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Three Quakeaways from Penn men’s 90-69 Brown throwdown

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Penn junior guard Clark Slajchert looked like his confident early-season self in his team’s 90-69 rout of Brown at the Palestra Saturday night. Slajchert notched a team-high 19 points on 8-for-13 field-goal shooting. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Penn picked a good time to turn in its best performance of the season.

The Quakers (16-11, 8-4 Ivy) pummeled Brown on Saturday at the Palestra, 90-69, and vaulted themselves into a three-way tie for first place in the Ivy League standings.

Though neither Penn nor the league have provided official confirmation, analytics expert Luke Benz said postgame that the Red and Blue have now clinched a trip to the Ivy League tournament.

Usually, this writer uses the top of these articles to describe some pivotal moment where Penn seals either victory or defeat. The pivotal moment on Saturday was the opening tipoff. The Quakers shot out to a quick 9-0 lead and never looked back. It took a string of circus shots by the Bears (13-12, 6-6) in garbage time to trim Penn’s final margin of victory below 30 points.

Just how good were the Quakers on Saturday? BartTorvik.com, a KenPom competitor, assigns every team in Division I a game score of 0-100 for each game it plays. Think of the number as the probability a team will win through its performance on a given night.

Penn finished with a final game score of 97.

It’s all happy Quakeaways today after the Red and Blue pulled off their biggest Ivy weekend sweep in some time:

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Rookies spark bounce-back win for Brown women over Penn

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Ivy back-to-backs can bring out the worst and best in teams, often in the same weekend.

Coming off an 80-37 drubbing against Princeton at the Pizzitola Sports Center in which it got outscored 33-2 in the third quarter, Brown rebounded 22 hours later with a 68-59 win over Penn.

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men eking out 66-64 win over Yale

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Jordan Dingle’s shooting clip wasn’t the greatest at the Palestra Friday night, but the junior guard came through in the clutch to help secure Penn’s win over Yale. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

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 …

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Yale men lose Knowling and tight defensive battle at Penn, 66-64

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Yale lost Matt Knowling to injury in its 66-64 defeat versus Penn at the Palestra Friday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

A key injury spelled doom for Yale at the Palestra in a 66-64 loss to Penn Friday.

With 18 minutes left in the game and the score knotted at 33-33, Yale leading scorer Matt Knowling rolled his ankle. He would not return to the game and his status for tonight against Princeton is questionable.

Penn hung on in a defensive struggle featuring 14 lead changes in which Yale converted just three field goals in the final 5:26. The visitors’ fate was sealed when a fallaway shot landed off base after Yale got the ball back down two with 5.1 seconds left following a 1-for-2 trip to the foul line by Ivy League free-throw percentage leader Clark Slajchert.

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Penn women stop Yale again to clinch Ivy League Tournament berth, 72-58

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It was pretty much a make-or-break game for the Yale women, and Penn’s Kayla Padilla broke them.
The Quakers ran away from the Bulldogs, 72-58, and left them with only the slimmest of chances of reaching the Ivy League Tournament — while securing a spot for themselves.

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Ivy women’s week seven roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top Ten

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Following Saturday afternoon’s action, the upper division pulled away from the bottom half, while the Brown rebuild took a positive step forward.

Columbia bounced back from a disappointing result against Princeton by taking it out on Yale in front of 1,485 fans at Levien Gymnasium.  The Lions jumped out to a 32-17 halftime lead on the strength of a 14-0 second quarter run.  The Light Blue made it a 20-point game after three and widen it to a game-high 28 points with just under four minutes to go in the contest.  Defensively, they limited the Bulldogs to 32% shooting and only 49 points, the first time they held an Ivy opponent under 50 this season.

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Ivy men’s week seven roundup: Ancient Eight’s top 10

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Week seven for the Ancient Eight saw Yale avenge its shocking opening day loss at Columbia and move into a tie at the top of the conference leaderboard.  After a close half that saw the Bulldogs holding onto a slim 31-26 lead, the Bulldogs outscored the last-place Lions 58-32 for the dominant 31-point win.  Yale, winners of six straight, had 13 different players in the scoring column and shot 65% from the field. 

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men completing season sweep of Harvard

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Penn senior swingman Lucas Monroe finished just one point shy of a second straight double-double in an 80-72 win at Harvard Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

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 …

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Penn women take revenge on Harvard, 70-64

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Passion! Great performances! Revenge! You could enjoy them all on the radio — the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday broadcast had “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” — or you could find them at the Palestra in West Philly, where the Penn women took down Harvard, 70-64.

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men outlasting Cornell in 92-86 shootout

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Penn junior guard Clark Slajchert upped his offensive efficiency in his team’s shootout win over Cornell at the Palestra Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

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 …

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