When Penn basketball departed for Italy on Aug. 15, the team’s goal was less about its play on the court, and more about the chemistry the players share.
The nine-day trip has the Quakers set to return home Aug. 23. Along the way, the Quakers were scheduled to play three games against Italian squads while taking in the sights and sounds of a foreign country.
“Most of us have never been to Europe,” senior Miles Cartwright said. “That brings us together in the one sense of it. We’re all going through this together.”
The team arrived in Venice on the 15th and stayed there for two days before heading to Florence and traveling to the trip’s final destination.
While the experience will certainly help bring the team together, the incoming freshman class was unable to go on the trip due to NCAA rules.
Currently, including the incoming freshmen, there are 20 players on the roster, so multiple cuts will have to be made before the season begins.
For a team that had difficulty gelling at times last season due to injuries, this trip could strengthen the bond of the returning players and may end up factoring into the coaching staff’s decision on which players stay on the roster.
“That’s the biggest part, for us to build these relationships off the court,” sophomore Tony Hicks said.
A year ago, this team was forced to grow together thanks to the lack of even a single senior on the roster, and now, the stakes are high.
Seniors Miles Cartwright and Fran Dougherty are expected to have the lessons from last season in mind as they lead a Red and Blue squad that will need to come together in a big way to finish atop the Ivy ladder this season.
Penn won its first game over Camp Darby, a military base outside of Florence, 111-42, but only so much can be read into those numbers.
Even if Penn were to have trouble spots in its time on the court in Italy, there is only so much that could be done.
“We’re trying to get better on the court,” Hicks said. “But we’re only playing three games so you don’t have a lot of time.”
This trip is more of a chance to slow everything down rather than to work hard to make vast improvements to their game.
However, last season, Cartwright and Dougherty spent time in Spain and both valued the time greatly. The payoff could be seen from Dougherty’s play at the beginning of the season last year, where he averaged 20.4 points in the first five games of the season.
Hopefully, this trip to Italy can have the same affect on other players on Penn’s roster.
“This is a life-changing experience,” coach Jerome Allen said. “If they come in with the right mindset.”
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