The Quakers felt the Bulldogs’ bite on Saturday.
After a spirited start, Penn fell to Ivy League preseason poll favorite Yale 77-60 on Jan. 24 at the Palestra.
The Quakers (9-9, 2-3 Ivy) had high hopes at home after a weekend on the road, but sophomore guard AJ Levine’s 17-point effort was not enough to stop the Bulldogs’ (15-3, 4-1) winning ways. Although the squads were seemingly evenly matched at the start of the game, Penn entered the half with a 10-point deficit, a difference that proved impossible to recover for the remainder of the game.
Here’s how it went down at the Palestra.
Two offensive styles contrast
Since the opening tip, the Bulldogs led an attack-driven offense, scoring 42 points in the paint alone, nearly double Penn’s point total inside. The Quakers’ reliance on the three-point line led to inconsistent offensive swings.
Yale’s around-the-rim effort was particularly notable as guard Casey Simmons and forward Nick Townsend tipped in uncertain shots and dominated on the boards. The Bulldogs accumulated a total of 42 rebounds compared to the Quakers’ 28. It was a game of rebounds and Yale was a complete mismatch for Penn.
Penn struggled to find the rim with a pass-and-shoot offense that went 28% from the three-point line, even when factoring in a hot shooting streak at the beginning of the game. Junior guard TJ Powers and senior guard Ethan Roberts struggled to find consistent momentum from the arc.
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“We hit a couple [of three-pointers], but we were settling,” coach Fran McCaffery said. “You don’t get into the bonus shooting threes.”
An off day for Penn’s reliable offense
Power and Roberts each notched 12 points — a far cry from the game-changing capabilities they typically bring to the table. Senior guard/forward Michael Zanoni also failed to make some of his specialty off-balance shots.
“Michael [Zanoni] missed a couple he usually makes … and that’s tough,” McCaffery said. “We’ve got to get him going.”
However, there were some solid individual performances, namely by Levine and freshman forward/center Dalton Scantlebury. Levine was one of Penn’s only players who consistently drove into the paint early on, scoring a team-high 17 points and attempting more free throws than all of his teammates combined.
Scantlebury, who saw most of his game time in the first half, did an impressive job guarding Townsend, the reigning Ivy League Player of the Week. He spent most of the second half on the bench due to a slight knock he picked up in the game.
A stop-start game for a reason
The officiating took center stage at points. While some free throws resulted from smart drives or clear fouls, at other times the referees whistled on plays where significant contact may not have been visible to all those in attendance. The crowd was quick to object to some of those calls.
There were 41 total fouls called in the game: 19 against the Bulldogs and 22 against the Quakers. Roberts finished with five fouls, while Power had four.
Next weekend, the team will be back on the road for its only set of back-to-back games in Ivy play, taking on Columbia in the Big Apple on Friday before heading to Ithaca, N.Y., to face Cornell on Saturday.
