Penn

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 85-53 loss at George Mason

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Penn hasn’t won consecutive games since its 2-0 start to the season in early November. The Quakers will have to wait a little longer to put together a winning streak after familiar problems torpedoed a solid early effort against host George Mason in what ultimately wound up as an 85-53 loss.

For about 15 minutes of game action, Penn (4-8) saw its efficient outside shooting carry over from Friday’s win over Rider. The Quakers started out 6-for-10 from deep and were all level at 23 with the Atlantic 10-contender Patriots with 6:49 left in the first half after senior guard George Smith drained an open transition three from the right wing.

It wound up being Penn’s high-water mark. Penn squandered three chances to take the lead — including a tough-luck moment when junior wing Ethan Roberts just barely missed an open reverse layup following a backdoor cut — before George Mason (8-4) restored order with an extended 12-2 run to end the first half that surely delighted this writer’s father-in-law, a Mason alum.

The Patriots are one of the better defensive teams in the country, and they lived up to that reputation when they held Penn to a paltry 32.2% field goal percentage for the afternoon.

How did it happen? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but …

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 79-66 win over Rider

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PHILADELPHIA — Playing for the first time after an 11-day layoff, Penn turned in its cleanest offensive performance of the season against Rider.

The Quakers never trailed in a 79-66 home win over the Broncs on Friday and put up a blistering 1.27 points per possession, according to KenPom. In a season that has been defined on the offensive end by long outages and poor shot-making, Penn (4-7) finally played at a high level for a full 40 minutes.

There were standouts both familiar and unexpected. Senior forward Nick Spinoso finished with 22 points, one off a career high, while junior wing Ethan Roberts dropped in 20 on 13 shots, including a four-point play that after he drained a straightaway three midway through the first half while absorbing heavy contact from Rider’s Jay Alvarez.

Meanwhile, Rider (4-8) appeared to be asleep at the wheel defensively for stretches. The Broncs repeatedly forgot to cover sophomore wing Niklas Polonowski when he spotted up from distance. Polonowski responded by dropping in 14 points on four made threes to record his first ever double-figure scoring effort against a Division I opponent.

For the first time in a while, it’s all happy Quakeaways:

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Penn women’s basketball squashes Delaware State, 72-45

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The Penn women’s basketball team got an early holiday present Friday: a young Delaware State team it could beat soundly while giving some first-year Quakers time in the spotlight.

With a game-high 14 points off the bench for center Tina Njike (a sophomore sidelined by injuries last season), Penn beat Delaware State, 72-45, at the Palestra for its fifth win in a row, and Del State’s fifth straight loss. At a muscular 6-foot-2, Njike showed strong moves to the rim for Penn (8-3) as well as a good touch from midrange with 6-for-8 shooting and four rebounds, plus 2-for-2 from the free-throw line, in 16 minutes on the court.

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 66-47 loss at VCU

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Jon Rothstein typically describes trips to VCU’s Siegel Center as “life-changing.”

It may not have been a particularly life-changing evening for Penn on Monday, but it went a little bit better than expected. The Quakers competed defensively for long stretches in a 66-47 loss to the Atlantic 10 favorite Rams, which could give them a little bit of momentum moving forward.

Penn (3-7) came all the way back from a disastrous start to tie the game at 21 with 7:17 to go in the first half after a nice steal from freshman guard AJ Levine (more on him later) led directly to a transition three from junior wing Ethan Roberts. The Quakers had fallen into a 14-2 hole right off the bat and went nearly 6:30 without a basket after Nick Spinoso scored on Penn’s first possession.

The Rams (8-2) restored order with an extended 18-2 run that spanned the final four minutes of the first half and first three minutes of the second. In a disturbing replay of the game’s beginning, Penn went 6:37 of game action without a bucket.

Penn’s effort level was there on Monday, but so were a lot of the same issues that have plagued this team all season, leading to some depressingly familiar Quakeaways:

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 68-53 loss to Elon

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There really isn’t too much to say in a micro sense about Penn’s 68-53 home loss to Elon on Sunday, which rounded out a 1-2 weekend at the Cathedral Classic Invitational.

The Quakers (3-5) shot 29.7% from the field and even worse from deep, hitting eight of 37 three-point attempts (21.6%). Penn never led, taking an immediate 8-0 punch to the mouth from the Phoenix (5-3) that forced coach Steve Donahue into a timeout less than 90 seconds into the contest.

