City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Steve Donahue isn’t pushing the panic button.

The Penn head coach knew his team would be in for a brutal first month of the season, though he didn’t count on it being perhaps as bad as it’s been. The Quakers have faced all sorts of obstacles over the last four weeks on top of a difficult schedule, and though the wins haven’t been there, Donahue knows the games that really count are still about a month away.

“I said this to the guys, we’ve been 10-2 in the preseason, won the Big 5, and it’s nice, but in our league, it doesn’t matter,” Donahue said after the Quakers’ latest setback, a 78-71 loss at Saint Joseph’s which dropped their record to 3-9. “We’ve got to be ready to play.”

The Penn head coach came into the season guiding a team full of unknown quantities, off a year where the entire Ivy League stayed on the sidelines, the only D-I conference to skip the entire season due to COVID. But he had enough coming back, with some promising youngsters from a couple years back now two years older, to think that the Quakers might be able to maintain the momentum the program had been building up in Donahue’s first six years.

So far, that hasn’t happened. Penn opened the season with a couple losses, got two back, then has struggled since, losing seven of its last eight. It’s been an unrelenting schedule, from several top-25 programs (Villanova, Arkansas) to others in the KenPom top-100 (Florida State, Utah State, Davidson), with trips to five different states, all while playing a dozen games in less than 30 days. 

Wednesday night’s loss on Hawk Hill was the fifth in a row, and while it was a good effort from the Quakers, it wasn’t enough to get their first win since Nov. 21. As excited as Donahue might have been to get back to action, it’s possible he went a little overboard in front-loading a schedule to get his team back to snuff.

Even with five seniors and four juniors on the rosters, the Quakers were about as green as could be.

“I didn’t think about this necessarily before the non-league, because we didn’t play last year, we didn’t know what to expect out of everybody but Jordan [Dingle] and Max Martz,” Donahue said, referencing his two sophomores who started a bulk of the 2019-20 season and left the school last year to preserve their eligibility. “Lucas [Monroe] played a little bit [two years ago], but the other 16 guys in our program really hadn’t played college basketball.”

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(Read more: Obinna, Hall set new career highs in St. Joe's Big 5 win)

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So the Quakers took their lumps, from a 105-70 loss in the season opener against FSU to an 87-79 2OT loss to Utah State on a neutral court in South Carolina, to a 76-60 loss at Arkansas, and now three straight in the Big 5: by 15 to ‘Nova, nine to Temple, seven to St. Joe’s.

“I’m very disappointed in the result, but I thought our kids continued to compete,” Donahue said about the least defeat, and his words weren’t just lip service; the Quakers never quit on a game they trailed most of the way through, getting within four in the final minute. 

It doesn’t help that Donahue hasn’t had his full rotation available since the opening couple games of the season. Michael Wang missed several in the middle of November before returning, by which point forwards Max Lorca-Lloyd and Nick Spinoso were both sidelined with lower-body injuries that still have them out. 

On top of that, sophomore Clark Slajchert, who’s provided some scoring pop in his first collegiate season (9.0 ppg), has missed the last two games due to COVID protocols. So the top seven that Donahue had to lean on Wednesday night was not the one he had in mind when the year began.

Penn also hasn’t had the luxury of playing many games in front of a friendly crowd; of their two home games, one came against city rival Villanova, who had plenty of support of their own at the Palestra. They won’t play at home again until Dec. 28 against James Madison, though that includes a 17-day gap after their

Donahue understands all of it, and that’s why he’s staying optimistic despite the poor record.

“No one’s played 11 games away from home in the country, we’ve played six Quad 1 and 2s, which I believe no other team in the country’s played,” he said, “Throw that into all the injuries and COVIDs, and we obviously just hadn’t played last year.

The Quakers have had to rely heavily on the scoring abilities of Dingle (20.5 ppg), their sophomore guard who entered play Wednesday night third in all of Division I men’s basketball in shots taken, though he’s shooting 43.8% (84-of-192) and 35.3% (30-of-85) from deep. 

Dingle was strong against St. Joe’s, scoring 26 points in 38 minutes on 11-of-19 shooting, including 2-of-4 from distance. Martz, who had 12 against St. Joe’s, scored in double figures for the third straight game, but nobody other than Dingle has really been able to carry the load for a long stretch.

“We know what Jordan can do and he’s been really good [...] we’re probably wearing him out a little bit,” Donahue said. “Everybody’s coming up with ways to stop him, and he’s still playing very efficiently.

Penn’s rotation should be returning closer to full strength before long, though they’re likely to have the same group available for Saturday’s Big 5 game at La Salle. Slajchert will be off the COVID list by the time James Madison visits the Palestra on Dec. 28, and Donahue said he expects Spinoso — who was out of a boot though not dressed on Wednesday — back in practice next week. Lorca-Lloyd, who Donahue said had an operation on his right foot, isn’t expected back until February.

Junior guard Jonah Charles, the team’s second-leading scorer (9.8 ppg) and its leader in made 3-pointers (31), came off the bench for the first time and played just eight minutes, with freshman George Smith playing 25 minutes against St. Joe’s following 27 minutes against Temple.

Smith had six points and three assists without a turnover Wednesday night, and Donahue said he liked what he got out of the 6-4 guard, specifically mentioning his defense and rebounding, as well as his assists.

“We’re trying to figure out who really deserves minutes [...] we’re going to figure out our roles as we go along,” Donahue said. “I don’t have a pedigree of last year to figure out what everyone can do, and that’s what this preseason’s for.”

The Ivy League season officially begins on Jan. 2 with a visit from Brown, which is when things get extra-serious for the Quakers. A top-four finish in the eight-team league, which plays a double-round-robin regular season, will be enough to place them in the Ivy League semifinals.

It's no sure thing they get into that top group. After Wednesday night, they're 217th in the stat-based KenPom rankings, fifth-best in the league, behind Yale (136), Princeton (152), Brown (171) and Harvard (175).

If they can apply the lessons learned this preseason, there’s still a chance for 2021-22 to go well for Donahue’s bunch, as rough as that record looks from the outside. But learning how to win is a skill, too, and it’s not one that the Quakers have yet shown they’ve got in the bag. 

“I think learning to compete against this level of talent, that we’ve had, is going to help us,” Donahue said. “If, and it’s a big if, if we can stay together and not get beat up from (losing).”