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Due to inclement weather in Ithaca, the Ivy League has adjusted the men’s basketball schedule for the weekend.
Cornell will be taking on Princeton on Saturday and Penn on Sunday. Columbia will host Penn on Saturday, and Princeton on Sunday. All four games are slated to tip-off at 2 p.m.
It rained all night in Upstate New York before freezing and turning into snow. Between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m., it snowed about a foot in Ithaca. The university canceled classes around 10 a.m. and closed around noon.
The team will still honor their Ivy League champion 1988 and 2010 teams over the weekend.
Dartmouth and Penn missed 79 shots from the field and at the free throw line during Saturday’s clash at the Palestra, but Penn’s 20 field goals on 52 attempts and nine free throws proved more than enough to win a slugfest with the Big Green, 54-46, to notch a weekend sweep after downing Harvard Friday.
Penn (10-7, 2-2 Ivy) powered its way to a 32-14 advantage 1:46 into the second half and hung on from there in a game in which points came at a premium no matter who you were.
Penn nearly gave the game away several times down the stretch against Harvard Friday evening at the Palestra. But it held on for a 75-72 win in overtime that it needed to avoid a fourth 0-3 start to Ivy League play in five seasons.
Penn seemed to be on the verge of victory when an inbounds turnover gave Harvard possession down 58-56 late. With 1.7 seconds on the clock, Noah Kirkwood hit a fadeaway jumper over the outstretched hand of AJ Brodeur to force an overtime period in which Penn again built an early lead, eventually getting to a 68-63 advantage off a Devon Goodman basket with 77 seconds remaining and making hay on multiple trips to the free throw line to gain a 75-69 edge.
Fran Dunphy’s teams always seemed to play great defense, whether at Penn or Temple.
Dunphy was honored with a standing ovation prior to the game, the first meeting between the two without either being coached by Dunphy in 31 seasons Saturday at the Palestra, and defense was fittingly the order of the day.
The Big 5 rivals held each other under a point per possession, but it was Penn that made enough shots for a 66-59 win.
A quick note to readers of Ivy Hoops Online that Thursday marked the 18-month anniversary of the Penn Athletics announcement that it would be hiring outside legal counsel to look into Jerome Allen receiving bribes from Florida businessman Philip Esformes to place Esformes’s son, Morris Esformes, onto the recruited athlete list for the entering Fall 2015 class. The information was revealed as federal authorities were investigating the elder Esformes for healthcare fraud.