Ethan Roberts

Quakeaways from No. 14 Penn men’s basketball’s NCAA Tournament loss to No. 3 Illinois

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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?

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2025-26 IHO Men’s All-Ivy Awards

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The Ivy League announced its major men’s awards Wednesday. But we know this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Ivy Hoops Online’s 2025-26 All-Ivy Awards, as determined by IHO’s contributors prior to the 2026 Ivy League Tournament:

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Factors favoring No. 14 Penn men’s basketball and No. 3 Illinois in their NCAA Tournament matchup

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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:

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Penn men’s basketball draws a No. 14 seed, matchup with No. 3 Illinois in NCAA Tournament

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Four hours after it secured its first NCAA Tournament berth since 2018 on Sunday, Penn men’s basketball learned it’s a No. 14 seed in the Big Dance and will play No. 3 Illinois in Greenville, S.C. in the tournament’s South region.

Penn and Illinois will tip off at 9:25 p.m. Thursday in Greenville, S.C., with Ian Eagle, Bill Raftery, Grant Hill and Tracy Wolfson on the call on TNT.

In that previous NCAA Tournament appearance, Penn controversially drew a No. 16 seed and a matchup in Wichita, Kan. with No. 1 Kansas, to whom it lost, 76-60.

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Quakeaways from No. 3 Penn men’s basketball’s Ivy League Tournament final win over No. 3 Yale

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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?

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s sweep of Dartmouth and Harvard

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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?

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Penn men’s basketball second-half takeover downs Dartmouth

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Dartmouth and Penn men’s basketball tip off at the Palestra on Feb. 27, 2026. (Ray Curren / Ivy Hoops Online)

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.

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How Yale men’s basketball edged Penn sans Nick Townsend

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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.

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s home sweep of Columbia and Cornell

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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 …

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s win over Princeton

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PHILADELPHIA — The streak is dead.

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?

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