The Palestra

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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Three Quakeaways from Penn men pushing past Columbia

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In addition to grabbing seven rebounds in just 20 minutes, senior guard Lucas Monroe made key plays the box score of Penn’s win over Columbia Friday at the Palestra doesn’t do justice. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Penn’s Friday night contest against Columbia at the Palestra likely won’t be featured much in the team’s end-of-season highlight reel, but the Quakers got the job done with a 74-65 win that was a bit closer than the final score indicated.

Though the Lions (6-17, 1-7 Ivy) never led past the 17:43 mark of the first half, they managed to close a deficit that swelled to as much as 18 points to five at multiple instances late in the second half.

But Columbia could get no farther. Junior guard Jordan Dingle twice quelled Lions rallies, once through an and-one to push Penn’s lead from 60-54 to 63-54 with 3:41 to play, and a second time through a three-pointer from the left wing to turn a 65-60 advantage into 68-60 with 2:20 to play.

With six games left to play in the Ivy season, Penn (12-11, 4-4) has a clear — though far from automatic — path to Ivy Madness, one of a small handful of Quakeaways from the Red and Blue’s third consecutive win.

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Penn women outlast Columbia, 71-67, to stand alone atop Ivy standings

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It might be time to say it out loud: The Penn women are back.
You can’t blame them if they were a bit jittery Saturday as they faced Columbia. The top-ranked team in the Ivies was visiting the Palestra with a roster full of scorers, a gaudy record and a fresh overtime win at Princeton.
Turns out Columbia should have been nervous as well.

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Penn women romp over Gwynedd Mercy in pre-Ivy warmup

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Coaches have plenty of good reasons for scheduling events like the Penn women’s Friday afternoon game — let’s not call it a contest — against Gwynedd Mercy at the Palestra. Drama just isn’t one of them.
Let’s get the basics out of the way: Penn 95, G. Mercy 38. The Quakers put 17 players on the court (no, not all at once), and 16 of them scored. The Penn reserves outscored the Penn starters, who in turn outscored Gwynedd Mercy, which to be fair played well for a Division III team facing a bigger, faster, more talented Division I team.

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Padilla leads Penn women in squeaker over Temple

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Kayla Padilla capped a milestone day with a left-handed drive through three defenders and led the Penn women to a raucous 62-61 win over Temple Sunday at the Palestra.
The basket with 6.8 seconds left gave Padilla 28 points on the day and 1,013 in her COVID-shortened career. The Quakers (6-5) head into a break for finals and Christmas with a five-game winning streak — sure to hit six, let’s face it, December 30 against Gwynedd Mercy before the start of Ivy play.

Penn women shut down Stony Brook, 73-53, after career scoring high from McGurk

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This should not have been an easy game for Penn women’s basketball.
This is a challenging year in which the team is trying to regain a spot among the Ivy leaders, projected to repeat in finishing outside the top half of the league. Thursday night’s opponent, Stony Brook, has a winning record and beat the Quakers a year ago.

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men’s overtime loss to Saint Joseph’s

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Lucas Monroe was one of three Quakers to play 40 or more minutes for Penn in its 85-80 loss to Big 5 foe Saint Joseph’s at the Palestra Wednesday night. Monroe logged a team-high 43 minutes, posting 16 rebounds, seven points, three blocks and two steals. But it wasn’t enough to keep Penn from running out of gas down the stretch. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

It’s not often that a team manages to lose a game in which it goes on a 21-2 run, but Penn did just that on Wednesday night, dropping its Big 5 opener to Saint Joseph’s in overtime at the Palestra, 85-80.

The Quakers (5-5) dominated the Hawks for 25 minutes, but that simply wasn’t enough. Saint Joseph’s (3-3) clawed back from a 14-point second half deficit on the back of some ramped-up defensive intensity, using ball-side pressure to disrupt Penn’s dribble handoffs and passing. Couple that with some three-point shooting progression to the mean, and you have a recipe for a comeback.

Despite everything, Penn held leads with 77 seconds left in regulation, 1:55 left in overtime and 1:00 left in overtime. Even after giving up the lead for good, the Quakers had four possessions in the final 56 seconds of overtime with a chance to win or extend the game.

Three open looks from long range did not go down for Jonah Charles or Clark Slajchert, while a fourth chance was wiped away by a debatable charge call on sophomore swingman Eddie Holland III.

What did Penn fans learn from an excruciating defeat?

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Princeton men claim outright Ivy title by pummeling Penn

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Princeton junior forward and Ivy Player of the Year candidate Tosan Evbuomwan notched 23 points, eight rebounds and seven assists in 32 minutes in Princeton’s win over Penn Saturday night. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Princeton and Penn closed out the regular season at The Palestra this evening in the only Ivy matchup involving teams that will play next weekend in the Ivy League Tournament.

Since the field was set prior to this weekend, the games had no impact on the seeding for the tourney. But the way the Tigers manhandled their traditional rival on its homecourt in a 93-70 shellacking must have been as unsettling for the Quakers as it was exhilarating for the Tigers.

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