Home of the Roundball Poets
Any realistic hope Penn had of reaching Ivy Madness died on Saturday night after the Red and Blue staggered through a road loss to Brown, 82-72, on the second night of a back-to-back.
Though Penn (6-16, 2-7 Ivy) was competitive throughout the evening and cut the deficit to as little as one point in the second half, the Quakers never led. A stepback three from Brown (12-10, 4-5 Ivy) superstar Kino Lilly Jr. pushed the Bears’ lead back to four with 10 minutes to go and Penn never seriously threatened after.
Brown is now effectively three games ahead of Penn thanks to its head-to-head sweep of the Red and Blue.
Instead of focusing on the minutiae of the game itself, this Saturday’s Quakeaways will serve as a progress report on the long-term questions I asked a few weeks ago:
Another week, another gut-punch loss for Penn.
The Quakers were on the verge of pulling the biggest upset in Ivy League play this season before another sequence of late-game disasters sent Penn to a 72-71 defeat at Yale.
Penn (6-15, 2-6 Ivy), after another flat start, used a pair of deep Sam Brown threes to take two late leads on the Bulldogs (15-6, 8-0), but the Red and Blue never were quite able to land the killshot they needed.
Eventually, Yale made Penn pay. With the game on the line and the visitors clinging to a one-point lead, Bulldogs big man Nick Townsend found freshman wing Isaac Celiscar cutting to the hoop for an easy layup with a little more than eight seconds to play. The Quakers ran both their big men at Townsend, and Brown was just a step behind Celiscar.
Penn couldn’t even get a potential winning shot off. The Quakers had a sideout inbounds opportunity on Yale’s end of the floor with six seconds to play, but no one could get open and Ethan Roberts’ desperation pass to freshman Michelangelo Oberti was easily deflected for a game-killing turnover.
The Quakers’ devastating loss brought back plenty of bad memories, starting with how …
It took a lay-in by freshman forward Isaac Celiscar off a nifty assist from junior forward Nick Townsend assist with eight seconds remaining to give Yale a 72-71 win over upset-minded Penn at John J. Lee Amphitheater Friday..
“We were trying to iso [senior guard] John [Poulakidas] and Nick,” Yale coach James Jones said. “Nick is as unselfish as they come.”
By now it’s a familiar recipe: Start the game with tenacious defense, add a heavy dose of imposing play in the paint and mix in a strong measure of sharpshooting from the outside.
When Princeton women’s basketball succeeds in combining these ingredients, it’s nearly guaranteed to win, as it did on Saturday afternoon in a 74-60, wire-to-wire putdown of Penn at Jadwin Gymnasium.
The triumph was Princeton’s 13th straight win over its arch-rival and the 500th head coaching win of Carla Berube’s career. Berube is 116-22 at Princeton after posting a 384-96 at Tufts for a career .809 winning percentage.
Total domination. There’s no other way to describe Yale’s 103-88 win over Cornell at Newman Arena, in a battle between two of the top three teams in the Ivy League standings.
Cornell (13-7, 5-2 Ivy) led 44-40 in a nip-and-tuck battle in which neither team held more than a five-point lead.
Ivy Hoops Online correspondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark brings us the audio of the postgame press conference for Princeton after its dramatic 61-59 win at Penn Friday evening:
Clark recaps the action between Princeton (16-6, 5-2 Ivy) and Penn (6-14, 2-5) at the Palestra:
There have been plenty of excruciating losses in Penn’s 12-game losing streak to arch-rival Princeton, but none have inflicted a pain quite like Friday’s 61-59 loss to the Tigers at the Palestra.
With less than a minute to go, there was Penn (6-14, 2-5 Ivy) in the lead despite being forced to play without star wing Ethan Roberts, who sat out the contest with an undisclosed injury. As has happened in so many of these losses to Princeton (16-6, 5-2), every break possible went the wrong way for the Quakers when it mattered most.
After sophomore guard Sam Brown missed the back-end of a one-and-one which would have extended the Penn lead to 59-56, junior forward Johnnie Walter had the offensive rebound in his hands for a split-second but couldn’t quite corral the ball. The Tigers secured possession and then saw sophomore guard Dalen Davis break free to drain a wide-open three-pointer from the left wing, giving the Tigers a 59-58 advantage with just over 30 seconds remaining.
On the next possession, senior big man Nick Spinoso drew heavy contact as he went up for a layup, hit his first free throw to tie the game, but missed the freebie which would have given Penn the lead. Walter then fouled Princeton’s Jackson Hicke as he put up a midrange jumper with six-tenths of a second to play.
There was zero doubt Hicke would miss. The 6-foot-5 sophomore hit both shots at the line to kick Penn fans back into a familiar pit of misery.
What could Penn fans take away from yet another disheartening loss?
So much for a nip-and-tuck game with arch-rival Princeton.
And so much for a trap game at Penn in between playing at Princeton and Cornell.
Yale answered those bells emphatically with a 77-70 win at Jadwin Gym and a 90-61 win at The Palestra.
In fairness to Penn, it was a 12-point game with a little under six minutes t0 play and then Yale closed the game out with a 23-6 run. But the game was never in doubt.
If consistency is a virtue, then Yale was more than virtuous. The Bulldogs shot 57% from the filed in both games and held both Princeton and Penn to 34% shooting.
“That’s a really good Yale basketball game,” Yale coach James Jones said. “A really good game from us from start to finish.”