Home of the Roundball Poets
For 40 minutes of basketball on Monday, Penn looked like the team optimists thought it could be in a surprising road win over Harvard.
The Quakers entered the matchup with the Crimson as healthy underdogs — six points by KenPom and seven-and-a-half by Vegas oddsmakers.
No matter. The Red and Blue used efficient offense, crisp passing and excellent outside shooting to produce an 82-67 triumph.
A nine-point Penn (5-11, 1-2 Ivy) halftime lead had dwindled to as little as two around the under-eight media timeout. But a catch-and-shoot three from senior wing George Smith pushed Penn back to a five-point advantage. Then, after an exchange of free throws, Smith found junior wing Ethan Roberts for threes on back-to-back possessions.
The latter of those shots, a deep pull-up shot in transition, gave Penn a 64-53 edge with just under five minutes to play. Harvard (6-10, 1-2) never seriously threatened after.
Penn put up a season-best 1.28 points per possession. How did the Quakers pull it off?
It all started with how …
Penn competed with Ivy title contender Cornell for long stretches in its Ivy home opener on Saturday, but the end result was what was widely expected: an 86-76 loss.
The Quakers (4-11, 0-2 Ivy) outplayed the Big Red (10-5, 2-0) for the first 15 minutes or so, but the whole game flipped once Cornell’s best big man, AK Okereke, took over.
With 3:58 to go in the first half, Penn was clinging onto a 27-25 lead when forward Nick Spinoso attempted a behind-the-back pass out of the post which Okereke easily intercepted. The junior then proceeded to drain a transition three in Spinoso’s face to give Cornell the lead.
On the next trip down the floor, Spinoso attempted a layup over Okereke which got blocked by the rim. Okereke then hit a transition layup which forced Quakers coach Steve Donahue into a timeout and it was all downhill from there, as the Big Red built a lead as big as 20 points in the second half.
What can Penn fans take away from an underwhelming afternoon?
The Red and Blue got the late stop they needed down three, forcing a wild miss from the host Big Green’s Brandon Mitchell-Day with about 20 seconds left to play. But after securing the rebound, freshman point guard AJ Levine lost the handle as he crossed midcourt.
Dartmouth corralled the loose ball, and after an exchange of free throws and a missed desperation three from Penn’s Ethan Roberts, walked away with a 73-70 win.
The Quakers (4-10, 0-1 Ivy) dropped their Ivy opener for the first time since the 2019-20 season. They’ve only beaten the Big Green (7-7, 1-0) at Leede Arena once since 2019.
It could be a long slog of an Ivy season for the Red and Blue, which rank dead last in the conference in KenPom (307th). They got off to an 0-1 start because …
The Penn women’s basketball team went a long way for is loss Monday to Arizona State – not just in flying to the Southwest, not just in challenging a Big 12 team on its home court, but in playing the Sun Devils even or better for seven-eighths of the game before falling, 73-67.
Playing on the road as a 25-plus-point Vegas underdog without your best player is typically a recipe for disaster. Penn learned that the hard way roughly this time last year against Houston when star guard Clark Slajchert suffered a season-ruining ankle sprain in an 81-42 beatdown.
By those standards, the Quakers’ Sunday trip to the Bryce Jordan Center to face Penn State was a (relative) success. Despite being without the services of junior wing Ethan Roberts, Penn went toe-to-toe with the Nittany Lions for roughly 25 minutes in an 86-66 defeat.
The Quakers (4-9) went to the locker room down just 34-31 at halftime and were within two points of Penn State (11-2) after senior big man Nick Spinoso bounced in a three-pointer from the left wing to make it a 38-36 game with 17:40 to go in the game. The Nittany Lions responded with an extended 13-3 run to push their advantage to double digits and built a bigger lead from there.
Penn State big man Yanic Konan Niederhauser scored five points in the game-deciding run. He finished with a 19-point, 15-rebound double-double.
What could Penn fans take away from a respectable showing against an NCAA Tournament contender?
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 …
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:
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.