Jerome Allen

Delaware State downs Penn in overtime, 77-75

by

PHILADELPHIA – Penn had been in this situation before. Tied game. A few seconds left on the clock. Coach Jerome Allen with a chance to draw up a play to give the Quakers the victory. And over the last two seasons, the Quakers had struggled to come through in the clutch.

Junior Tony Hicks, the Quakers’ go-to scorer, ended up with the ball in his hands as the clock neared zero, and just like recent years, he couldn’t seal the deal. His bank shot rimmed out as the clock struck zero.

And in overtime, just like recent years, Penn allowed a lesser opponent to sneak by for a victory. Delaware State defeated Penn, 77-75, after the Quakers couldn’t shut the door late in the second half.

With numerous opportunities to finish the Hornets off, Hicks instead faded down the stretch, his fellow classmate Darien Nelson-Henry provided no help, and the failures of old crept out of the Palestra walls.

“It was just a play that didn’t go down,” Hicks said of his shot at winning the contest in regulation.

Read more

No More ‘Next Games’ for Jerome Allen, Penn Basketball

by

In his first post for Ivy Hoops Online, former Daily Pennsylvanian Sports Editor John Phillips weighs in on what this season means for the future of Jerome Allen and Penn basketball. 

It is Penn coach Jerome Allen’s favorite mantra: The next game is the most important, because it’s the next time we play.

For the four-plus seasons Allen has served as Penn’s coach, however, that has rarely been true. There have been plenty of meaningless games played under Allen’s eye for the Red and Blue. He carries a 56-85 record into this season, so the next games on the schedule haven’t mattered much where winning is concerned.

But even when the team was going a combined 17-42 over the last two seasons and some were calling for Allen to be fired depending on his team’s performance during a stretch of bad games, Allen’s mantra proved to be false as well. Due to a long list of reasons, or what some would consider excuses, Allen’s struggles have been given a free pass. After superstar Zack Rosen left the team, Penn’s struggles were framed as natural following the departure of such a strong presence. Then, last year, after Allen’s team showed a stark lack of discipline throughout the season, Allen made a culture change in the locker room that led to Julian Harrell and Henry Brooks, two of the most talented players on Penn’s roster, leaving the team. So despite the struggles that Penn faced on the court in 2013-14, the Quakers were still granted a reprieve, supporting the argument that each “next game” Allen’s squad faced last season was in no way the most important.

Read more

Q&A with Daily Pennsylvanian Senior Sports Editor Steven Tydings

by

The Daily Pennsylvanian’s annual Penn Basketball Supplement is out today, and I encourage you to check it out, not because I’m a DP alum but because it’s a very thorough, insightful supplement. In fact, there are some genuine nuggets in the DP’s supplement, including Tony Hicks’s reasoning for changing his jersey number from ‘1’ to ’11’ this season – “It was kind of egotistical, and I just wanted to get away from that” – and the team’s reaction to being projected to finish seventh in the Ivy League – “We break huddles; we say: ‘Seven.’ We commit bad plays during practice on offense or defense; sometimes coaches will say ‘Seven.’”

So optimism abounds for Penn basketball in spite of last season’s 8-20 finish, but how’s the team looking up close and personal right now? I reached out to my successor as Daily Pennsylvanian senior sports editor, Steven Tydings, for an inside look at the Quakers.

Read more

2014-15 Penn Season Preview – Empires Crumble

by

Ancient QuakerNothing lasts forever.  Of what was once a powerful 500-year-old Republic, all that remains now of the Roman Empire are some weathered boulders scattered across Italy in the form of decaying monuments. And what has become of Britain’s Empire that once stretched to every continent on the planet? It has been reduced to a token naval force and an army of T-shirted, potbellied, Guinness-fueled, vomiting soccer hooligans who now invade neighboring lands in the name of “Man U” instead of Her Majesty the Queen.

Therefore it should not be a shock to Quaker fans that the era of Quaker hoops dominance is now effectively over. Having ruled admirably over the Ivy League for almost 30 years (along with Princeton—an effete and supercilious France to our noble and righteous England), the torch has now been passed to upstart Harvard. (The powerful but crass and cultureless “America” if you will in my little imperial scenario.) What was for years our birthright (at least we thought it was) is now handily out of reach for the foreseeable future.  Since our last championship in 2007, The League has been effectively turned upside down with Harvard, Columbia, Yale and, most likely, Brown at the top.  Twenty years ago, no one could ever have imagined this anymore than they could a bunch of ill-equipped colonists defeating the most powerful Domain in the history of civilization.

Read more

The Top 10 Nonconference Matchups for Ivies This Season

by

Oddly, the main theme of last month’s Ivy preseason teleconference seemed to be the value of tough nonconference scheduling. Nearly every Ivy coach talked at length about how scheduling a challenging nonconference slate made teams better. We all know that strength of schedule becomes a major factor for teams in power conferences as Selection Sunday approaches, but that doesn’t apply to the 14-game tournament that is the Ivy League. Still, we’ll likely to learn a lot about our beloved Ancient Eight when they hit the road to take on some of the nation’s most powerful programs. At the very least, nonconference play can be exciting when we least expect it. Who expected Cornell to jump out to a 14-point lead at No. 8 Syracuse last November? Who expected No. 2 Michigan State to trail Columbia by seven in the second half at the Breslin Center and the game to swing for good on back-to-back phony shot clock countdowns?

