Penn Basketball: Weekend split not enough for struggling Quakers

Penn basketball’s costly overtime loss to Harvard has dropped them two games behind the final spot in the Ivy League tournament.

Things just haven’t gotten any easier for Penn basketball as the Ivy League season sits at its midway point. The promising Quakers team that returned most of its production from last year’s championship squad, and won this season’s Big 5, now sits at 3-4 in the Ivy standings. They’re two full games behind Princeton for the all-important fourth position in the league’s standings, the lowest one that would qualify them for the Ivy League Tournament.

Things had gone so well for Penn in the non-conference season that they began to earn distant talk of a potential at-large bid come March. They had handed Villanova their first Big 5 loss since 2012, beaten Miami by double-digits, and won four true away games before the New Year. But the team hit a skid when both Michael Wang and Max Rothschild went down with injuries, and despite beating both Temple and Saint Joe’s in January, the Quakers never regained that early season form in Ivy League play. Crushing back-to-back losses to bitter-rival Princeton topped off a four-game losing streak as Ivy play opened, and Penn is sitting on the wrong side of the Ivy standings with only six regular season games left to play.

The Quakers were 2-4 in league play when the weekend opened, with the chance to knock off now-7th place Dartmouth, and repeat last year’s Ivy final victory on the Palestra floor against Harvard. Penn played 90 minutes of basketball this weekend, going to overtime in both contests; the Quakers first had to overcome a double-digit second-half deficit to force the extra period with Dartmouth, eventually winning 82-79, but dropped to Harvard after Crimson player Bryce Aiken drilled a game-tying three with less than ten seconds to play.

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The rebound was up for grabs for Penn, but AJ Brodeur’s right hand swept it out to Noah Kirkwood, who gave it up to Aiken for the shot. Penn had held multi-possession leads throughout the second half, and was up by six with a minute to go.

Last March, Harvard missed the game-tying threes that could have sent the Ivy League championship game to overtime; this year, they made sure to prolong their contest against Penn at the Palestra, and made no mistake with the extra five minutes, scoring 14 in overtime and winning the game 75-68.

The loss was Penn’s second in overtime in Ivy play, the third time they had fallen in the extra frame in their last six losses. While they had the magic to earn the sweep over their Big 5 rivals, they’ve been on the other end of a few big disappointments in the conference.

And while the Penn-Harvard game was being played, about 45 minutes up the road in Princeton, the fourth-place Tigers were handing Dartmouth their second loss of the weekend. They improved their record to 5-3, widening the gap between themselves and fifth-place Penn back to two games. Penn is right back to where they were before the weekend began, but now have two fewer games to make up the difference and grab a spot in the Ivy League tournament.

I don’t need to remind Quaker fans, but Saturday’s result was huge; had Aiken’s three rimmed out and they had beaten Harvard, Penn would be one game back of both Princeton and the Crimson. Harvard has now all but secured a top-four spot after beating the two teams directly behind them in the standings over the weekend, beating both Penn and Princeton on the road, and Penn finds themselves in an even deeper hole with only one team ahead of them really within reach. The Quakers also share a 3-5 record with Brown. It’s far from an impossible feat for Penn to climb into the top four, but no one could’ve guessed they’d be fighting just for that after their incredible non-conference season.

There might not be one reason Penn’s season has done a complete one-eighty. Michael Wang’s game has been up and down, as can be expected as a freshman. He was a big key in keeping the team afloat, putting up big offensive numbers when Ryan Betley went down for the year.

Although some Penn fans wonder if his play was entirely the reason, Wang didn’t leave the bench against Dartmouth on Friday. And Steve Donahue’s depth has been a big question all year, but in Ivy play, it has been severely exposed and its contributions consistently limited. On top of being the reigning champions certainly getting the best effort from everyone in the league they meet this year, a lot started working against the Quakers right as league play began to approach.

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Making up two games with six left to play is not an easy thing to do, and with no games left against Princeton, Penn doesn’t control its own destiny. They’ll need to finish with just about a perfect record in this final stretch, which will be a difficult task with all of Harvard, Yale, and Cornell left on the schedule, and hope that Princeton’s equally rigorous schedule hands them at least three more losses. It’s quite possible Penn’s season ends with as much disappointment as it began with promise, but maybe these Quakers have another miracle or two left in them.