City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Dylan Williams plays happy.

That was clear early in the second half of Penn’s home opener against Maryland-Eastern Shore on Thursday night, when the Quakers’ junior guard found himself free in the corner for a knockdown catch-and-shoot triple. 

The WOOOOOO he let out all the way back down the court was audible throughout the Palestra, the beaming smile on his face lighting up the corners of the venerable gymnasium at 34th and Chestnut. It continued even as he was guarding the ball at the other end, where he was giving UMES’ guards fits all night. 

“I just want to have fun on the court,” he said, “so I like to bring energy, passion to the game. So if I hit a 3, you’ll see me celebrate, we’re going to get back on defense, we’re just going to have fun on the court.”

That passion and energy are two major reasons Steve Donahue brought the Columbia (S.C.) native and junior college product to Penn this offseason, to help jump-start a program that’s coming off its worst season in nine years. With him and Drake transfer Ethan Roberts in the fold and producing at a high level, Penn’s off to a 2-0 start after beating UMES, 85-84.

Though Ivy Leagues have traditionally not relied much on transfers, the opening of the transfer portal has led to somewhat more fluid roster situations even in the Ancient Eight. The Quakers lost key pieces each of the last two seasons, first Jordan Dingle to St. John’s last year and then Tyler Perkins to Villanova this year. 

That left Donahue and his staff in the position of needing to get older via the portal to keep up with the likes of Princeton and Yale after an uncharacteristic 11-18 season (3-11 Ivy) a year ago. They had some key returners back, including senior forward Nick Spinoso, senior wing George Smith and sophomore guard Sam Brown, but needed to add more college-ready talent.

“We made a concerted effort going into the recruiting cycle that we were probably going to look at transfers, not knowing that Tyler was was going to leave,” Donahue said. “My assistants went through thousands of names, it’s so difficult to get kids that understand what the education’s about, (and) their ability to pay and turn down lucrative deals other places.

“As you can tell,” he concluded, “I thought they’d be really good.”

A 6-foot-5 wing from Arlington Heights (Ill.), Roberts is the Quakers’ leading scorer through two games (19.0 ppg). After scoring 15 against NJIT in the season opener, he followed that up with a team-high 23 points in Thursday night’s win, going 8-of-13 from the floor and 5-of-10 from downtown.

The 2022-23 Patriot League Rookie of the Year while at Army West Point, Roberts averaged 12.4 ppg and 4.4 rpg as a freshman, then sat out all last season with a stomach ailment. 

“We didn’t have a cure for it, we had to do a ton of doctor visits and I didn’t get cleared for a long time,” he said. “Probably [not] until the end of December, and it was too late for me at that point to come back, I was out of shape and I had lost some weight. It was a hard year, and I’m just so happy to be here and wearing [a] Penn [jersey] , I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Roberts, whose teammates and coaches call him ‘Ebo,’ looked every bit the star player against UMES, hitting one confident jumper after another, crashing the glass for a game-high 10 rebounds for his first double-double in a Penn uniform. 

“I’m not too much worried about the other stuff, I’m just trying to compete and keep climbing that ladder,” he said. “I don’t think I’m anywhere near to where I’m going to be, I’m not in midseason form or anything yet.”

Williams finished with six points and three assists in 30 minutes, not having his best shooting night (2-10 FG, 2-7 3PT). His court vision was apparent, the 5-foot-11 guard threading the needle on a number of passes, though a few fumbled receptions by teammates cost him a couple further dimes. He scored a team-high 17 points against NJIT.

As a sophomore at Triton College (Ill.), Williams averaged 15 points and 5.4 assists per contest as the Trojans made it to the NJCAA Division I men’s basketball championship, losing to Barton CC (Kan.) in the title game. That came after a freshman season at Mineral Area (Mo.) in which he averaged 10.9 ppg and 2.5 apg.

He’s used to winning, and he doesn’t intend on stopping. 

“Learning from other point guards, watching the NBA, watching other elite college guards, I learned that you need the floor general on the court to be great,” he said. “The standard is the Ivy league championship, making it to March Madness. We want to win, we know it’s a winning program, so we just want to get back to where it was at.”

As incoming transfers are not eligible to participate in Ivy League summer practices, Williams and Roberts, along with the rest of the Quakers’ newcomers, had to wait until September to start to get acclimated to their teammates. So the product on the court at the beginning of the year is bound to be quite different from one seen in a month or two, when Ivy play begins.

“We’re a whole new team, we’re all trying to figure each other out," Roberts said. "We’ve got transfers, and there’s a learning curve to that, it’s not linear. We’re just trying to climb that ladder and be the best team we can be by March 7 or whenever Ivy Madness is.”

Brown (22 points, 4-10 3PT), Smith (14 points, 3 rebs) and Spinoso (11 pts, 8 rebs) all joined Roberts in double figures against UMES, which has an entirely new roster of 13 players under first-year head coach Cleo Hill Jr.

Maryland-Eastern Shore made Penn sweat out the win Thursday evening. The Quakers were ahead comfortably, 55-40, midway through the second half, but a 15-3 Hawks run got the visitors right back into it. 

Three 3-pointers in the closing 28 seconds prevented Penn from closing it out comfortably, even as the Quakers went 10-for-10 from the line in the final minute. Brown’s pair with less than a second remaining sealed the win, a half-court buzzer-beating chuck by UMES dropping through the net as too little, too late. 

Donahue was most concerned about a rebounding effort that saw Penn get beat 43-35 on the boards, including 17 offensive rebounds, leading to a 22-18 UMES advantage in second-chance points. The Quakers have been starting two bigs up front with Spinoso and sophomore Augustus Gerhart, who fouled out after 17 minutes against UMES, scoring eight points.

“I was disappointed in our guards’ rebounding,” Donahue said. “Ethan was the only guy that really crashed the boards, I think Augie getting in foul trouble hurt as well. We’re playing two bigs and we have bigger guards now, we have to limit teams to one [shot], and to me that was the reason they got back in the game.”

Penn goes for its third straight win to open the season next Tuesday with a trip to Lafayette.