Simone Sawyer went out with a bang, and the Penn women’s basketball team wrapped up its season sooner than it wanted but with an emphatic home win Saturday over Brown, 69-56.
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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s sweep of Dartmouth and Harvard
PHILADELPHIA — Merry clinchmas, Quakers fans.
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 women’s basketball blows by Dartmouth
A day after losing its last chance at Ivy Madness, the Penn women’s basketball team came out and put on a championship-level clinic at Dartmouth, barely missing a shot in the first quarter en route to an 89-66 victory Saturday night.
Harvard women’s basketball locks up Ivy League Tournament berth, eliminating Penn
The Harvard women’s basketball team punched its ticket to Ivy Madness on Friday night with a home win against Penn, 60-46 – but not before the Quakers gave the Crimson a scare.
Penn men’s basketball second-half takeover downs Dartmouth
PHILADELPHIA – There isn’t exactly a large sample size of Ivy League transfers from Duke (or Virginia for that matter), so when TJ Power signed with Penn last spring, the bar was set pretty high.
How Yale men’s basketball edged Penn sans Nick Townsend
No Nick Townsend. No problem.
Yale men’s basketball had sophomore forward Isaac Celiscar and senior forward Casey Simmons, and that duo powered Yale to a 74-70 win over surging Penn at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday afternoon.
With the win, Yale (21-4, 9-2 Ivy) clinched a bid to the Ivy League Tournament.
Penn women’s basketball keeps hope alive by beating Yale
The Penn women’s basketball team got the win it needed Saturday at home – not an inspiring win, not a dramatic one, but a comfortable one against a shorthanded and struggling Yale squad, 68-52, to stay in the race for a slot in Ivy Madness.
Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s loss at Yale
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.
What did Penn fans learn from a tough afternoon?
Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s home sweep of Columbia and Cornell
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 …
Columbia women’s basketball takes revenge on Penn
Columbia wasn’t going to let lightning strike twice.
Two weeks after the women’s basketball team lost to Penn in West Philly, it put on a showcase of smothering defense, consistently found the open shooter in the lane or on the perimeter, withstood a Penn comeback and won comfortably at home Saturday, 69-56, at Levien Gym.