City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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Two months ago, in the early goings of Penn’s season, the Quakers got worked on the glass in a 19-point loss to George Mason, and it made Steve Donahue teach his team an important acronym.

C.A.S – Compete After the Shot.

Those three letters and dozens of rebounding drills were ingrained into Penn’s players since that early December loss. On Saturday night, it showed in a big way.

Penn beat Harvard, 67-57, capping off a weekend Ivy League sweep at the Palestra, and the Quakers dominated the backboard, outrebounding the Crimson, 53-32. Penn (8-11, 2-3 Ivy) had three players with double-doubles (Darien Nelson-Henry, Max Rothschild and Matt Howard) and scored 46 of its 67 points in the paint.

“The guys really bought in and I think it’s now a strength of ours,” Donahue said of his team responding to the rebounding drills.

While 15 rebounds came on the offense end, it resulted in only 13 second-chance points for the Quakers. But they still limited chances for Harvard. The Crimson (9-13, 1-5) missed 47 field goals, and Penn pulled down 38 defensive rebounds.

Nelson-Henry – who was back on the court this weekend after an ankle injury limited him a week ago – led the way with game highs in both points (18) and rebounds (12). Rothschild, a freshman forward, had another strong showing with 14 points on 7-of-11 shooting and pulled down 11 boards, four of which came on offense.

Meanwhile, Howard had 12 points and also grabbed 11 rebounds. So the trio of Nelson-Henry, Rothschild and Howard combined for 34 rebounds. Harvard had 32 as a team.

In a postgame press conference, Rothschild elaborated on the C.A.S. drills and said the result against Harvard was due to the competition between players like him, Nelson-Henry and Howard at practice.

“They’re fun. That’s what I like to do, I like to get after it on the boards and you see guys like Matt and Darien who like to do that, too,” Rothschild said. “So it’s fun at practice when we do these compete after the shot drills. And it’s good practice. We’re going after each other in practice that hard, nobody else on the court is going to battle us as hard as we battle ourselves.”

Added Harvard coach Tommy Amaker about his team’s rebounding deficit: “(Penn has) been one of the best in our league recently, and they do a great job of keeping a line, going after it and there were times we felt we should have come up with some and we didn’t. But that is a characteristic of a team that is playing with a great deal of hunger. I thought that’s how they played tonight.”

The Quakers also got a much better offensive performance in the second half after scoring just 27 points in the initial 20 minutes. Penn shot 50 percent from the field in the second half, and Nelson-Henry, Howard and Rothschild combined to go 13-for-17 from the floor and score 28 of the team’s 40 points after the intermission.

The trio of double-doubles helped Penn to its first Ivy League sweep of the season, as the team won its first league game on Friday night against Dartmouth. For a team that had just two wins in the last six weeks coming into the weekend, the pair of victories should provide a boost moving forward.

 “I thought guys understood it,” Donahue said. “They understand how hard they have to play. They’re not gassed after five or six trips. They can kind of pace themselves, and I thought that was a big thing over this weekend. We’re getting into a rhythm and now we got to play.”