Penn

Penn women get through warmup at Dartmouth, 54-37  

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It was a game of limited importance. The Penn women, in third place and assured of a spot in the Ivy tournament, made the long road trip to Hanover, N.H., for what was supposed to be a tune-up at Dartmouth, which had yet to win an Ivy game.
But Penn wasn’t playing like a team contending for a title Saturday — shooting poorly and turning the ball over repeatedly coming off a disappointing loss at upstart Brown a week earlier.
Penn held just a one-point lead when Dartmouth junior guard Mia Curtis grabbed the rebound after a Penn miss with three seconds on the clock and hustled the ball downcourt to senior forward Emma Koch for the layup at the buzzer — putting the Big Green ahead, 12-11, after one quarter.

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men taking care of business in win over Dartmouth

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Senior Lucas Monroe turned in a 13-point, 10-rebound performance to lift Penn past Dartmouth at the Palestra Saturday (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

PHILADELPHIA — Penn is one win away from at least a share of the Ivy League regular season championship after a businesslike 89-79 win over Dartmouth at the Palestra on Senior Day.

The Quakers never trailed after the 16-minute mark of the first half, but there were some dicey moments along the way. At one point, a 9-0 Big Green run midway through the second half cut the visiting team’s deficit to 64-61 and forced Penn coach Steve Donahue into a timeout with 9:19 to play.

Coming out of the break, junior forward Max Martz proved to be Penn’s stopper.

Martz got a mismatch in the post against Dartmouth’s Ryan Cornish, backed down the guard and drained a righty hook to extend the Red and Blue’s lead back to five. He then went on to add two three-pointers from the corner and a second jumper over the next four-plus minutes to hold Dartmouth at bay. Martz finished the afternoon with 18 points and a team-high KenPom offensive rating of 163 points per 100 possessions.

Penn will need a performance like that from Martz next Saturday at Princeton in arguably the team’s biggest regular-season game in five years.

During the long wait, Quakers fans will have plenty to ruminate on, such as how …

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men’s 90-69 Brown throwdown

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Penn junior guard Clark Slajchert looked like his confident early-season self in his team’s 90-69 rout of Brown at the Palestra Saturday night. Slajchert notched a team-high 19 points on 8-for-13 field-goal shooting. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Penn picked a good time to turn in its best performance of the season.

The Quakers (16-11, 8-4 Ivy) pummeled Brown on Saturday at the Palestra, 90-69, and vaulted themselves into a three-way tie for first place in the Ivy League standings.

Though neither Penn nor the league have provided official confirmation, analytics expert Luke Benz said postgame that the Red and Blue have now clinched a trip to the Ivy League tournament.

Usually, this writer uses the top of these articles to describe some pivotal moment where Penn seals either victory or defeat. The pivotal moment on Saturday was the opening tipoff. The Quakers shot out to a quick 9-0 lead and never looked back. It took a string of circus shots by the Bears (13-12, 6-6) in garbage time to trim Penn’s final margin of victory below 30 points.

Just how good were the Quakers on Saturday? BartTorvik.com, a KenPom competitor, assigns every team in Division I a game score of 0-100 for each game it plays. Think of the number as the probability a team will win through its performance on a given night.

Penn finished with a final game score of 97.

It’s all happy Quakeaways today after the Red and Blue pulled off their biggest Ivy weekend sweep in some time:

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Rookies spark bounce-back win for Brown women over Penn

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Ivy back-to-backs can bring out the worst and best in teams, often in the same weekend.

Coming off an 80-37 drubbing against Princeton at the Pizzitola Sports Center in which it got outscored 33-2 in the third quarter, Brown rebounded 22 hours later with a 68-59 win over Penn.

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men eking out 66-64 win over Yale

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Jordan Dingle’s shooting clip wasn’t the greatest at the Palestra Friday night, but the junior guard came through in the clutch to help secure Penn’s win over Yale. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Penn is on the verge of a trip to the Ivy League Tournament after pulling off one of its most thrilling victories in years.

