Turn Back the Clock: Jerome Allen as a Penn basketball recruit

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Students at Penn right now haven’t seen a time when anyone other than Jerome Allen was the head coach of Penn basketball. But that time did indeed exist.

On Sept. 10, 1991, then-head coach Fran Dunphy gave The Daily Pennsylvanian a sneak peak into what he thought about the players he had recruited to join the Red and Blue. One of those recruits was a 6-foot-3 guard from Episcopal Academy (Pa.) named, you guessed it, Jerome Allen.

Dunphy said at the time that he didn’t expect Allen to step right into the starting lineup but that he was hoping Allen would “challenge the four returning guards for playing time and, somewhere during the course of the season, possibly start.”

The Quakers had played through consecutive losing seasons to begin Dunphy’s time as coach. While the Quakers wouldn’t win the Ivy title in the 1991-92 season, they laid the groundwork for an era of dominance. Allen did make his way into the starting lineup, starting 20 of the 26 games he played in while averaging 12.2 points per contest.

In Allen’s sophomore, junior and senior seasons, Penn didn’t lose a single Ivy game, going a perfect 42-0 in that span led by Allen and guard Matt Maloney.

However, it wasn’t just Allen that made Dunphy’s recruiting class special. Allen was joined by 6-foot-7 forward Shawn Trice, who became a starter in the frontcourt for the Red and Blue in a short span.

Scott Kegler, a 6-foot-5 guard, and 6-foot-6 forward Eric Moore would also play parts in the Red and Blue’s impressive run.

All of this added up to a pretty impressive class that Dunphy introduced to Penn’s campus in the fall of 1991.