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Down Go Those Nets! ✂️#MakeShots 🐯🏀 pic.twitter.com/po8escJul4
— Princeton Men’s Basketball (@PrincetonMBB) March 4, 2023
Our George “Toothless Tiger” Clark recaps what Princeton coach Mitch Henderson called the best win he’s ever had, a 76-69 victory over archrival Penn to clinch a second straight Ivy League title and the 29th in program history:
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:
PHILADELPHIA — Penn is one win away from at least a share of the Ivy League regular season championship after a businesslike 89-79 win over Dartmouth at the Palestra on Senior Day.
The Quakers never trailed after the 16-minute mark of the first half, but there were some dicey moments along the way. At one point, a 9-0 Big Green run midway through the second half cut the visiting team’s deficit to 64-61 and forced Penn coach Steve Donahue into a timeout with 9:19 to play.
Coming out of the break, junior forward Max Martz proved to be Penn’s stopper.
Martz got a mismatch in the post against Dartmouth’s Ryan Cornish, backed down the guard and drained a righty hook to extend the Red and Blue’s lead back to five. He then went on to add two three-pointers from the corner and a second jumper over the next four-plus minutes to hold Dartmouth at bay. Martz finished the afternoon with 18 points and a team-high KenPom offensive rating of 163 points per 100 possessions.
Penn will need a performance like that from Martz next Saturday at Princeton in arguably the team’s biggest regular-season game in five years.
During the long wait, Quakers fans will have plenty to ruminate on, such as how …
Penn is on the verge of a trip to the Ivy League Tournament after pulling off one of its most thrilling victories in years.
The Quakers (15-11, 7-4 Ivy) took down Yale, 66-64, Friday night in a classic Palestra matchup between two teams that have now split their home-and-home series for six consecutive seasons. The two teams exchanged the lead 14 times. Neither led by more than six points.
Penn took the lead for good when sophomore guard George Smith hit an open three at the top of the key off a nice feed from Max Martz to give the Quakers a 52-50 lead with 7:19 to go.
The end was a sequence of events that likely gave Penn fans heart palpitations. The Quakers held a four-point lead with less than 13 seconds to go, but let Bulldogs (17-7, 7-4) guard John Poulakidas hit an open three with about 5.8 seconds on the clock.
Penn got the ball inbounds without issue, but normally reliable free-throw shooter Clark Slajchert split a pair at the line. Despite getting a chance to tie or win the game, Yale could not get off a final shot before the buzzer sounded.
There’s a lot for Penn fans to process ahead of a Saturday night tilt against Brown, such as how …
Penn took a huge step towards securing a berth in Ivy Madness on Saturday with a nearly wire-to-wire 80-72 win over Harvard in Cambridge, Mass.
Though the Quakers (14-11, 6-4 Ivy) led the game for 38:59, there were some nervous moments in the second half, as careless turnovers and a scoring drought that spanned 5:51 of game time let the Crimson (12-12, 3-7) close their deficit to as little as three points with 3:37 to go.
Penn only made one field goal in the game’s final 10 minutes — a corner three from sophomore guard George Smith — and relied on 20-23 free throw shooting in the final 3:18 to keep Harvard at bay. Smith hit five three throws in that span, as did senior swingman Lucas Monroe.
The Red and Blue pretty much stuck the dagger in Harvard’s playoff hopes with the victory; Harvard now sits alone in seventh place in the Ivy standings, three full games out of playoff position.
Meanwhile, Penn sits just a game out of first place in the league and controls its own destiny for at least a share of the Ivy crown.
That tantalizing possibility is one of many things Penn fans can chew over from an uplifting win, such as the fact that …
Penn picked up a potentially season-changing win on Saturday night.
By downing Cornell at the Palestra, 92-86, the Quakers (13-11, 5-4 Ivy) are now tied for third in the league and control their own destiny for an Ivy Madness berth. The win over the Big Red (15-7, 5-4) was also Penn’s first against a team considered a serious contender for the Ivy title.
The Quakers beat Cornell at its own game: a shootout. Penn hit 11 threes on 23 attempts, none bigger than the one sophomore guard George Smith hit off a feed from Lucas Monroe with 11:10 remaining to tie the game at 62.
After a few empty possessions for both teams, junior guard Clark Slajchert hit two free throws after he was fouled while shooting a three with 10:41 to play, which put the Quakers ahead for good.
Penn is now multiple games over .500 for the first time since the 2019-20 season. There will be plenty for the team’s fans to chew on before a Feb. 11 contest at Harvard, such as the fact that …
Penn’s Friday night contest against Columbia at the Palestra likely won’t be featured much in the team’s end-of-season highlight reel, but the Quakers got the job done with a 74-65 win that was a bit closer than the final score indicated.