The Quakers (15-11, 7-4 Ivy) took down Yale, 66-64, Friday night in a classic Palestra matchup between two teams that have now split their home-and-home series for six consecutive seasons. The two teams exchanged the lead 14 times. Neither led by more than six points.

Penn took the lead for good when sophomore guard George Smith hit an open three at the top of the key off a nice feed from Max Martz to give the Quakers a 52-50 lead with 7:19 to go.

The end was a sequence of events that likely gave Penn fans heart palpitations. The Quakers held a four-point lead with less than 13 seconds to go, but let Bulldogs (17-7, 7-4) guard John Poulakidas hit an open three with about 5.8 seconds on the clock.

Penn got the ball inbounds without issue, but normally reliable free-throw shooter Clark Slajchert split a pair at the line. Despite getting a chance to tie or win the game, Yale could not get off a final shot before the buzzer sounded.

There’s a lot for Penn fans to process ahead of a Saturday night tilt against Brown, such as how …

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Ivy women’s week seven roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top Ten

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Following Saturday afternoon’s action, the upper division pulled away from the bottom half, while the Brown rebuild took a positive step forward.

Columbia bounced back from a disappointing result against Princeton by taking it out on Yale in front of 1,485 fans at Levien Gymnasium.  The Lions jumped out to a 32-17 halftime lead on the strength of a 14-0 second quarter run.  The Light Blue made it a 20-point game after three and widen it to a game-high 28 points with just under four minutes to go in the contest.  Defensively, they limited the Bulldogs to 32% shooting and only 49 points, the first time they held an Ivy opponent under 50 this season.

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Ivy men’s week seven roundup: Ancient Eight’s top 10

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Week seven for the Ancient Eight saw Yale avenge its shocking opening day loss at Columbia and move into a tie at the top of the conference leaderboard.  After a close half that saw the Bulldogs holding onto a slim 31-26 lead, the Bulldogs outscored the last-place Lions 58-32 for the dominant 31-point win.  Yale, winners of six straight, had 13 different players in the scoring column and shot 65% from the field. 

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Penn women take revenge on Harvard, 70-64

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Passion! Great performances! Revenge! You could enjoy them all on the radio — the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday broadcast had “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” — or you could find them at the Palestra in West Philly, where the Penn women took down Harvard, 70-64.

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Ivy women’s week six roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top Ten

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On Friday night, league-leading Columbia continued its “Revenge Tour” by dominating Penn by 22 points at Levien Gymnasium, avenging a surprise four-point loss to the Quakers on January 7.  The Crimson also had payback on their minds, as they traveled down to New Haven to take on a Yale team that defeated them 71-70 in overtime on that same January day.  Harvard’s defense took control over the opening 20 minutes, limiting the Elis to 19% (0% from three) from the field and opening up a 33-13 halftime lead that the visitors could not overcome.  

Meanwhile, Princeton, which entered the weekend tied for second with Penn and Harvard, rattled off a 17-5 run over a six-minute stretch of the third quarter to ring up a double-digit victory over Cornell.  In the night’s remaining contest, Brown swept the season series over Dartmouth on the strength of 10 three-pointers.

The Big Red suffered another big third-quarter run, giving up 17 straight points to the Quakers on Saturday, as Penn took the second half of their Empire State weekend. Harvard methodically built a 26-point fourth-quarter lead and ended up winning by 13 at Brown. The victory gave the Crimson a season sweep over the Bears and was the team’s fifth in a row.

Down three at the half, Yale outscored Dartmouth 28-17 in the third quarter to lead the Bulldogs to a 13-point win.  While Yale’s season sweep of the Big Green and weekend split keeps it in the hunt for a slot in the Ivy Tournament, Dartmouth’s 14th straight loss keeps them winless in Ivy action and eliminates it from postseason play.

