City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2022-23 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 9. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season click here)
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Walk into the John R. Rockwell gymnasium, adjacent to the Palestra, minutes before the Penn men’s first official practice of the 2022-23 season begins, and a group that means so much to the Quakers’ success jumps out immediately. A group of five young forwards, all gathered together under one basket doing some warm-up drills, their attitude a mixture of relaxed confidence and focus. 

It’s almost certain that none of them will be the team’s leading scorer, nor are any preseason All-Ivy or All-City 6 picks, most of the attention focused on the group of guards and wings at the other end of the court, who will form the nucleus of the Quakers’ attack. Don’t be fooled: without their presence, Penn’s Ivy League title chances are low.

“I didn’t like where we’re heading defensively over the last couple of years, and that’s kind of been the focus of (change),” head coach Steve Donahue said. “Playing bigger.”

When the Quakers won 24 games and the Ivy title in 2017-18, it was with a pair of 6-foot-8 forwards, Max Rothschild and A.J. Brodeur, at the ‘4’ and ‘5’ spots, their presence a major reason why they were one of the top 75 defensive teams in the country, according to hoops statistician Ken Pomeroy.

But instead of that season kicking off the renaissance of a program that for years had been the best in the Ivies, it’s been a few seasons of injuries and frustrations for the Quaker men. The last four years have seen Penn go 47-39 (.547) overall and 24-18 (.571) in Ivy League play, the lost COVID year throwing the whole league off to boot.

Last year, a season-ending injury to starting center Max Lorca-Lloyd six games into the season meant freshman Nick Spinoso was forced into a starting role — until he hurt his back and missed a month.

That left Donahue playing 6-7 forward Michael Moshkovitz at the ‘5’ and 6-5 wing Max Martz at the ‘4’, and the Quakers’ defense suffered. KenPom had them at No. 295 in the country in defensive efficiency (1.095 points per possession), their inability to stop teams from getting to the rim a major reason why. Their 12-16 record (9-5 Ivy) wasn’t as bad as it seemed due to a brutally tough non-conference, but it certainly will not be a year to remember.

So Donahue’s thinking big this year, and he’s got the pieces to do so.

“More traditional 5’s, more traditional 4’s,” Donahue said, “and I think it really helps our defensive rebounding, offensive rebounding, get easier shots for your opponents, better screening team, there’s a lot of things that help if you can play two bigs.”

The player whom Donahue and his staff had touted since his signing as the next big piece in the Penn frontcourt was Lorca-Lloyd, a top-150 level prospect in his class who picked the Quakers over the likes of Stanford and Vanderbilt, who came out of the same powerhouse Northfield Mt. Hermon (Mass.) program that Broduer did.

The goal was to have the long, 6-10 rim-runner who can play above the rim playing at first alongside Brodeur, a more offensively skilled forward who could stretch the floor just enough to make it respectable. But Brodeur was just too natural a fit in Donahue’s offense at the ‘5’ and Lorca-Lloyd wasn’t quite right, so he only played a total of 31 minutes in nine games as a freshman.

The 2020-21 season was a wash due to COVID. Six games into the 2022-23 season, Lorca-Lloyd broke his foot. Season over. Junior year gone. He enters his senior and final year at Penn — he still has two years of eligibility remaining after this one, but can’t play them at Penn due to Ivy academic rules — with just 15 games under his belt, a total of 38 collegiate points scored.

“It’s probably not fair,” Donahue said. “AJ was such a good center, and when we took him out of that spot, we weren’t the same. So it would have been nice if AJ could have played the ‘4’ and play Max at the ‘5’, get him some minutes as a freshman; he didn’t get that chance. Then we hit the pandemic, he doesn’t play. Then he breaks his foot the third year.

“I think he’s a really big piece to if we’re going to challenge for a championship, that he is what we thought: a great rim protector, runs the floor, very athletic on the offensive end, can get put-backs, good on lob plays, knows how to play now, can pass it, finishes around the rim. Yeah, that’s a big piece for our league, if he plays the way we think he’s capable.”

Donahue said that he expects Lorca-Lloyd and Spinoso, a muscular 6-9 Long Island native who can stretch the floor, to “split minutes” at the 5. Their game-to-game usage is likely to come with who’s got the hot hand and who’s best from a matchup standpoint, but it seems like one of the pair will be on the court at all times.

“We value what both of us bring to the table,” Spinoso said. “I know when I’m in the game, I’ve got to do my thing, and when he’s in the game he’s got to do his thing, and I feel like we complement each other really well.”

At the ‘4’ spot are Moshkovitz, a Jerusalem native who’s in his third season at Penn after beginning his college career at Kankakee (Ill.) CC, and Gus Larson, a 6-10 stretch-big out of Northfield Mt. Hermon. Moshkovitz ended up starting 16 of the 28 games he played in last year, averaging 5.1 ppg, 4.7 rpg and 2.8 apg; Larson played a total of nine minutes across seven games, but Donahue said he’s made “huge strides” and should factor into the rotation.

A playmaking wing showing his abilities with the ball in his hands, though he was often reluctant to look for his own shot, Moshkovitz said he’s spent this offseason working on his 3-point shot, after going 6-of-28 from deep last year. Donahue said that Moshkovitz was playing “too many minutes” last year and is looking forward to keeping the game simpler for his ‘4’s this year, but Moshkovitz didn’t seem flustered by his mid-season role switch.

“I never felt like (Donahue) was asking too much,” Moshkovitz said. “I’m here to do whatever he asks me for, and whatever challenge it is, I’m willing to do my best. 

“I think this year, mostly because we got some experience last year, it’s going to be a bit easier, whatever he asks me to do.”

If that four-man froncourt can produce, allowing Martz and Lucas Monroe to play the ‘3,’ this will be one of the biggest Penn teams in recent memory across the board, and that should result in a drastically different on-court presence.

“Now that Max Lorca-Lloyd is healthy, Nick is healthy, and then Gus Larsen has taken huge strides, Moshkovitz has a year under his belt,” Donahue said, “I think we can play big, and that’ll help us.”