It was all downhill from there.

Instead of focusing on Sunday’s contest, these Quakeaways will focus more on macro-level observations about Penn at large. Believe it or not, Saturday’s upcoming game against Drexel will be the one-third point of the Quakers’ season.

So, where does Penn stand?

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 86-78 loss to Navy

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The “bye week” didn’t do Penn much good.

Playing at home after a 10-day layoff, the Quakers saw their losing streak hit four games after an 86-78 loss to Navy in their opening game of the Cathedral Classic Invitational.

Penn (2-4) came all the way back from a 12-point deficit in the second half when Augie Gerhart finished off a nice high-low post pass from Sam Brown to give the Quakers a 51-50 lead with 9:04 to go.

It turned out to be Penn’s only lead of the night. The Midshipmen (3-4) responded with three straight three-pointers, capped off by a corner shot from Navy’s star, Austin Benigni.

Familiar problems for Penn reared their ugly heads again on Friday, starting with how …

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Penn women’s basketball loses in overtime to UC Irvine, 72-68

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The Penn women’s basketball team took another few steps forward Thursday night at the Palestra but came up short in overtime, 72-68, against the University of California at Irvine.
Both sides were tantalizingly close to taking the win in regulation. With a bit more than five minutes left, a three-pointer on a fast break put Irvine up, 60-57. And as the next three minutes ticked away, neither team could score until Penn freshman forward Katie Collins took a pass from Saniah Caldwell and hit a three to tie the game again. A layup for Irvine was quickly followed by another Penn three, this one from freshman Ashna Tambe on a feed from Mataya Gayle. And that one-point Penn lead lasted through an excruciating 90 seconds of missed shots and turnovers for both sides until Irvine’s Hunter Hernandez missed one foul shot but sank the second with five seconds left to send the game into overtime.

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Quakeaway from Penn men’s basketball’s 93-49 loss at Villanova

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Disheartening. Discouraging. Disgusting.

Whatever negative adjective you’d want to throw out would probably apply to how Penn performed in a 93-49 loss at Villanova on Tuesday night.

That 44-point margin of defeat is the worst loss Penn has ever suffered against the Wildcats in a series that spans 71 games and dates back to 1910. The prior record-holder was the 43-point loss Penn took to Villanova in the 1971 Elite Eight, which ruined an undefeated season for the Quakers and is widely considered the worst defeat in program history.

This team is galaxies away from that 1970-71 squad. The Quakers actually played pretty well offensively in the early stages on Tuesday, using good ball movement and better three-point shooting to draw even with the Wildcats at the under-eight media timeout in the first half.

What happened from there was nothing short of a collapse. Penn went roughly 14 minutes of game time without scoring a field goal as Villanova used red-hot outside shooting to put together a killer 30-3 run.

As for Tyler Perkins, who got his first chance on Tuesday to face his former Penn teammates after his offseason transfer up the Main Line to ‘Nova? The sophomore guard scored seven points before the game’s first media timeout and finished a rebound shy of a double-double.

There is only one Quakeaway that merits mentioning after Tuesday’s humiliation:

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How are the Ivy non-grad transfers doing?

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With the season two weeks old, here’s a first check on the 2023-24 Ivy stars who transferred prior to their graduation. This year, the student-athletes are all from the men’s side, but growing amounts of NIL money, more relaxed transfer rules and the lack of scholarships in the Ancient Eight should eventually (sadly) expand this list to the women’s division in the near future.

Over the opening few weeks, Kalu Anya, Malik Mack and Danny Wolf have continued their strong play from last year, while Chisom Okpara and Tyler Perkins are seeing reduced roles with their new teams.

We’ll take another look in a few weeks to see how everyone’s doing:

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Penn women’s basketball picks itself up after falling to Saint Joseph’s

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No matter what sport you’ve been around, you’ve probably heard it said: A W is a W. An ugly win counts just as much in the record books.
But the opposite isn’t necessarily true, and the Penn women’s basketball team recorded a pretty good loss Friday night to an excellent Saint Joseph’s squad, 68-57, at the Palestra.
For context, look back a year and a day to the last time the two teams met: a 77-49 blowout for the Hawks on their way to a 28-win season (and a Big 5 championship). If anything, the Hawks are stronger this year, while the Quakers are trying to compensate for the loss of All-Ivy forward Jordan Obi to graduation and spark plug guard Ese Ogbevire to injury.

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