Palestra

Off the Bench: Mataya Gayle ’27 of Penn women’s basketball

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Ivy League hoopsters are Division I athletes on the court and exceptionally accomplished and multi-dimensional humans off it. Ivy Hoops Online presents a new series, Off the Bench, that takes fans inside the stories that you might not otherwise know from the stands or via your screen. 

Next up is Mataya Gayle ’27, a rising senior on the Penn women’s basketball team, and a psychology major from Woodstock, Ga. While our previous installment highlighted the relationship of two brothers attending Princeton together, here we delve into the experience of a sibling with nine brothers and sisters at home! Through her eyes we see how her birth order and family system have prepared her for the key role she has played, and will play one more season, in the Palestra and beyond:

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Burning questions for Penn men’s basketball: Palestra Ivy Madness edition

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There is perhaps no juxtaposition which better sums up the current state of college basketball in 2026 than the fact that the NCAA’s transfer portal opened up as One Shining Moment was playing to officially close the books on the 2025-26 season.

As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 1,500 players have entered the portal. Of course, many of those names were known in the weeks leading up to the stroke of midnight on April 7.

The season has barely ended, but these next few weeks will be critical as Penn looks to protect its current stable of talent and reload with some new faces ahead of its Ivy League title defense. Below are just a few of the questions Quakers fans should be asking ahead of a pivotal offseason.

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Simone Sawyer leads Penn women’s basketball over Brown on Senior Day

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Simone Sawyer went out with a bang, and the Penn women’s basketball team wrapped up its season sooner than it wanted but with an emphatic home win Saturday over Brown, 69-56.

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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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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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LISTEN: Penn men’s basketball tops Princeton to snap 14-game series losing streak

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The all-time series record between Penn and Princeton is even again after a 61-60 win for the former over the latter Saturday, as reflected soon after by this sign at the Palestra. (George Clark | Ivy Hoops Online)

Ivy Hoops Online correspondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark recaps a 61-60 win for Penn men’s basketball (11-10, 4-4 Ivy) versus archrival Princeton (8-15, 4-4) Saturday at the Palestra that snapped the home program’s 14-game losing streak against the Tigers:

Resurgent Cornell women’s basketball downs Penn to hit .500 in Ivies

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The Cornell women’s red-hot-shooting Big Red built a big lead over Penn and held on for a 62-58 win Friday night at the Palestra – breaking a 16-game losing streak to the Quakers, climbing to 3-3 in league play and taking another step on the road to relevance in the Ivies.

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s home loss to Yale

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PHILADELPHIA — That Penn lost to Yale in its first matchup against the overwhelming Ivy League favorite should not have come as a shock to anyone.

But it’s the way the Quakers fell at home that should leave a frustrating taste in fans’ mouths.

Penn (9-9, 2-3 Ivy) played well below what it was capable of in a 77-60 loss to the Bulldogs (15-3, 4-1). The Quakers missed plenty of shots they normally hit and put up a season-worst 0.9 points per possession. On the other end of the floor, Yale scored 42 points in the paint, which more than made up for Penn’s admirable efforts to force turnovers and limit the damage from the Bulldogs’ elite outside shooting attack.

The Quakers held several leads throughout the first half but gave up an extended 12-2 run heading into the break which gave Yale a relatively comfortable 10-point edge. Penn had several chances to cut the Bulldogs’ lead to one possession early in the second half but never put any serious game pressure on Yale.

Penn’s defeat was expected, but it now puts a tremendous amount of pressure on next week’s road back-to-back against Columbia and Cornell. Both of these teams are right alongside the Quakers in a six-car pileup that separates second and seventh in the league standings by a single game.

A sweep would be devastating to Penn’s hopes of making Ivy Madness in its first year under Fran McCaffery.

What did fans learn from an underwhelming afternoon?

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