Quakers beat Brown, 80-78, in overtime

Saturday night at the Palestra, the old adage rang loud and clear: defense wins games.

Despite trailing seven points at the half, the Quakers held Brown to just 31 points in the final 25 minutes, including overtime.

The defensive clamp-down helped Penn earn its third-straight victory — an 80-78 thriller.

While the Red and Blue (8-8, 2-0 Ivy) finished strong — led by senior Jack Eggleston’s 25 points and 12 rebounds — they allowed the most first-half points to an opponent since allowing 58 to Duke in last season’s 114-55 loss.

Adrian Williams, son of 1988 Super Bowl MVP Doug Williams, led the early fight for Brown (7-11, 0-4) with 19 points off the bench. in the first half

“[Giving up 47 first-half points] is just inexcusable,” Penn senior Jack Eggleston said. “It should never happen.”

But the captain and his team turned up the defense in the second frame as they chipped away at a deficit that reached 10 on three occasions.

“We definitely showed a lot of maturity in sticking with it and staying the course,” junior co-captain Zack Rosen said. “It was all defense.”

Though the Quakers showed few signs of a comeback in the first 12 minutes of the second stanza, they managed to shut down Williams, who has been battling “a really bad knee,” according to Brown coach Jesse Agel.

But Agel was quick to point out that it wasn’t an injury that held Williams to three points following his 19-point first-half explosion.

“[Penn] did a great job locating him,” Agel said. “What was holding him back was [that] they did a great defensive job.”

On the other end of the court, with just over eight minutes remaining in regulation, Tyler Bernardini and Eggleston caught fire for the Red and Blue as they cut into Brown’s lead. With 5:25 remaining, the game was tied and the Palestra was rocking.

The Bears kept their cool, though, and two minutes later, Penn found itself up against another six-point deficit.

Rosen recalled the team’s collective mindset: “We dug ourselves a hole. Okay, fine. What are we going to do about it?”

Eggleston had the solution.

He nailed a jumper then a three, and senior Conor Turley executed an impressive three-point play to tie the game at 73.

Forty-six seconds remained on the clock, and Rosen passed the ball around the perimeter to freshman Miles Cartwright — who had struggled to shoot all night — for the game winner.

Cartwright’s shot missed, and Rosen grabbed the rebound with a chance to put the game away himself. But he passed it away, this time to the hot Bernardini, who missed the buzzer beater.

But in overtime, the Quakers needed just over two minutes to send the message to Brown that they were going home with the win. Eggleston nailed a long three, then followed up with an emphatic dunk and a scream in celebration.

And with a Turley dunk, the Red and Blue capped off a 25-minute defensive stand that — slowly, but surely — sealed the win.

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