skip navigation

Winning culture taking over quickly at Penn

11/25/2015, 11:45pm EST
By Josh Verlin

Jamal Lewis (above) celebrates a 3-pointer in Penn's win over La Salle on Tuesday night. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

If there’s been any one telling moment about how this year’s Penn team is different from its recent predecessors, it came with under four minutes left in the first half Quakers’ Big 5 opener against La Salle on Tuesday night.

It came after the Explorers had gone on a 13-3 run to take a 10-point lead, the kind of run that in years prior would have represented the beginnings of yet another loss, one of the dozens that the program suffered over the last three years.

That was then.

Whatever it is--new head coach Steve Donahue, an extra year of maturity for some key sophomores, a healthy group of seniors--this is a different Penn squad.

Instead of folding against La Salle, the Quakers responded, closing the gap to three points at the half before breaking things open in the second half and running away to an eventual 80-64 win.

The 4-1 start is the program’s best mark after five games since an identical start back in 2001-02, when the members of the current team were still in elementary school. The win in the first Big 5 game of the year is the first time the program’s done that since 2004.

“It feels amazing,” said senior center Darien Nelson-Henry, who paced his team with a career-best 31 points and 14 rebounds in the win. “This is the first time I’ve started out with a Big 5 win, this is the first time I’ve beaten La Salle, and I want to keep it going.”

Historically, the last few years have been the exception and not the norm. This is, after all, a program that's in the top-15 all-time in NCAA history in wins and has gone to the NCAA Tournament nearly two dozen times.

While they might be aware of the past, nobody on this current roster knows what that's like.

In the three years prior to this one, all under head coach Jerome Allen, Penn went 26-61 (.298). Attendance at the Palestra, which has seen its bleachers packed to the corners time and time again by the Penn faithful, dropped to a few hundred mostly-apathetic fans by February (and usually sooner) every time.

That’s the type of losing that can have a lasting effect beyond just one season.

And in the season opener against Robert Morris, Donahue saw those old ways return. After his team went up 16 at the break, the Colonials were able to come back and tie things up with three minutes remaining.

“I saw it in the body language, almost like a ‘here we go again' type of attitude,” the former Cornell and Boston College head coach said. “I didn’t sense that in the first half today. I sensed like ‘alright, shots aren’t falling--we’re going to be grittier.’”

Neither of the Quakers’ seniors, Nelson-Henry or point guard Jamal Lewis, could pinpoint what exactly has changed this season. All involved with the program were optimistic all offseason that this year would be different, but until the games started counting, who was to say for sure that anything would actually change?

Well, it's clear something has.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the win over La Salle was that it came just four days after a 104-67 blowout loss at Washington, another one of those outcomes that has the opportunity to send everything into a spiral.

Obviously that didn't happen.

“I don’t know if this is different or not, but we just exaggerate the positivity,” said Lewis, who’s back to being a solid member of the rotation after a life-threatening illness over the summer of 2014 kept him on the sideline last season. “Mistakes are going to be made, teams are going to go on runs; we try to worry about the next play and try to play that play to the best of our ability. I think that has allowed us to not worry about being down, we just worry about the next play.”

Penn's got a good opportunity to keep the momentum going, playing at struggling Lafayette (1-4) this Sunday before returning home to host Navy (3-2).

But there are still plenty of obstacles ahead: Villanova, Temple and Saint Joseph's all remain in the Big 5 schedule, and all three have looked good this season against tough competition. And then there's the Ivy League, with the top trio of Princeton, Yale and Columbia a combined 9-4 in non-conference play, with some very impressive wins under their belt.

Now, at least, Penn knows what it'll take to stick with them.

"Obviously some teams are going to play well against us, or we’re going to have mismatches," Nelson-Henry admitted. "But I think as long as we keep our attitude that we had from the beginning, I think we’re going to be good.”

Welcome back to optimism, Quakers fans. It’s been a while.


Recruiting News:

HS Coverage:

Tag(s): Home  Josh Verlin  Events  Division I  Penn  Big 5