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Penn’s Saturday matchup against Yale went pretty much according to script.
The Bulldogs opened the game on a 9-0 run and never looked back from there in a 90-61 dismissal of the Quakers at the Palestra. Penn (6-13, 2-4 Ivy) rallied from that opening punch to the mouth and cut the deficit to as little as seven points with 4:38 to go in the first half after a Niklas Polonowski layup.
Yale (13-6, 6-0) responded with an immediate 10-0 run, which was kicked off by a deep open three from stretch big man Nick Townsend. Penn never seriously threatened after.
Instead of recapping what went into an entirely predictable loss, these Quakeaways will instead be reformulated as questions, which will hopefully establish what’s at stake the rest of the season.
Penn’s renewed Ivy Madness hopes didn’t last for long.
The Quakers are once again behind the eight-ball after a series of late mistakes against Brown led to a tough-to-accept 88-79 loss at the Palestra.
It fell apart for Penn (6-12, 2-3 Ivy) beginning with 5:39 to play in the game. The Quakers had the ball with a 72-69 lead, having erased a 17-point first-half deficit. The first domino fell when sophomore forward Augie Gerhart was correctly called for an offensive foul after he used his elbow to create space in the low post. On their next trip down the floor, the Bears (10-8, 2-3) hit a jumper to make it a one-point game.
Penn had a chance to extend the lead once again, but the otherwise brilliant junior wing Ethan Roberts missed the front end of a one-and-one. Brown’s Aaron Cooley hit a layup after the miss to give the Bears a lead they would not surrender. The Quakers got a clean fastbreak look for Roberts after the Cooley bucket, but it wouldn’t fall.
For Penn, Friday’s loss could quickly snowball. The Quakers will be heavy underdogs in their next three games against Yale, Princeton and Yale again. That 2-3 Ivy record could turn to 2-6 in the blink of an eye.
What did Penn fans learn from a disappointing evening?
I am old enough to remember the Princeton-Penn hegemony in Ivy hoops.
We’re talking 1965-2015. That’s 50 years. That’s a long time. Names like Carril, Dunphy, Bradley, Petrie, Calhoun and many, many more.
Tommy Amaker entered in 2007 and assisted in disrupting the world order. In 2010, Cornell made a run to the Sweet 16.
Since then, it has been mostly Yale and Princeton.
And the rivalry is very heated.
James Jones and Mitch Henderson could not be more different, personally and stylistically. But since 2016, their hegemony is crystal clear.
Yale has gone 88-28 and Princeton 85-31 in the Ivy regular season. Yale has won three Ivy League tourneys and Princeton two. They have each won two NCAA tourney games.
Little to separate them, but Yale has won 11 out of the last 14.
Princeton and Yale have, as a duo, separated from the pack.
This year, Yale sits atop the Ivy standings at 4-0. Princeton is 3-1 after a home loss to Cornell.
Yale has a league-leading NET ranking of 79 and a KenPom ranking of 75. Princeton sits at 130 and 137, respectively.
“I’m excited about the opportunity,” Yale coach James Jones. “That’s what college basketball is all about.”
And he is correct. The 5 p.m. start at Jadwin Gym will be televised by ESPN2.
Keys to the game:
Penn is back in the mix for Ivy Madness after a second consecutive strong shooting performance.
The Quakers rained in 18 threes on 35 attempts in a 93-78 home dismissal of Columbia. Penn (6-11, 2-2 Ivy) is now tied with Dartmouth for fourth place in the league standings, while the Lions (11-6, 0-4) are pretty much toast after a stellar nonconference campaign.
Saturday afternoon’s hero was Sam Brown, who dropped in a career-high 30 points on 12 shots. He became the first Penn player to hit at least eight threes in a game since Jordan Dingle’s 2022 demolition of Harvard in the first Penn game at the Palestra open to fans since COVID hit.
The Quakers won on Saturday thanks to an excellent stretch of complementary basketball early in the second half. They held Columbia without a field goal for 7:38 on the defensive end, while five different Penn players hit threes on the offensive side of the floor. Penn used the dominant stretch to extend a four-point lead into a 19-point advantage inside of 10 minutes to play.
It’s all good vibes again, thanks to how …
For 40 minutes of basketball on Monday, Penn looked like the team optimists thought it could be in a surprising road win over Harvard.
The Quakers entered the matchup with the Crimson as healthy underdogs — six points by KenPom and seven-and-a-half by Vegas oddsmakers.
No matter. The Red and Blue used efficient offense, crisp passing and excellent outside shooting to produce an 82-67 triumph.
A nine-point Penn (5-11, 1-2 Ivy) halftime lead had dwindled to as little as two around the under-eight media timeout. But a catch-and-shoot three from senior wing George Smith pushed Penn back to a five-point advantage. Then, after an exchange of free throws, Smith found junior wing Ethan Roberts for threes on back-to-back possessions.
The latter of those shots, a deep pull-up shot in transition, gave Penn a 64-53 edge with just under five minutes to play. Harvard (6-10, 1-2) never seriously threatened after.
Penn put up a season-best 1.28 points per possession. How did the Quakers pull it off?
It all started with how …
Penn competed with Ivy title contender Cornell for long stretches in its Ivy home opener on Saturday, but the end result was what was widely expected: an 86-76 loss.
The Quakers (4-11, 0-2 Ivy) outplayed the Big Red (10-5, 2-0) for the first 15 minutes or so, but the whole game flipped once Cornell’s best big man, AK Okereke, took over.
With 3:58 to go in the first half, Penn was clinging onto a 27-25 lead when forward Nick Spinoso attempted a behind-the-back pass out of the post which Okereke easily intercepted. The junior then proceeded to drain a transition three in Spinoso’s face to give Cornell the lead.
On the next trip down the floor, Spinoso attempted a layup over Okereke which got blocked by the rim. Okereke then hit a transition layup which forced Quakers coach Steve Donahue into a timeout and it was all downhill from there, as the Big Red built a lead as big as 20 points in the second half.
What can Penn fans take away from an underwhelming afternoon?