City of Basketball Love

Vincent Lungaro (@VinceLungaro)
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As if the grueling nature of a college basketball season wasn’t enough, Penn is about to get an extra dose of competition over the next two weeks.

The Quakers (7-9, 0-3 Ivy League) play the first of five games in a nine-day stretch at 7 p.m. Friday when they take on Harvard (11-6, 3-1) at Lavietes Pavilion in Boston.

Following its matchup with the Crimson, coach Steve Donahue’s team will make a short trip north to face Dartmouth on Saturday, before returning home on Tuesday to host archrival Princeton.

Columbia will visit the Palestra on Friday Feb. 10, as will Cornell on Feb 12.

To say it’s going to be a busy period for the Quakers is an understatement. The Ivy League has had to shorten the amount of regular season dates available, with a four-team conference tournament being held for the first time ever in early March.

And if Penn wants to be playing in that historical tournament in its own gym, it needs to turn things around quickly.

The good news for the Quakers is that the schedule before this stretch hasn’t been all that busy.

“We’ve probably played five games in 30 days, so we’ve had the chance to practice a lot,” Donahue said; it was actually five games in 18 days (Jan. 7-25), but those were the only five games they’ll have played between Dec. 30 and Feb. 5. “We’ve been playing our best basketball. We’re excited.

“It’s obviously a huge part of the season, for a lot of reasons,” he added. “One being we’ve dug ourselves a hole, and we’ve got to get out of it. And that starts on Friday against Harvard.”

When Donahue was the head coach at Cornell from 2000 to 2010, Harvard had largely hovered around the middle to bottom of the conference.

Now, in his return to the Ivy League with the Quakers, Donahue has seen the Crimson’s evolution into one the conference’s more consistent programs, highlighted by four NCAA Tournament berths in the past five seasons. 

Donahue said the Crimson’s improvement mirrors the improvement of the league as a whole from top to bottom.

“They’ve brought in a much better, athletic type of basketball player,” Donahue said. “As they have, so has the league.”

Four days after their clash with the Crimson, the Quakers must then face Princeton in a shake-up of when the teams would usually meet in the past.

Instead of playing one another in the traditional spot at the end of the regular season, the game now takes place right smack dab in the middle of the season due to the introduction of the Ivy League Tournament; Princeton took the first matchup, 61-52 in New Jersey on Jan. 7.

“It’s a challenge, there’s no doubt about it,” Donahue said.

“But, a lot of leagues play similar challenges, this one’s just unique to our league,” he added. “I think both teams kind of have the same thing. It’s not like [Princeton] is sitting at home waiting for us; they’re doing the Harvard, Dartmouth trip as well.”

Since a disappoint home loss to Brown on Jan. 14, Donahue said the Quakers have been competing at a much higher level.

They played Saint Joseph’s close on the road in a 78-71 defeat, before topping La Salle 77-74 in the second of two straight Big Five matchups.

“I thought we competed well at St. Joe’s and then to go on the road to play a Top 100 team and figure out to win, that result is a mental boost for our guys,” Donahue said. “We played some different people, they played well and I think we’re a better basketball team than we were before these 20 days.”

Freshman forward A.J. Brodeur continues to lead the way offensively for the Quakers, averaging 15.3 points per game, including a 35-point performance in the win over La Salle.

“We don’t go into a game where we go ‘We’ve got to make sure we get him his 20’,” Donahue said. “I’m very confident that if teams really pay attention to him we’ll take advantage. ”

A player that rewarded Donahue for an increase in minutes over the past few games is another freshman, 6-5 Downingtown West product Ryan Betley.

Averaging just 2.6 points per game on the season beforehand, Betley scored a combined 28 points against the Hawks and Explorers.

“He gives us something that we hadn’t had before,” Donahue said. “He’s a very good shooter and another longer, athletic kid that can finish at the rim. He can play at the top of our 1-3-1 zone and create some turnovers. He’s brought something that we really needed.”