A long week off for Penn basketball

We've passed the half-way point in Penn men's basketball's 8 day layover between games. The Quakers upset St. Joe's last Saturday night and now have 4 more days before taking on rival Princeton at home Monday.

Last week at practice I asked coach Jerome Allen his thoughts on the somewhat quirky scheduling during this stretch, and whether it was nice to have a long break before facing the rest of the grueling Ivy schedule:

It really depends on how you look at it. The maturity of your team, the health of your team. Time to practice is always a good thing, it allows you to really reinforce your fundamentals and your principles. But I also see where it can be looked at as a negative where guys can get out of their game rhythm and stuff. We’re going to look at it as it being positive and say that after Saturday’s game, the 8 or 9 day layoff allows us to get guys more healthy, allows to us really get back to reinforcing our fundaments and instill some new schemes to make us a better team come the rest of league play.

And is it especially nice to have a long break before facing Princeton:

I think we respect the game enough to know that we can’t really put extra emphasis on preparation for one particular game. We can put emphasis on preparing for whoever our next opponent is, to be honest.