Even after a blowout loss, Penn’s Fran McCaffery has already won. And he can’t wait to get back to work.

GREENVILLE, S.C. — It was early January when Brad Underwood knew his friend was in a good place. His Illini basketball team was visiting the Palestra for a neutral site game against Penn State when Fran McCaffery stopped by to chat.

The two coaches had spent the previous eight years helping one another navigate and endure the pressures of a rapidly evolving Big Ten. Leading a major college basketball program was rapidly evolving into a careful-what-you-wish-for kind of thing. They were men from an era when coaches built legacies via relationships and culture, an era when there was something meaningful in the association between the name on the front of the jersey and the university standing behind it. The previous spring, when Iowa fired McCaffery, the winningest coach in school history, it was another sign of the times. Except, here McCaffery was now, looking like a man who’d rediscovered something.

“I told our staff, this is pure joy,” Underwood said of that night at the Palestra. “This is what I saw when I saw Fran. I saw the smile, he was happy. He told us exactly where he sat when he was a kid watching games in the Palestra, got to play there. Then you come full circle and you come back to your alma mater, I can’t imagine there’s maybe anybody in college basketball any more proud than Fran McCaffery is. To be able to live out something like that is really pretty cool. It doesn’t get to happen very often, but he was so happy. In this profession that’s really hard to do.”

When the two men met again on Thursday night in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the scoreboard said it went much better for one than the other. Underwood’s third-seeded Illini looked like aliens compared to McCaffery’s Quakers, who were giving away multiple inches and magnitudes of pounds in nearly every defensive matchup. The size disadvantage eventually manifested itself in a 105-70 loss that was even more decisive than the score. Penn was outrebounded 48-25 and was outscored 44-24 in the paint.

“Obviously those are some pretty big dudes out there,” said Penn senior Cam Thrower. “Ultimately, I think the biggest thing is we fought till the end. We tried our best. Yeah, their size was pretty tough to contend with.”

Compounding matters were the Quakers’ health issues. Leading scorer Ethan Roberts was sidelined with a concussion he suffered ahead of the Ivy League tournament. TJ Power, who scored 44 points in Penn’s conference tournament championship game win, was battling an illness that required multiple IVs. He started and played 30 minutes, but scored only six points, and lacked his usual energy on the glass.

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Penn fought as well it could, trailing by only five with under three minutes left in the first half. But reality struck quickly. They entered the locker room down by 10. Seven minutes into the second half, that deficit had doubled. Resignation set in. All that was left was to find perspective.

“As a kid, I always dreamed of this,” said senior Michael Zanoni, who played like he belonged, scoring 20 points on 9-for-18 shooting. “So to go out and do this was really fun, especially with ‘Penn’ across my chest, it was a dream come true. It was a dream school for me. To play with my brothers out there and hit some shots, it was a really cool feeling. I know my younger self was super happy.”

Words like that are an end-game lives in the heart of a coach like McCaffery. A Philly native who starred at Penn, he has returned to complete the circle.

“Unless you grew up in Philadelphia and spent every Saturday night at the Palestra, pretty much all your childhood years, you probably wouldn’t completely understand it,” McCaffery said. “All three of my roommates were at the game on Sunday. That’s what it’s all about. My teammates, my roommates are there supporting me. My alma mater said, ‘OK, this is our guy.’ I know how important the basketball program is to the university.

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“We’re part of something bigger, the university, the athletic department. Penn basketball and the tradition is something that a lot of people take great pride in, and they put me in charge. I couldn’t be more thankful. It’s truly a blessing to be at my alma mater, to be home, and then to have a group like I had and support from our administration like I have.

“You can’t do it alone. Unless your administration is joined in the fight with you, you can’t do it. So I’m incredibly fortunate, incredibly proud.

“Can’t wait to get back to work.”