from the right wing, tied the game at 75 with a second to go in regulation. Yale guard Trevor Mullin (who had hit two clutch free throws to extend the lead to three before Power’s heroic shot) nearly sank a three-quarter-court heave as the buzzer sounded, but it clanged off the back iron.
In overtime, Power — whose free-throw shooting struggles this season have been well-documented — put the Quakers ahead for good with 3:02 left in the extra session following two makes from the charity stripe. He got a ton of help from senior guard Cam Thrower, who had a five-point scoring burst in a 40-second span to give the Red and Blue some critical breathing room.
In his first campaign running his alma mater, coach Fran McCaffery has pulled off one of the biggest single-season turnarounds in recent college basketball memory.
What should Penn fans hold onto from an afternoon of unbridled joy?
ITHACA, N.Y. — Penn men’s basketball is 40 minutes away from its first trip to the NCAA Tournament in eight years after outlasting Harvard in a 62-60 overtime thriller to advance to the Ivy League Tournament final.
Sophomore point guard AJ Levine — more on him later — played the hero after he blew by Harvard sophomore guard Ben Eisendrath off the dribble for a scoop layup with 6.1 seconds to play in the extra session.
With the Crimson in scramble mode, Levine got a hand in Harvard guard Tey Barbour’s face as the sniper put up a three-point attempt to win the game.
Barbour’s shot was off line to the right and a wild celebration ensued.
AJ Levine just sent the Quakers to the Ivy Madness final with a driving layup. Incredible. pic.twitter.com/WNP8gxIR1z
The Quakers (17-11) are now in a position that few expected them to be in back in November. What did we learn about this team as it preps for an empty-the-tank game against Yale for a conference tournament championship?
Penn men’s basketball left no doubt on Friday night that it is a serious contender to win the Ivy League Tournament with a relatively easy blowout road win over Brown, 82-61.
The game itself? Well, it meant nothing in the standings. The Quakers (16-11, 9-5 Ivy) have been locked into a No. 3 vs. No. 2 game with Harvard in the league’s conference tournament for roughly a week. The Bears (9-18, 3-11) already were a cinch for last place.
Penn allowed Brown to score on its first possession but never trailed again.
Instead of expounding at length on the minutiae of the Quakers’ regular season finale itself, we’ll use these Quakeaways to spin forward and set expectations for what Penn will need to do to beat the Crimson and set itself up for a shot at its first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 2018.
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?
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.
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 …
After 14 consecutive losses to its most hated rivals, Penn finally — finally — took out hated Princeton at the Palestra on Saturday by the thinnest of margins, 61-60. The Quakers (11-10, 4-4 Ivy) now sit atop a four-team morass in third place in the Ivy League and hold their destiny in their own hands.
It should have surprised no one that Penn needed to extend to its absolute limit to finally take out the Tigers (8-15, 4-4). The Quakers led by as many as 12 points in the second half on the back of some intense defense, but an extended offensive outage let Princeton climb back into the game.
The afternoon came down to a one-on-one defensive stand by Quakers sophomore point guard AJ Levine against the Tigers’ best player, Dalen Davis. Levine poked the ball away from Davis at the top of the key as the game clock wound below 10 seconds, then forced Davis into a difficult contested midrange jumper which caught front iron and bounced harmlessly away.
Levine was mobbed by his teammates as he flexed to the crowd, a moment of catharsis after eight years of frustration of heartbreak.
What did Quakers fans learn from an exhilarating day?
