Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 93-78 win over Columbia

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 …

Read more

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 86-66 loss at Penn State

Playing on the road as a 25-plus-point Vegas underdog without your best player is typically a recipe for disaster. Penn learned that the hard way roughly this time last year against Houston when star guard Clark Slajchert suffered a season-ruining ankle sprain in an 81-42 beatdown.

By those standards, the Quakers’ Sunday trip to the Bryce Jordan Center to face Penn State was a (relative) success. Despite being without the services of junior wing Ethan Roberts, Penn went toe-to-toe with the Nittany Lions for roughly 25 minutes in an 86-66 defeat.

The Quakers (4-9) went to the locker room down just 34-31 at halftime and were within two points of Penn State (11-2) after senior big man Nick Spinoso bounced in a three-pointer from the left wing to make it a 38-36 game with 17:40 to go in the game. The Nittany Lions responded with an extended 13-3 run to push their advantage to double digits and built a bigger lead from there.

Penn State big man Yanic Konan Niederhauser scored five points in the game-deciding run. He finished with a 19-point, 15-rebound double-double.

What could Penn fans take away from a respectable showing against an NCAA Tournament contender?

Read more

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 66-47 loss at VCU

Jon Rothstein typically describes trips to VCU’s Siegel Center as “life-changing.”

It may not have been a particularly life-changing evening for Penn on Monday, but it went a little bit better than expected. The Quakers competed defensively for long stretches in a 66-47 loss to the Atlantic 10 favorite Rams, which could give them a little bit of momentum moving forward.

Penn (3-7) came all the way back from a disastrous start to tie the game at 21 with 7:17 to go in the first half after a nice steal from freshman guard AJ Levine (more on him later) led directly to a transition three from junior wing Ethan Roberts. The Quakers had fallen into a 14-2 hole right off the bat and went nearly 6:30 without a basket after Nick Spinoso scored on Penn’s first possession.

The Rams (8-2) restored order with an extended 18-2 run that spanned the final four minutes of the first half and first three minutes of the second. In a disturbing replay of the game’s beginning, Penn went 6:37 of game action without a bucket.

Penn’s effort level was there on Monday, but so were a lot of the same issues that have plagued this team all season, leading to some depressingly familiar Quakeaways:

Read more

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 68-53 loss to Elon

There really isn’t too much to say in a micro sense about Penn’s 68-53 home loss to Elon on Sunday, which rounded out a 1-2 weekend at the Cathedral Classic Invitational.

The Quakers (3-5) shot 29.7% from the field and even worse from deep, hitting eight of 37 three-point attempts (21.6%). Penn never led, taking an immediate 8-0 punch to the mouth from the Phoenix (5-3) that forced coach Steve Donahue into a timeout less than 90 seconds into the contest.

It was all downhill from there.

Instead of focusing on Sunday’s contest, these Quakeaways will focus more on macro-level observations about Penn at large. Believe it or not, Saturday’s upcoming game against Drexel will be the one-third point of the Quakers’ season.

So, where does Penn stand?

Read more

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 86-78 loss to Navy

The “bye week” didn’t do Penn much good.

Playing at home after a 10-day layoff, the Quakers saw their losing streak hit four games after an 86-78 loss to Navy in their opening game of the Cathedral Classic Invitational.

Penn (2-4) came all the way back from a 12-point deficit in the second half when Augie Gerhart finished off a nice high-low post pass from Sam Brown to give the Quakers a 51-50 lead with 9:04 to go.

It turned out to be Penn’s only lead of the night. The Midshipmen (3-4) responded with three straight three-pointers, capped off by a corner shot from Navy’s star, Austin Benigni.

Familiar problems for Penn reared their ugly heads again on Friday, starting with how …

Read more

Quakeaway from Penn men’s basketball’s 93-49 loss at Villanova

Disheartening. Discouraging. Disgusting.

Whatever negative adjective you’d want to throw out would probably apply to how Penn performed in a 93-49 loss at Villanova on Tuesday night.

That 44-point margin of defeat is the worst loss Penn has ever suffered against the Wildcats in a series that spans 71 games and dates back to 1910. The prior record-holder was the 43-point loss Penn took to Villanova in the 1971 Elite Eight, which ruined an undefeated season for the Quakers and is widely considered the worst defeat in program history.