Read more

Penn Roster Preview – 2014-15 Edition

by

Now or never season for Jerome Allen? Now or never season for Jerome Allen.

That being said, this is a very young roster as seven of Penn’s top 10 scorers from last season are gone, which means that Penn’s nonconference play may not be as telling as it was a year ago when it was clear very early on – like, the season opener – that the Quakers were in trouble. This roster needs time to gel, and it will have to gel before the program starts stringing together wins with any consistency. So it’ll be a while before we can properly evaluate what pieces Allen is working with here.

Read more

A Long Road Ahead for Penn

by
There's no sugar coating the state of the Penn program here, but The AQ supports the Quakers through thick and thin.
There’s no sugar coating the dire state of the Penn program here, but The AQ supports the Quakers through thick and thin.

“You don’t want to lose to a team that doesn’t play well, that isn’t well coached, that doesn’t play with class…..Penn plays hard, is well coached, and they play with class.”  -Princeton’s Basketball Coach, 2014.

Unfortunately, the above quote was referring to Penn’s 2014 Ivy Champion women’s basketball team. In the span of four short years, Mike McLaughlin has remarkably turned the women’s basketball program from worst (2-26) to first– in almost the same time frame that Jerome Allen has managed to coach the men’s team into the Ivy cellar.

In my opinion, none of the attributes quoted above can be used to describe the Quaker men. Even watching the NCAA Tournament, it looks like other teams are playing 21st Century hoops while Penn is now mired somewhere in the Mesozoic Era. The turnovers, the fouls, the loss of poise, and the lack of hustle and awareness have made them impossible to watch. Just as disturbing is the complete lack of growth, discipline, and maturity, particularly among the second and third year players. Here is a brief laundry list of recent events.

Read more

Weekend’s Winners

by
Yale and Penn pulled off improbable sweeps this weekend to throw a little chaos into the Ivy picture.
Yale and Penn pulled off improbable sweeps this weekend to throw a little chaos into the Ivy picture.

Another Saturday night, another surprise: James Jones’ squad brings a level of defensive intensity previously unseen, while putting together a shooting performance for the ages. Yale outplayed Harvard for 40 minutes at Lavietes and now brings a share of the Ivy League lead back to New Haven at 5-1.

Meanwhile, a fan base that was calling for Jerome’s head one week ago will be a little quieter this week, as the Quakers rode a huge performance from Fran Dougherty to a big win over Columbia.

Elsewhere, Princeton and Brown salvaged splits against two teams destined for the bottom half.

Let’s get to the weekend’s big winners…

Read more

The Ship Be Sinkin’

by
An embarrassing sweep up north has left the Penn faithful up in arms about how to fix the mess in Philly.
An embarrassing sweep up north has left the Penn faithful up in arms about how to fix the mess in Philly.

 

“The ship be sinkin’.”

Former New York Knick guard Michael Ray Richardson uttered these words just a few years prior to the drafting of Patrick Ewing, the eventual “savior“ of a then horribly dysfunctional franchise. The question now for Quaker fans is who will rescue Penn’s once proud “crown jewel” athletic team, a similarly dysfunctional organization that is now in desperate need of salvation.

Read more

The Thaw

by
Penn shocked the Ivy world by pushing the pace and rebounding, knocking off title contender and archrival Princeton at the Palestra.
Penn shook up the Ivy race by pushing the pace and rebounding, knocking off title contender and archrival Princeton at the Palestra.

I suppose I would be remiss if I did not comment on Saturday night’s game.

The Penn-Princeton rivalry is, and always has been, special. In fact, as I recall our games at both the Palestra and that drafty, geodesic aircraft hanger in New Jersey, my ears still ring. Saturday’s contest was indeed no exception in our shared history as the Quakers finally showed a flash of the kind of team that everyone (including me) thought they could, would, and should be.  The Tigers are a decent team (I stop short of classifying them as  “a good team” because, after all, it’s the Tigers), and Penn, along with the much-vilified Jerome Allen, should be congratulated for taking them down in exciting fashion. The Red & Blue somehow managed to do everything they hadn’t done during most of their brutal and disappointing non-conference schedule, namely: rebound (42-25), defend, and play a full 40 minutes of hoops. Still, they almost gave the game away by once again beating themselves with costly fouls and turnovers.  Their bench play was also better but, in general, remained mostly invisible. Princeton, for their part, happened to have an off night from the three point line, a usual strength of their team, thus validating the axiom, “live by the three, die by the three.” Tonight, they died. [Ed. note: This is what’s possible when you shoot over half of your attempts from behind the arc– 50.7%, the highest percentage in the country– you are bound to have off nights like that.]

Read more