Penn’s men are going back to the Ivy League tournament, but they took the long way to get there

March was six hours away when the ball was tipped at the Palestra on Saturday, and it had been a while since that mattered for Penn’s men.

Fran McCaffery’s squad has clearly improved over the course of this season, but just how much has been hard to tell at times. A senior night showdown with tied-for-first Harvard offered a proper test, and a win would clinch the Quakers’ first Ivy League tournament berth in three years.

Which Penn team would show up?

The one that fell behind Dartmouth by 12 points a night before, or the one that rallied to win? The one that nearly threw away a late lead to Princeton at the start of the month, or the one that finally ended a 14-game, eight-year losing streak to its historic rival?

All of them, it turned out. Penn trailed 31-21 at halftime, then charged back to lead 56-50 with 5 minutes, 37 seconds to play. But the Quakers almost gave it up before holding on to win, 64-61.

There was plenty of noise from the 2,877 fans on hand at the buzzer, a reminder that even a paltry crowd can make a great atmosphere at the 99-year-old shrine. It might have been as much out of relief as anything else, but it was still a release.

“I think that’s what makes it emotional, is we’ve been so close,” senior forward Ethan Roberts said after his Palestra finale. “So to see these wins and the season transpire the way it did, we’re in a great spot, and we just learned from it. We kept fighting, and it was ugly at times, but it just makes it all worth it.”

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It’s easy to say that this Penn team goes as far as TJ Power takes it. He took it to an extreme on Friday, scoring 38 of his team’s 80 points against the Big Green. But Roberts matters too, and this was his best game in weeks: 21 points, three assists, and four rebounds, including the game-sealer in the last seconds.

“I kind of blacked out after the buzzer hit,” Roberts said. “Our team, our entire year since last summer when we had the coaching change [and] we see coach [Fran] McCaffery is coming here, it’s like, ‘All right, we’re winning.’ And to see we’re in this position today … this is literally all we’ve worked for. This has been our north star.”

AJ Levine, the sophomore starting point guard, is another big factor — and not always in a good way. He’s a tenacious defender, and is capable of great passes and shots. But he’s also capable of driving into any lane in front of him, even if it’s a trap.

It’s not a coincidence that he played much more within himself in the second half of conference play, and that Penn went 6-1 in those seven games.

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“He’s always going to have an aggressive mindset, and you don’t ever want to take that away from him,” McCaffery said, with a towel draped over his shoulders after a postgame water-dousing in the locker room. “He gets emotional, and you don’t want to take that away from him either, but you can’t let it get you to where you’re focused on, ‘I got a bad call,’ or ‘He [a teammate] should have cut backdoor.’ When he’s under control and he’s locked in like he was in the second half, he’s really good.”

Now, after the regular-season finale at Brown on Friday, it will be off to Cornell’s arena for a rematch with the Crimson in the Ivy tournament semifinals. All four seeds are set with a game to spare.

“It’s great feeling as a coach when you know you have a group of guys that have bought in from day one since I got here, and want to experience success,” McCaffery said. “And then to see them celebrate in the locker room — the thing we have to do now, and they both [Roberts and Levine] said it, which is good, is we have to stay locked in. We earned an opportunity. We have to play well next week, and then get ready to play well against two really good teams.”

(If you’re wondering, there’s no word when the event will next be at the Palestra. All that’s known is the 2027 edition will be at Dartmouth, and Hanover, N.H., is as glamorous as central New York is in mid-March.)

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No. 1 Yale will be the favorite on paper, No. 68 in the NCAA’s NET rating while the other three teams are all in the 150s. But the top seed has only won the tournament twice in its seven editions, as the five-time finalist Bulldogs know well.

This time, they’ll have to beat the hosts in the semis. Yale won its home game vs. Cornell in a 102-68 blowout, then the Big Red won the regular-season round in Ithaca on Friday on a last-second three.

Penn and Harvard also split their games, with the Crimson winning by 64-63 in Boston on Jan. 19.

“There’s the frustrating losses, there’s the hard-fought wins like today,” Levine said. “When that buzzer went off and I realized what we’ve done — and how it’s just the start, really, because we’re going to go compete there — I mean, it just it felt amazing to just see that hard work pay off a little bit. But it will really pay off when we go up there and we do what we do.”

Those words might have been a little too accurate for their own good. Still, they have a chance, and that’s more than Penn could say the last two seasons.