This team is galaxies away from that 1970-71 squad. The Quakers actually played pretty well offensively in the early stages on Tuesday, using good ball movement and better three-point shooting to draw even with the Wildcats at the under-eight media timeout in the first half.

What happened from there was nothing short of a collapse. Penn went roughly 14 minutes of game time without scoring a field goal as Villanova used red-hot outside shooting to put together a killer 30-3 run.

As for Tyler Perkins, who got his first chance on Tuesday to face his former Penn teammates after his offseason transfer up the Main Line to ‘Nova? The sophomore guard scored seven points before the game’s first media timeout and finished a rebound shy of a double-double.

There is only one Quakeaway that merits mentioning after Tuesday’s humiliation:

Read more

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s comeback win over NJIT

NEWARK, N.J. — It wasn’t pretty, but it was gritty.

Staring down the barrel of a dispiriting opening night loss to KenPom No. 334 NJIT, Penn used a combination of a well-schemed 2-3 zone and a relentless interior attack to slowly turn a 17-point second-half deficit into a 58-57 victory.

The winning moment on Monday night came when junior wing Ethan Roberts got the ball in an isolation backdown on the left block with six seconds to go. The Drake transfer bullied his way into the paint and drew a foul with just 1.6 ticks left on the clock. Roberts missed his first free throw but drained the second, the capper on a 15-point Penn debut.

NJIT got a decent turnaround look for forward Levi Lawal at the buzzer, but the sophomore airballed the jumper and the dozens of Quakers fans assembled in Newark could finally exhale.

There’s plenty for Penn to mull over after a near-certain defeat turned into a celebration, starting with how …

Read more

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 82-69 win at Dartmouth

Penn’s long nightmare is finally over.

The Quakers snapped their eight-game losing streak in style on Friday with an easy win over Dartmouth, 82-69.

Penn (10-15, 2-8 Ivy) led by as many as 24 points in the second half and never trailed after the 12:20 mark in the first half.

The Quakers won on the road for just the second time all season and picked up their first win on the road against the Big Green (5-18, 1-9) in five years.

Penn’s postseason chances may be exceedingly slim — more on that later — but there were plenty of positive signs for the future and a bevy of happy Quakeaways for the first time in nearly two months:

Read more

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 70-61 loss at Brown

Penn’s season looks all but over after a late offensive outage spelled doom in Providence, R.I.

The Quakers had a chance to draw with one point of Brown with 5:30 to play after junior forward Nick Spinoso hit an and-one layup over the Bears’ Malachi Ndur. Spinoso line-drive bricked the free-throw and the score remained 56-54 in favor of the Bears.

Penn didn’t make another shot from the field until just 45 seconds remained. At that point, the lead for the Bears had swelled to 11 points in what wound up being a 70-61 win for Brown (6-14, 2-3 Ivy).

It’s hard to see the Quakers responding on the second day of a road back-to-back at Yale, the current league co-leader. Penn (9-11, 1-4) may remain mathematically alive to reach Ivy Madness for a few weeks longer, but the hole this team has dug for itself may be too deep to overcome.

There aren’t too many happy Quakeaways for fans to hold onto as they pick through the wreckage of a season that started with such promise.

Read more

Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 81-42 blowout loss at No. 3 Houston

Senior guard Clark Slajchert didn’t return after rolling his ankle in Penn’s 81-42 loss at No. 3 Houston. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Penn was always going to have trouble competing on the road against Associated Press No. 3 Houston, which ranks first in overall efficiency margin and first in defensive efficiency on KenPom.

But what happened to the Red and Blue on Saturday was worse than what any Penn fan could reasonably have predicted. Houston delivered an 81-42 beatdown, which was the visitors’ worst loss since they endured a 114-55 humiliation at the hands of Duke on New Year’s Eve in 2009.

Houston (13-0) started the game on an 18-0 run. Penn (8-6) did not score until more than nine minutes had passed in the first half, when freshman Sam Brown drained a long contested three-pointer off a feed from classmate Tyler Perkins.

The ugly final score wasn’t even the worst thing about Saturday. Senior Clark Slajchert rolled his ankle midway through the first half and did not return.

There’s not much to take away from a “burn the tape game,” but you can start with how …

Read more