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Penn unable to overcome Princeton on Palestra's 90th

02/08/2017, 12:00am EST
By Zach Drapkin

Princeton limited Penn freshman A.J. Brodeur (above) to 10 points and left the Quakers 0-6 in the Ivy. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

Zach Drapkin (@ZachDrapkin)
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The Palestra honored its 90th anniversary on Tuesday with one of college basketball’s oldest rivalries, as Penn met Ivy League foe Princeton for the 235th occasion.

Friendly memories of years past were about the only positives the Penn fans could take away from the night.

The Quakers crumbled under a three-point barrage from Princeton, falling to 0-6 in conference play with a 64-49 defeat while the victors stayed undefeated in the Ivy League.

“For the most part, I thought our guys represented the program well tonight and played as hard as they could and competed. It just wasn’t good enough,” Penn head coach Steve Donahue said. “I wish we could have played a little better and helped celebrate the event that much more.”

Princeton shot the lights out from long range, going 14-of-29 from deep to account for 66 percent of its points in the contest.

Spencer Weisz led the cannonade for the Tigers, splashing home six threes to finish with a game-high 22 points.

“We were fortunate Spencer made some big shots. The ball went down for us tonight,” Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson said. “Making shots is the name of the game and tonight, number 10 made a lot of shots and set the tone for us.”

Princeton’s offense got cooking early on, capitalizing on a seven-minute Penn scoring drought with 13 unanswered points to take a 12-point lead with seven minutes left in the first half.

Weisz was a critical part of that quick start, hitting a pair of threes during that 13-0 spurt and finishing the opening period with 14 points.

“We held them in check relatively the whole game and they gave us some good looks offensively, we got in transition a bunch and then just were able to run our sets,” Weisz said. “When the ball goes in, like coach said, it makes everything a little easier.”

With Penn unable to find any momentum throughout the game, the lead never dipped under double digits after the 4:46 mark of the first half.

The Tigers smothered every set thrown at them on defense, forcing Penn into longer possessions and therefore limiting the Quakers’ ability to string together buckets and get back into the game through the transition game.

A second-half comeback gave Princeton a scare in the two teams’ first meeting of the season, but this time around, the Tigers made sure Penn couldn’t recover.

“We had a big nice comfortable lead in the first game and they came back and made some huge shots in transition, so that was a focus,” Henderson said. “We had to get that squared away.”

Princeton shut Penn down in the second half, holding the Quakers to 22 points over the final 20 minutes to seal the victory.

On the Penn side of things, Darnell Foreman led with 11 points and four assists, while AJ Brodeur had 10 points and six rebounds. Sam Jones had 10 points as well.

The Quakers are still without a win in conference play and sit alone at the bottom of the Ivy League, but Donahue isn’t too concerned just yet.

“There’s a lot of basketball to be played,” Donahue said. “As much as we’ve lost these games, I feel that in particular, now that Princeton’s out of the way, we can compete with anybody else in this league. We’ve got to win a game.”

The Quakers will look to pick up a much-needed W this weekend, with games against Columbia and Cornell on tap for Friday and Sunday.

If Penn is going to start to play its best basketball, now’s the time to do it.

“(We had) a really good preseason and non-league schedule, one of our toughest, and we competed well and won games,” he added. “We have not played as well in the league and that’s frustrating for all of us. On Friday night, we want to change that.”


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