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That Penn team that won the Big 5? It was back in the win over Yale. | Mike Jensen

The Quakers took out Yale to stay alive for the Ivy tournament.

AJ Brodeur and the Quakers are still alive.
AJ Brodeur and the Quakers are still alive.Read moreCHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

Penn students were still on break. The corners of the Palestra weren’t filled in.

A question hung in the air — it had followed the Penn Quakers around lately. How had the same group that had swept through the Big 5 not been able to do more than tread water in the Ivy League?

On this night, none of that mattered. Brown had won up at Princeton in a late Friday afternoon Ivy League special. For Penn, that result provided clarity. The Quakers already understood the urgency of their situation.

The next time the Quakers lost, their season would be over. Whether Friday against Yale or Saturday against Brown — they needed to win both to advance to the Ivy tournament. March Madness and its survive-and-advance mode had come early. Saturday night’s Brown-Penn winner will get the last slot in the four-team Ivy postseason battle royale at Yale.

Clarity can be a very good thing. Forget all your struggles, just go out and play. Friday’s Quakers were immediately a step quicker than Yale. Fingertips redirected loose balls. Extra passes found open shooters. Spin moves worked. Three-pointers fell. Fast breaks were thwarted.

Maybe the biggest shocker: Even Penn’s free throws were falling.

Didn’t matter that Yale came in tied for first in the Ivies. At one point, Penn was up 32-13. At halftime, it was 46-30. The final was 77-66.

This was like watching a conference tournament where one team already had its NCAA bid locked up and the other was in pure survival mode.

It’s not as if Penn hadn’t been here before. Quakers coach Steve Donahue relied on his veterans, who had experienced last year’s NCAA Tournament, and the last two Ivy tournaments. Two years ago, this same group had needed to beat Harvard the last day of the regular season to get into the four-team Ivy postseason free-for-all.

If A.J. Brodeur wasn’t the best player on the court, then Penn teammate Antonio Woods was. Woods is as good as any defender in the Big 5. (Or just call him the best.) It was no surprise he came out guarding top Yale scorer Miye Oni, or that Oni wasn’t scoring. Woods also was completely taking it to Yale at the other end. He had 15 first-half points.

“This game really meant a lot to me, still playing for a the chance to go to the tournament,’’ said Woods, who finished with 22. “I didn’t want this to be my last game and tomorrow means nothing on my senior night.”

“The beauty of Antonio, he’s never really high, he’s never really low — he just kind of plays in the moment,’’ Donahue said. “So when the stakes are high — whether that’s end of game, end of clock — he just seems to rise to the occasion.”

So what’s the deal with the change in fortunes from back in December during the City Series? It’s really not that complicated, if you listen to Donahue, who had mentioned even before the season how 34 of 40 Ivy starters had returned, which is just unheard of.

“And all the all-league players,’’ Donahue said last night. First team and second team. And in this league, every player really reads the scouting reports, he also mentioned, which means there are no surprises. It’s not as if you could ever have an off night on the road in this league. Now, you can’t do it at home.

“The league has grown into this,’’ Donahue said. “We probably should have seen this coming.”

Penn’s offense just hasn’t been as consistent in the league, the coach said. The defense has been there.

“I think one of the issues with us this year — we’ve never been great,’’ Brodeur said. “We weren’t bad. We were OK. To win this league, you’ve got to be great. I think today we started to show a little bit of that potential that we have in us.”

“Right now, it’s halftime,’’ Donahue said a couple of minutes later. “We have 40 more minutes to play.”