Tyler Perkins delivered a strong 15-point performance in his collegiate debut. (Penn Athletics)
Chalk up Penn’s first game in the post-Jordan Dingle era as a success.
The Quakers raced out to a 30-9 lead in the first six-plus minutes against Division III John Jay on Monday at the Palestra and didn’t look back en route to a 102-57 win.
With the second-leading scorer in Division I gone to St. John’s, Penn (1-0) relied on offensive production by committee; five players scored in double figures.
Monday’s contest was, in all practicality, a preseason game. But the Quakers put enough on tape to have some meaningful Quakeaways ahead of Wednesday’s home game against Bucknell.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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:
Empty media room seat in memory of Grant Wahl (Photo by Rob Browne)
The morning of day two of Ivy Madness had more people in the media room and arena as the men’s teams took the stage for their interview sessions.
It’s certainly worth noting the empty media room seat left unoccupied as a tribute to Grant Wahl, the award-winning college basketball and soccer journalist who died a few months ago due to complications associated with Marfan syndrome. Wahl attended Princeton from 1992 to 1996 and began his career as a reporter for the Daily Princetonian. A very nice touch by everyone at the Ivy League office and Princeton Athletics.
Some more observations from the pre-semifinal part of the day:
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)
The Ivy League announced its major men’s awards Tuesday, but we know this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Ivy Hoops Online’s 2022-23 All-Ivy Awards, as determined by IHO’s contributors:
