Spring break came 20 minutes too early for the Quakers.
After leading by eight early in the second half, Penn men’s basketball allowed Princeton to make a strong comeback. The Tigers hit nearly 78 percent of their shots in the second half en route to a 70-58 win in the season finale.
While Penn’s season was over regardless of the outcome of the game, the team was playing for an above-.500 Ivy season and the chance to knock Princeton (24-6, 12-2) off the top of the Ivy League. With the win, Princeton became co-champions with Harvard. The two will play Saturday to decide the League’s automatic NCAA tournament berth.
“Everybody’s playing for something,” Penn coach Jerome Allen said.
On Senior night at the Palestra, Penn held the Tigers to just 19 points in the first half and a measly 28-percent shooting percentage.
“There was a lot of discussion about the passion we needed to play with,” Princeton coach Sydney Johnson said about his team’s halftime talk. “And these guys absolutely showed how bad they wanted it.”
What really hurt the Quakers (13-15, 7-7 Ivy) throughout the game was Princeton’s three-point shooting, especially down the stretch when Penn was trying to make a comeback of its own.
While the Tigers made half of their attempts from behind the arc, Penn only made 21 percent of its three-point attempts.
Princeton senior Kareem Maddox opened up the perimeter game with a strong post presence. He led the way for the Tigers, scoring 21 of his 23 points in the second half. Despite Penn’s best efforts, the team could not find a solution.
“They really pounded the ball inside,” senior forward Jack Eggleston said. “I did a poor job on Maddox, and he’s a tough matchup. Even though he doesn’t shoot the ball well, he’s athletic, he’s long ... and he did a tremendous job finishing.”
No one was more disappointed with the game’s result than Eggleston, who played his final game as a Quaker with the rest of the seniors.
“My legacy is not going to include a title,” Eggleston said. “That’s pretty disappointing. That was one of my goals coming in, and to leave here without a title is going to bug me for a while. But I hope that at some point down the road, I can look back and say, ‘I was a part of rebuilding a championship program.’”
Johnson, a Princeton graduate, said Eggleston would have been a great Tiger, the highest compliment he feels he could give someone.
“Jack Eggleston is a player that I’ve loved from the day I saw him,” the Princeton coach said. “He’s been a pain in the rear end to compete against, and he’s been a leader ... That kid is special.”
While this certainly isn’t the way Eggleston wanted to end his collegiate career, the packed Palestra crowd gave him a standing ovation as he walked off the court for the last time.
The season continues for Harvard and Princeton when they face off Saturday at Yale to determine who will receive the Ivy bid in the NCAA Tournament. But for the Red and Blue, it just represents one more year without an Ivy League championship.
For Allen though, the final Ivy game of the season really doesn’t concern him.
“Saturday, you know where I’m going to be?” he asked. “Taking my daughter roller blading.”