Though the Lions (6-17, 1-7 Ivy) never led past the 17:43 mark of the first half, they managed to close a deficit that swelled to as much as 18 points to five at multiple instances late in the second half.
But Columbia could get no farther. Junior guard Jordan Dingle twice quelled Lions rallies, once through an and-one to push Penn’s lead from 60-54 to 63-54 with 3:41 to play, and a second time through a three-pointer from the left wing to turn a 65-60 advantage into 68-60 with 2:20 to play.
With six games left to play in the Ivy season, Penn (12-11, 4-4) has a clear — though far from automatic — path to Ivy Madness, one of a small handful of Quakeaways from the Red and Blue’s third consecutive win.
After another exciting weekend of Ivy hoops that saw all the home teams holding serve, the league standings have a tie at the top, and seven teams are separated by only two games.
Yale continued its dominance of Princeton, winning for the eighth time in their last nine matchups. Meanwhile, Penn, losers of three straight league contests, won its third straight over Harvard in a must-win game at the Palestra.
Cornell, missing Nazir Williams, took care of Brown, which was without Kalu Anya, Dan Friday and Malachi Ndur. Dartmouth continued its strong league play with a victory over Columbia, its third league win it its last four contests and finds itself over .500 at the halfway point for the first time since 2009.
Saturday results
Yale over Princeton, 87-65
Penn over Harvard, 83-68
Cornell over Brown, 80-73
Dartmouth over Columbia, 83-73
Standings
Cornell 5-2 (15-5, overall)
Princeton 5-2 (14-6)
Yale 4-3 (14-6)
Dartmouth 4-3 (8-13)
Harvard 3-4 (12-9)
Brown 3-4 (10-10)
Penn 3-4 (11-11)
Columbia 1-6 (6-16)
The second half of the schedule starts with a big back-to-back weekend, highlighted by a matchup between the league leaders at Jadwin Gymnasium and Yale looking for revenge against Dartmouth at Leede Arena.
Fri., Feb. 3
Yale at Harvard, 5:00 p.m.
Brown at Dartmouth, 6:00 p.m.
Columbia at Penn, 7:00 p.m.
Cornell at Princeton, 7:00 p.m.
Sat., Feb. 4
Yale at Dartmouth, 6:00 p.m.
Brown at Harvard, 6:00 p.m.
Columbia at Princeton, 6:00 p.m.
Cornell at Penn, 6:00 p.m.
Below are 10 of the top performances from the weekend: –
Penn’s Monday night matchup against Hartford was a lopsided risk-reward proposition.
A win would mean nothing to the Quakers’ postseason ambitions, while a road loss to the second-worst team in Division I (Hartford entered the game 362nd out of 363 teams in KenPom) would have been one of the worst defeats in program history.
After a bit of a dicey start, Penn turned on the jets and left the Hawks behind, 76-52. The nonconference win snapped a three-game losing streak for the Quakers (10-11).
Penn fell behind early, 19-11, and allowed Hartford (4-17) to start out shooting 8-for-10 from the field. But after coach Steve Donahue made a hockey-style line change, the Quakers’ reserves sparked a 26-9 run over the rest of the first half.
Junior guard Jordan Dingle got a lot more action in this matchup against Hartford than he did in the Quakers’ 75-55 win over the Hawks at the Palestra back in November, in which he played just 18 minutes. Dingle poured in 23 points in 28 minutes on Monday, right in line with his season average.
His performance was one of many happy Quakeaways from the victory.
PHILADELPHIA — Penn’s season looks like it’s on the verge of spinning out of control after the Quakers delivered a dispiriting offensive performance en route to a 72-60 home defeat against archrival Princeton.
If you had told the average Quakers fan prior to the game that Penn (9-10, 2-3 Ivy) would hold Princeton (13-5, 4-1) to 40.4% shooting from the field, four made three-pointers on 25 attempts and just six assists on 23 made baskets, they would have told you that the Red and Blue would likely win by double digits.
Instead, the Quakers one-upped the Tigers’ offensive futility. Penn failed to make a single three-pointer on Monday, and, in fact, has not hit a single shot from long distance since Jordan Dingle’s four-point play opportunity with 3:29 to go in the first half of Penn’s Saturday loss to Dartmouth.
The backbreaking sequence for the Quakers came with roughly 10:38 to go in the second half and Princeton up two, 40-38. The Tigers’ Ryan Langborg freed himself from Penn’s Andrew Laczkowski for a decent look at a three and drained the shot. Penn forward Nick Spinoso was simultaneously called for a foul away from the ball.
Princeton was in the bonus, so standout freshman Caden Pierce calmly drained both ends of a one-and-one to complete the five-point possession. The Tigers’ lead was just seven points, 45-38, but it may as well have been 20, given Penn’s offensive struggles.
Most of the Quakeaways from Monday are ugly, so look away if you must: