George Smith

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 76-72 upset of No. 21 Villanova

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With a little ball-fake and a half jab step, Tyler Perkins generated just enough space to rise up over Villanova’s Brendan Hausen and create a memory Penn fans will remember forever.

The freshman sensation used those moves to bury a corner three in front of the Penn bench that pushed the Quakers’ lead over the Associated Press No. 21 Wildcats to 11 points with four minutes to play and sent the Palestra into a frenzy. After weathering one last barrage of Villanova three-pointers, Penn sealed a stunning 76-72 upset over the Wildcats.

For the Quakers (3-1, 1-1 Big 5), the win was their first triumph over a ranked team since a nearly identical upset over Villanova at the Palestra in December 2018; that edition of the Wildcats was defending an NCAA title and entered ranked 17th in the AP poll.

The images the upset generated — Perkins throwing the ball into the air in joy as time expired, fans storming the court — are the ones that, in a perfect world, would create a whole new generation of dedicated Quakers fans.

What else can Penn fans hold onto from a magical Monday night?

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 69-61 loss at St. Joseph’s

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Penn senior guard Clark Slajchert notched 27 points in 38 minutes, shooting 5-for-8 from three-point range, in his team’s 69-61 loss at St. Joseph’s Friday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Penn’s first trip out of the friendly confines of the Palestra ended in disappointment after the Quakers couldn’t quite complete a valiant second-half comeback against Saint Joseph’s in a 69-61 loss at Hagan Arena.

Despite cutting a 19-point Hawks lead to just two points at three instances late in the second half, Penn (2-1, 0-1 Big 5) never had the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead, thanks to a series of bad breaks and mistakes that were reminiscent of last season’s Ivy Madness loss to Princeton.

The backbreaking sequence came with just under four minutes left to play and the Quakers trailing just 61-59. Saint Joseph’s Kacper Klaczek bricked the front end of a one-and-one, but Penn surrendered an offensive rebound and layup to Rasheer Fleming to extend the Hawks’ lead to four.

On Penn’s next possession, normally-reliable free throw shooter Clark Slajchert missed the front end of a one-and-one. Nick Spinoso corralled the offensive board and looked like he had a clear shot at a layup, but got rejected by Klaczek.

There would be other miscues later on, including a blown fast break opportunity with two minutes to go that could have cut the Hawks’ back lead down to one possession, but that sequence hurt Penn the most.

The loss will give Penn fans plenty to mull over, like how …

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2023-24 Ivy men’s media day recap and season preview

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With the season a few weeks away, the Ivy League hosted its Men’s Basketball Media Day on Thursday. the second of two hoops-themed media availabilities. The event was hosted over Zoom for media members and is available on the conference’s YouTube channel.

The preseason media poll was released on Tuesday with Yale, last year’s regular season co-champions, securing the top spot. Princeton, which used its Ivy League Tournament title victory as a springboard to a Sweet 16 NCAA Tournament run, was picked second.

The Bulldogs received 14 of 16 first-place votes, while the Tigers earned the other two top votes.

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Picking up the pieces after Jordan Dingle leaves Penn men’s basketball behind

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Jordan Dingle has entered the NCAA transfer portal, a seismic move that dramatically lowers expectations for Penn’s 2023-24 campaign and suggests the task of getting top talent to stick around could get taller for other Ivy League programs. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

April 28, 2023 will go down as one of the darkest days in recent Penn basketball history.

That was the day news broke that reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Jordan Dingle had opted to enter the transfer portal instead of returning for his senior season and making one last run at an Ivy title and NCAA Tournament appearance with the Red and Blue.

This writer frequently looks for some sort of silver lining or happy takeaway, even after the worst Penn losses. There is none this time.

If you’re pessimistically inclined, Dingle’s departure arguably closes the book on Penn’s 2023-24 season, six months before it even begins.

Bart Torvik’s preseason 2023-24 rankings had Penn ranked 80th initially and 98th earlier this week as talent began to flow through the transfer portal. Sans Dingle, Penn now sits 150th, fifth in the Ivy League and only 36 spots clear of seventh-place Dartmouth.

With Dingle, Penn could reasonably have been called co-favorites for the Ivy title alongside Yale and an outside contender for a NCAA Tournament at-large bid with aggressive scheduling.

Now? It will be a battle to even qualify for the Ivy League Tournament.

The effects of Dingle’s exit — just a small handful of which are listed below — will be felt through not just the program but the Ivy League for years to come.

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Road to redemption: A look ahead to 2023-24 for Penn men’s basketball

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Penn gets to benefit from Jordan Dingle’s dynamic scoring prowess again next season. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

March is defined by thin margins.

Penn’s season collapsed with the blow of a referee’s whistle with 90 seconds to go in its Ivy League tournament semifinal against Princeton. If Nick Spinoso’s charge on the Tigers’ Keeshawn Kellman in a one-point game had been ruled a no-call or a flop, would Penn have advanced?

Yale can ask itself a similar question. If August Mahoney — the third-best free throw shooter in the country — converted his one-and-one with 2:18 to go in a three-point game in the Ivy League Tournament final against Princeton, would the Bulldogs have completed their furious second-half rally?

Both those teams could only watch as Princeton went on to go on a magical run to the Sweet 16, the deepest an Ivy League champion has gone in the NCAA Tournament since 2010.

Plenty of Penn fans are probably still bitter, and could you blame them?

But a look at the Quakers’ returning roster indicates that fans’ high expectations for redemption in 2023-24 will be well-justified:

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Princeton men overpower Penn in Ivy League Tournament semifinal

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Senior forward Tosan Evbuomwan recorded a game-high 21 points in 37 minutes in Princeton’s Ivy League Tournament semifinal win at Jadwin Gym Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Our George “Toothless Tiger” Clark recaps Princeton’s 77-70 Ivy League Tournament semifinal win over Penn at Jadwin Gym Saturday:

Two takeaway quotes:

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men’s Ivy League Tournament semifinal loss to Princeton

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Ivy Player of the Year Jordan Dingle’s 19 points and six assists in 37 minutes weren’t enough to push Penn past Princeton in their Ivy League Tournament semifinal clash at Jadwin Gym Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

PRINCETON, N.J. — Penn and its fans will be replaying the final two minutes of Saturday’s Ivy League Tournament semifinal against Princeton for a long time.

What was setting up to be a thrilling finish ended only in deflation and disappointment, as a late series of critical 50-50 situations all broke the wrong way in a 77-70 loss to the hated Tigers.

Penn had the ball down 71-70 with 90 seconds left when junior guard Jordan Dingle made a pass out of a double team to sophomore forward Nick Spinoso at the top of the key.

Spinoso faked a pass to a cutting Dingle, then tried to spin off Princeton senior forward Keeshawn Kellman in the lane. Kellman flew backwards as if he had been hit by sniper fire, and the officials obliged with a charge call that mystified even the ESPN broadcast team. Penn never had the ball with a chance to take the lead again.

One call, of course, does not define a game. Penn had plenty of self-inflicted wounds on Saturday, one of many dispiriting Quakeaways:

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Ivy League Tournament men’s semifinal preview: No. 3 Penn vs. No. 2 Princeton

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Ivy League Tournament – at Jadwin Gymnasium (Princeton)

Saturday, March 11: Semifinal at Jadwin Gym
No. 2 Princeton (19-8, 10-4 Ivy) vs No. 3 Penn (17-12, 9-5 Ivy) at 11:00 a.m. (available on ESPNU and ESPN+)

Game #1, 1/16/23: Princeton over Penn (home), 72-60
Game #2, 3/4/23: Princeton (home) over Penn, 77-69 (OT)

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men’s colossal collapse at Princeton

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The plan Penn coach Steve Donahue oversaw to limit reigning Ivy Player of the Year Tosan Evbuomwan’s effectiveness worked Saturday at Princeton, but his team still lost to the Tigers for an eighth straight outing. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

PRINCETON, N.J. — It is hard to envision a more disheartening end to an Ivy League regular season than the collapse Penn orchestrated on Saturday at Jadwin Gymnasium.

The Quakers (17-12, 9-5 Ivy) squandered a 17-point second-half lead before falling in overtime to Princeton (19-8, 10-4), 77-69, handing a share of the Ivy regular season title to their most bitter rivals.

Penn’s undoing was an offensive outage when it mattered most. After sophomore guard George Smith hit a contested layup to extend the Quakers’ edge to 66-58 with 4:16 to go, the team did not make a shot from the field for the remainder of regulation or overtime, a 9:16 stretch.

The Quakers are now locked into the No. 3 seed for next Saturday’s Ivy League Tournament, which will also be held at Jadwin. They will either get a third crack at Princeton or a rubber match against Yale, depending on the result of Yale’s Saturday night road game against Brown.

All the good feelings from Penn’s eight-game winning streak have disappeared in a flash, replaced by a handful of mostly painful Quakeaways:

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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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