Penn men’s basketball senior guard/forward Ethan Roberts, the team’s leading scorer on the season, will not play in Penn’s March Madness game against Illinois, coach Fran McCaffery told media Wednesday afternoon.
McCaffery also said that junior forward TJ Power, who scored 44 points in Penn’s Ivy League championship win over Yale, was questionable with an illness and did not practice Wednesday.
“We really won’t know until tomorrow,” McCaffery said of Power’s status. “If you asked me, ‘Do I think he’s gonna play?’ I’d say yes. But he didn’t practice today.”
No. 14 Penn will tip off against the No. 3 Illinois on Thursday at 9:25 p.m. in Greenville, S.C.
Power was named conference tournament MVP after leading Penn to overtime victories over Harvard and the Yale Bulldogs. His 44-point effort broke the men’s Ivy Madness single-game scoring record and is the second most in a men’s Division I conference tournament final in the last 30 years. The former five-star recruit, who transferred to Penn after playing for Duke and Virginia, was unanimously named to the All-Ivy first team after averaging 16.8 points per game in the regular season.
“That’s a game changer, because a lot of the things we do are featuring him,” McCaffery said of how Power’s status affects the Red and Blue’s game plan. He called Power “one of the most versatile, one of the most talented, one of the most accomplished players in college basketball this year.”
“If he’s not out there, it’s no different than any other time — it’s next man up,” McCaffery added. “You have to have somebody else who’s ready. [Senior guard] Cam Thrower, you could not have asked him to do any better than he did in Ethan’s absence. So hopefully somebody else will step up in TJ’s place if he can’t go.”
Roberts sat out the Quakers’ Ivy Madness championship run after sustaining a concussion during practice. In the tournament, Thrower filled in with a career-high 19 points against Yale, including 4-of-6 from beyond the arc.
Roberts, a second-team All-Ivy selection, averaged 16.9 points and 3.9 rebounds per game for Penn this season. In November, he was named the Lou Henson National Mid-Major Player of the Week after scoring over 30 points in the Quakers’ wins over Saint Joseph’s and Drexel.
The injury marked Roberts’ second concussion of the season — he also missed Penn’s final four non-conference games after suffering a blow to the head in the Quakers’ Big 5 Championship loss to Villanova.
“When you’ve had your second concussion, that’s not something you mess with,” McCaffery said.
