Fran McCaffery, TJ Power, and the Penn Quakers are now the coolest story in Philly hoops

This was Fran McCaffery in the aftermath of Penn’s 88-84 overtime victory in the Ivy League tournament championship Sunday at Newman Arena in Ithaca, N.Y.: bespectacled and placid and content to be heading back to the NCAA Tournament for the 13th time with five programs. He was nothing like he often is on the sideline, where he can rage and yell and practically vibrate with intensity, and he was betraying little about what this game and its outcome had to mean to him.

This was for his father, Jack, who walked a beat as a Philly cop for 28 years and kept a watchful eye over Veterans Stadium and the Palestra as a security guard for 16. This was for his older brother, Jack, who was a great Philly sportswriter before suffering a stroke two years ago. This was for all the Saturday nights that the McCaffery family spent at the Palestra in the ’70s, when Jack Sr. was manning the door and his sons were just boys who couldn’t get enough basketball. This was for a Penn team that has won nine of its last 10 games after starting 9-10 this season, that is the program’s first squad to qualify for the NCAAs since 2018, that got McCaffery — from West Oak Lane, from La Salle High, from the University of Pennsylvania Class of ’82 — back to the Big Dance for the first time since 2023.

“They’re all incredible, but I do think this was a little different,” McCaffery said. “Not only coming home to my alma mater, coming home. I just feel blessed to have this opportunity, and I feel blessed to have the group of guys I have. … From Day One, they bought in. The way they love one another is essentially the reason we’re here. … That’s what I hope to encounter. That’s what I hope to build. That’s what culture is. And these guys made it easy.”

This was for TJ Power, who followed McCaffery to Penn after playing a little at Duke and even less at Virginia and who wanted out of UVA after his coach there, Tony Bennett, abruptly retired. Who decided that earning money at another program was less important to him than going to the Ivy League — the last vestige of amateurism in college basketball, a conference where pay-for-play is forbidden — and playing for a coach who had connected with him, who ran the kind of free-flowing, fast-paced system that suited Power’s skills. Who is the biggest story of the month right now after scoring 44 points and grabbing 14 rebounds and swishing two three-pointers in the final seven seconds of regulation just to grant the Quakers another chance.

» READ MORE: Three schools later, TJ Power came to Penn with armor. He’s feeling ‘indestructible.’

“I came to play for Coach McCaffery,” Power said. “That’s the bottom line — wherever he was going. I made the mistake twice of saying no to him. I didn’t want to make that the third time. His style of play, what he’s done for me, it’s everything. I don’t think I tell him enough. So grateful for him taking a chance on me.”

This was another achievement for McCaffery in his 30-year career as a head coach. Lehigh, UNC-Greensboro, Siena, Iowa, now Penn: He’s led all of them to the Tournament. And this was a validation of the wisdom that he wielded in the closing moments of regulation Sunday. Playing at Penn and in the city’s summer leagues, McCaffery had earned the moniker “White Magic” for his skill and flair, and a coach with that sort of background knows that, when you have a guy as talented as Power is and as hot as he was, the only thing you need to do is make sure the ball gets in his hands because he’ll take care of the rest. Which is what happened: Power dribbled from one end of the court to the other, Yale’s defense backing up … backing up … no Yale player looking to foul Power … no one watching in the gym or at home quite believing it when Power’s long, high three-pointer fell clean through the net with two seconds left.

“There’s really nothing overly complicated about that,” McCaffery said. “We ran some actions, but you just said it: We’re going to him. We’re putting the ball in his hands. That doesn’t put me in the Hall of Fame. Anybody who was at the game: ‘Throw the ball to TJ.’ That’s what we did, and he was incredible.”

This was for the entire Big 5. This was for that once-formidable alliance of programs here in Philadelphia that had fallen so far over the last several years. This was a surprise that added some local juice and interest to an NCAA Tournament that, until Sunday afternoon, promised to have just Villanova — shorthanded, coming off a lousy loss to Georgetown in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament — representing the city. This was the Quakers knocking off Yale, which has represented the Ivy League in the NCAAs in three of the previous four years and was 24-5 and atop the league ahead of Sunday. This was a small Cinderella moment in an age of college hoops when those moments have never been harder to come by.

» READ MORE: Penn wins Ivy League tourney and punches ticket to NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018

“I don’t really, quite frankly, look at that,” McCaffery said. “I was hired to run a program the right way, to build culture, to build confidence. If you do that, you’re going to win games. I don’t care where we’re playing.”

This was about all that and more. This was TJ Power and the Penn Quakers, and their coach owning March Madness for just a little while. This was the coolest moment for Philadelphia basketball in a long time. This was exactly what Fran McCaffery said. This was a little different, in all the best ways.