City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
––

UNIVERSITY CITY — Steve Donahue had heard it before.

“Someone texted me (earlier), a good friend,” the Penn men’s coach said, “and said ‘We’re destined for close games because we are young.’”

Donahue’s Quakers, who came into Saturday off a narrow win the day before to Lafayette, played their fifth straight close game of the season and second in a span of 24 hours. But unlike Friday, Penn was unable to come out on top as it fell to Belmont 84-79 in overtime in its second game of the Cathedral of College Basketball Classic.

“Some of these experiences you got to go through,” Donahue said. “You hate to lose. I just thought if we made a few foul shots in the first half, we're not down 10, we're down six against a good team like Belmont. You just can't do that.” 

In this stretch, which also consists of a win against Big 5 foe Villanova, Penn (4-3) has lost to three opponents — St. Joe’s, Maryland-Eastern Shore and Belmont — by a combined 16 points. The Quakers have lost twice in overtime during the span as well. 

This one was particularly painful.

Despite clawing back throughout the second half to erase a 10 point halftime deficit and forcing overtime, the Quakers were unable to get over the hump. Belmont led most of overtime, a six-point  lead with a minute left looking like it might be the final blow. But Penn battled back as freshman guard Tyler Perkins drove to the basket and converted on the AND-one to make it a 3-point game with 51 seconds. 

The Quakers had a chance to tie it with 17 seconds to go but a costly mishap hit — Spinoso was defended heavily and misplaced a pass, intended for Perkins and Slajchert, into the backcourt for a turnover with six seconds left. Cade Tyson sealed the win for the Bruins with a pair of free throws. 

It felt like a game in March, down to the wire with each team trading possession for possession. 

“I hope that these experiences, and there was positive to it, that they can grow from that, figure that out and be comfortable the next time we're in a tight situation,” Donahue said. 

“I thought we did a good job except for the last possession there, it got away from us, but for the most part I thought we executed. Seems like points off of turnovers really helped you guys tonight to spur that comeback.” 

With a young roster — that also features three new starters — Donahue is also figuring out a lineup that he can go to in situations down the stretch to close out games. Senior guard Clark Slajchert and Spinoso combined for 42 points on the night. 

“When you go through this with all the young guys, you're looking for a starting, a closing lineup and who can guard if we need a little better defense out there,” Donahue said. “But we don't have a lot of guys that have been through it except for Clark and Nick and George and (senior wing Andrew Laczkowski) somewhat. But there's other guys and I told them that.

“I said ‘Every night we're all going through this together.’ I got to figure out what's our best lineup that night that can give us the best chance to win until someone jumps up there and says, ‘I'm good, you can trust me.’ And it could happen in three games (or) it could happen in three months. The idea is that by the time the lead comes, we have a team that's out there that we can really trust.”

For the second straight afternoon Penn once again struggled inside the arc, this time against Belmont 6-foot-9 forward Malik Dia. 

The sophomore helped spark a 22-5 run for the Bruins over a span of close to 10 minutes in the first half with a pair of triples and a handful of rebounds, putting the Quakers into an early 22-11 deficit at the nine minute mark. Dia finished with a game 27 points, eight rebounds and three steals. 

“Back to back nights (of) the big going to work on us,” Donahue said.

He added: “It starts on both ends. We were stagnant on the offensive end and then it bleeded into the defense … I don’t just blame our bigs, we got to do a better job with team defense and I got to come up with a little more scheming of how to guard really talented (players). That kid is really talented. He’s an SEC transfer … So he’s good.” 

Penn made a noticeable adjustment out of halftime with Dia and their struggle to find shots inside the arc as the Quakers switched to their zone defense to open the second half. The result offensively was knocking down six of their first eight shots. 

“That's what our zone does,” Donahue said. “We don't turn (a lot of) people over, but we played the zone. They're such a good offensive team that I thought the way we can kind of keep them off balance (was to) make them a little stagnant and get a turnover, which we don’t typically get in our man defense. We rebounded out of (the zone) for the most part, thought we did a good job in it.” 

Perkins served to be a domino once again for the Quakers, especially in the second half as Penn clawed itself back from a 10 point halftime deficit. 

“He’s just a really good competitor,” Donahue said of his freshman guard. 

Perkins, in just his seventh collegiate game, was given the keys to the offense at points Saturday and didn’t disappoint as he finished with a team-high 25 points, 21 of which came in the second half alone, three steals and two assists. 

“Thought tonight was a big thing that we gave it and put it in his hands,” Donahue said. “He made a couple of good passes and got downhill. They were really guarding Clark hard so to have someone else to go to and make a decision (was big).” 

Penn will now shift its focus to tomorrow when it takes on Monmouth in game three of the round-robin event. Tip-off is set for 2:30 pm. 

“Fortunately we got to flush this out of our system pretty quickly and come back tomorrow to play,” Donahue said. 

This article was written by John Leuzzi. He can be reached at byjohnleuzzi@gmail.com or on Twitter/X @ByJohnLeuzzi.