City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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All is not well at 32nd and Chestnut. But Penn’s men’s coach, Steve Donahue, is staying optimistic.

An 80-74 defeat at the hands of Towson on Sunday dropped Penn’s men to 0-3 on the young season. But more than the record, it’s the manner in which it’s happened, a team that was picked to finish atop the Ivy League in the preseason looking more likely they’ll finish outside of the league’s four-team playoff if they don’t figure quite a few things out.

After getting blasted on the road by Iona and then failing to hang with Missouri on Friday, the Quakers returned home but didn’t look comfortable against the Tigers until there was too little time to make up for the huge hole they’d dug themselves in. 

Poor shot selection, a lack of offensive options and a lackluster defensive effort had Penn down 21 midway through the second half, only a late rally making the score respectable. Donahue, the Quakers’ 8th-year head coach with 22 years of Division I head coaching experience under his belt, wasn’t thrilled after Sunday’s defeat, though he was far from discouraged.

“I don’t think there’s a team in our league that would have won any of the three games we just played,” he said. “We’re one of four teams in the country that played three top-100 teams. 

“The concern is that you want to win every game, but I love this group, I love our tightness, I think unfortunately this is how we’re going to have to go through some of this, to get better, because of it. And I do think we’ll get there, but we’re not there right at this moment.”

Aside from the opening few minutes, when a couple Clark Slajchert 3-pointers and one from Max Martz had Penn matching an equally-hot Towson squad out of the gate, the Penn offense struggled for long stretches. 

The Quakers were shooting 25% from the floor into the second half, taking too many contested 3-point shots and not enough open ones, Towson continually getting better looks and beating its hosts on the glass, taking a 34-24 lead at halftime, thanks to a 26-16 edge on the glass.

The margin stretched until it was 57-36 with 10:28 remaining, Towson on a 14-2 run, when Penn — more specifically Jordan Dingle — finally woke up.

“I didn’t think we competed well enough early,” Donahue said, “but I thought after getting punched in the mouth, I thought we responded really, really well.”

Jordan Dingle (above, left) goes up for two of his game-high 24 points, all of which he scored in the second half. (Photo: Dan Hilferty/CoBL)

Though Slajchert (21 points, 8-14 FG) carried the Penn offense early, it was with Dingle, the team’s leading scorer a year ago, struggling to the tune of a scoreless first half on 0-5 shooting. But the Blair Academy (N.J.) product found his groove in the second, scoring all 24 points of his in the final 18 minutes, finishing the game 10-of-20 from the floor, though 1-of-6 from 3-point range. He’s just 5-of-22 from 3-point range this season, though he missed most of the preseason due to injury.

“Jordan was out for six weeks, he’s just really getting back to live action,” Donahue said. “The first half they hard-hitched the ball screens, and I thought he got rid of the ball well, we burned them, we got open shots out of it. They changed their coverage and I thought we got downhill in the second half. 

“That being said, I’m sure Jordan will tell you, he didn’t play a great first half, he’s got to play better, we all have to play better than we did in the first half.”

Towson (3-0) got 23 points from starting guard Nicolas Timberlake, one of four in double figures along with Cam Holden (17 points), Charles Thompson (14) and Jason Gibson (11). Malvern Prep product Rahdir Hicks played 22 minutes off the bench, scoring six points with three assists and no turnovers.

Slajchert, Dingle and sophomore forward Nick Spinoso (12 points, four assists, five rebounds) were the only real sources of offensive production all game for Penn, which got 17 minutes of scoreless ball from starting center Max Lorca-Lloyd and a total of six bench points from the six reserves who weren’t Spinoso.

“The ball just did not move in the first half, — they did a great job of stopping our initial action, and with eight or nine, 10 seconds left on the shot clock, we just stopped moving,” Donahue said. “That’s when you give it to your best player and hope for the best, and it’s just not going to work against a good team like Towson. 

“Long-winded answer, we’ve got to run better offense, I have confidence, we have 12 guys on this team that have scored over double-digits in a college game. Most in the country. We should have other guys that can step up and make plays.”

After a brutally difficult non-conference slate last year, when Penn went 3-10 in the opening two months before righting the ship to go 9-5 in Ivy League play, Donahue tried to schedule a slate that would challenge his 2022-23 squad without wrecking their confidence before the games that really mattered. 

Instead, they’re in real danger of starting out 0-5, with a trip up to Market Street on Tuesday to face a dangerous Drexel (1-0) before heading down to Morgantown (W.Va.) to play West Virginia, now 2-0 after a 25-point throttling of rival Pittsburgh on Friday.

“No such thing as a must-win,” Donahue said. “Our slogan is ‘must trust:’ trust in the process, trust that you’re going to work hard. We can’t really worry about the opponents, in particular, if I wanted to do that, I’d go schedule 350s and make sure we get all these wins. This is about us getting better, competing for a Big 5 championship and competing for the Ivy League.”