Penn falls short vs. longtime rival Princeton, drops Ivy League opener on the road
The Quakers carried a 14-point lead at the half, but allowed the Tigers to come back in the second, where they shot 77.78%, to fall 78-76 on Monday night.
New coach, new players, same result.
Penn took a familiar drive to Jadwin Gymnasium on Monday night, looking to open Ivy League play with a win against longtime rival Princeton. After taking a 14-point lead in the first half, the Quakers couldn’t keep pace with the hot-shooting Tigers in the second and fell, 78-76, after missing the final shot in Fran McCaffery’s first Ancient Eight game as head coach.
Princeton (5-11, 1-0 Ivy) has won 14 straight over Penn, which McCaffery and the players know well.
“You can’t worry about what happened six years ago,” McCaffery said. “What happened when Pete Carril was coaching, we all know what it was like. We played a game tonight. We lost to a good team, a really good coach, and, whether we won or lost, we are going to break the film down and try and get better.”
Next up, Penn (7-7, 0-1) will host Brown on Saturday (2 p.m., ESPN+).
Last-second chance
Penn made a late comeback and trailed by two after a 13-0 run, which included nine points from the free-throw line.
The final play, intended for Ethan Roberts, went awry, and point guard AJ Levine attempted to make a buzzer-beating three, which clanged off the rim.
“They did a good job switching it,” McCaffery said. “I thought [Roberts] should have kept going. He passed it. That’s hard because now you put your teammate in a position where there’s two seconds to go in the game and he’s at 26 feet.”
Roberts, the team’s leading scorer, missed the previous four games because of an injury he suffered against Villanova in the Big 5 Classic championship on Dec. 5.
The senior forward scored 19 points on 5-for-12 shooting in his return, but McCaffery believes Roberts has yet to return to full speed.
“He takes the pressure off TJ [Power] and Michael [Zanoni],” McCaffery said. “He just has to get back in rhythm. He missed five weeks. He’s trying to remember the plays; he’s trying to remember where he goes.”
Second-half collapse
Roberts and shooting guard Zanoni (13 points) led the charge in the first half, combining for 20 points to help secure a 32-24 lead. To open the second, the Tigers made 16 straight baskets in the first 11-plus minutes.
Penn suddenly found itself down, 63-51, with 8 minutes, 48 seconds to go. The Tigers made 21 of 27 shots (77.8%) from the field, including 5-for-7 from deep, in the second half.
McCaffery was asked whether he had seen a shooting performance like that before. “No,” he said. “Nothing else to say, no. It’s a good question.
“What do you do? Think about it. You can change personnel. You can change defenses. We did that, and really the only thing to work was press, and we waited too long.”
However, Penn did not miss from the free-throw line in the game, going 19-for-19.
Seeking redemption
Princeton had struggled to start the season, and coach Mitch Henderson attributed the Tigers’ strong performance against Penn to the return of Dalen Davis, who suffered a leg injury in November.
The junior shooting guard scored 19 points off the bench in 21 minutes. Sophomore guard Jack Stanton led the Tigers with 23 points.
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“It’s not just the scoring,” Henderson said of Davis’ play. “That’s awesome, I did not know we made 16 in a row. That’s amazing, but it’s his defense — his ability to go with balls shows his competitiveness.”
Penn will face Princeton again on Feb. 7.