Down 16 points to Columbia in the first half on Friday, it may have looked like the Ivy League championship dreams of the Penn men's basketball team were over.
But the Quakers battled back, and used a big second half to beat the Lions, 51-47, to improve to 22-6 overall and 9-3 in the Ivy League. Coach Fran Dunphy won his 228th game as coach of the Quakers, the most ever at Penn.
With the score tied at nine, the Lions (11-16, 4-9 Ivy) went on runs of 11-0 and 11-2 to open a 16-point advantage. Penn cut the deficit to 12, 35-23, at the break.
The Quakers opened the second half on fire, going on a 20-2 run to make the score 43-37 with 9:11 to play in the contest.
The Lions would not go away, and Penn found itself up just two with 20.9 seconds to play and 11 left on the shot clock after Dunphy called a time out.
Junior forward Ugonna Onyekwe was able to get open underneath and bank in a layup to put the Quakers up by the final margin.
Penn was led by Ugonna Onyekwe, who had 14 points, and Andrew Toole, who scored 11. Craig Austin led the Lions with 13. Penn outscored Columbia, 28-12, in the second half.
Penn returns to action tomorrow night against Cornell at 7 p.m.
The other Ivy League contenders kept pace with Penn tonight, as Yale topped Harvard, 77-72, and Princeton came back and outlasted Cornell, 61-57. Brown also won, beating Dartmouth, 85-70.
Princeton leads the Ivy League at 10-2, Yale is a half game back at 10- 3, and Penn is a game back at 9-3.
The Penn women's basketball team also won tonight, opening a 25-point lead before beating Columbia by nine, 87-78.