Like last February, the Lions and Tigers faced off in front of a boisterous capacity crowd at Levien Gymnasium with first place on the line.  And just like a year ago, Princeton controlled the game from the very beginning, quickly taking the students out of the contest and running away with a commanding 18-point victory. 

The Tigers’ eighth win in a row was the first their first taste of Ivy revenge in the Carla Berube era, rebounding from an 58-55 defeat at home in early January.  

With nine league games in the book, Princeton, Columbia and Harvard sit atop the standings, while Penn is one game back in fourth and Yale is two games behind. 

While the preseason favorite Tigers and Lions split their season series, the commanding nature of Princeton’s road win, the reemergence of the team’s offense and the presence of the Ivy League Tournament at Jadwin Gymnasium seems to put the Orange & Black in the driver’s seat for the league’s automatic bid.

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Ivy men’s week six roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top Ten

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The opening games of the second half of the Ivy slate ended with sweeps by Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown.  The Ps did their traditional double wins from home, while the New Englanders were able to earn their victories on the road.

On Friday, the Tigers welcomed Cornell to Jadwin Gymnasium in a match between the league’s top two teams.  Prior to the start of the contest, Princeton honored its championship teams from 1996 to 1998, which included Tigers head coach Mitch Henderson and Big Red coach Brian Earl.   The Orange & Black overcame a 13-point second half deficit to claim sole possession of first place.  The win gave Henderson his 200th career victory. 

A day later, the Tigers gave Henderson win number 201 with a comfortable 22-point victory over Columbia, the last-place team in the Ancient Eight.

Yale showed it has completely rebounded from its opening losses to Columbia and Dartmouth by extending its winning streak to five. 

The Bulldogs were hot on the offensive side in the first half at Harvard, opening up a 17-point halftime lead.  The Crimson tightened the defense in the second half and cut the lead to five with 2:25 to go in regulation, but a 0-for-6 effort the rest of the way ultimately doomed Harvard.  With the victory, the Bulldogs completed their second straight season sweep of their Boston rivals.

At Leede Arena, Yale used a 13-0 run to close out the first half and take an 11-point lead into the locker room.  The visitors never let the Big Green get closer than 10 and cruised to a 19-point revenge win that gave them sole possession of second place.

Against Columbia on Friday night, Penn took an 18-point advantage at the 13:15 mark of the second half, but the Lions clawed their way back and made it a five-point contest with two minutes on the clock.  Similar to Harvard against Yale, Columbia closed the game 1-for-6 and the Quakers came away winning by nine.

Saturday’s matchup between Penn and Cornell was an offensive slugfest with 10 lead changes over the first 30 minutes of action.  The Quakers eventually opened up a nine-point lead with 7:19 to go and held on against the never-say-die Big Red.  The win, which split the season series, gave Penn its fourth in a row and its 46th all-time sweep of the Empire Ivies.

The Big Red, meanwhile, dropped from the top of the leaderboard to a tie for third after the lost weekend.

In Friday’s game in Hanover, Brown tied a season high with 13-made three-pointers on their way to a season sweep of Dartmouth.  Although limited to 24% shooting in the opening half, the Big Green got within seven points with 9:25 left in the contest.  The Bears used a 10-2 run over the next four minutes to put the game away.

After four ties and five lead changes in a close contest between Brown and Harvard, Bruno used a 16-zero run to open up a 15-point lead almost halfway through the second half.   For the second straight night, the Crimson battled back, eventually making it a two-point game with six seconds remaining.  Brown made one of two free throws and the home team couldn’t convert the game-tying three-pointer at the buzzer.

Bruno’s win was the 133rd victory of head coach Mike Martin’s career, tying him for the program lead with Stanley Ward.  It also avenged a 70-68 overtime loss to Harvard at the Pizzitola Center on January 6 and put the team in a three-way tie for third place with Cornell and Penn.

By late Saturday night, Dartmouth dropped to sole possession of sixth place, while Harvard, losers of three straight was alone in seventh.

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