City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Penn is not ready to compete with the top of the Ivy League. Evidence of that could be seen on Saturday evening at the Palestra, when the Quakers were eventually worn down and picked apart by an experienced Yale squad, 79-58.

But that’s okay, for now. An Ivy title wasn’t expected in the first year of the Quakers’ Steve Donahue era, just improvement.

So far, the program seems to be more or less on track.

A 1-1 weekend against Brown and Yale left Penn’s record at 10-13 overall, 4-5 in the Ivy League. That’s already more overall wins than the Quakers had in each of the three prior seasons under head coach Jerome Allen, and with five games left in Ivy League play they’ve already equaled the program’s league win total from 2014-15 and are one away from matching the year before that.

Penn has a difficult but manageable stretch to close out the year: Cornell (9-15, 2-8) and Columbia (19-8, 8-2) at home, a road trip to Dartmouth (9-15, 3-7) and Harvard (11-15, 3-7) and then at Princeton (18-5, 8-2) to close out the year. A 3-2 record is not impossible, though it’ll take a road upset or two to get there.

“I’d love to get a winning record--I think that’s a great step, no doubt,” Donahue said. “But more important I look at it qualitatively. I want us to get better, I want to see if we can take another jump, see if we can play great basketball.”

The most important thing for Donahue’s staff to close out the season is to see continued improvement from the underclassmen, namely the three freshmen and three sophomores who are currently part of the rotation.

First-year guards Jackson Donahue (9.1 ppg, .359 3PT%) and Jake Silpe (4.9 ppg, team-leading 3.4 apg) are the team’s likely backcourt of the future, and both would like to finish their freshman seasons out strong. Donahue, who only had six points against Yale, had 25 a few games prior, while Silpe has worked his way back into the starting lineup and is playing his most confident ball after a rough stretch in December.

Another rookie, forward Max Rothschild, has seen his minutes grow as the year’s gone on, averaging 7.8 ppg in his last eight games after averaging 2.4 ppg through the first 14. Sophomore Darnell Foreman, the team’s backup point guard, had his best career game on Friday with 11 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds against Brown.

By this point the last few seasons, with Ivy League titles already out of reach and no conference tournament (or any other sort of postseason appearance) a possibility, the last few weeks of Penn’s basketball seasons felt like a slow drudge towards the offseason.

This year certainly has a different feeling--there’s more fans back in their seats at the Palestra, with more than 3000 coming to watch the Quakers battle the Bulldogs on Saturday night. And with all those underclassmen in the rotation who all look to be mainstays over the next few years gaining valuable minutes game after game, there’s a clear future to build towards.

“I think we have that ability, guys are still locked in,” Donahue said. “I want to see a couple younger guys can take another jump, help us win a game next weekend. Those are the things I really judge us on.”

In looking at Penn’s most recent game against Yale, the Quakers did seem to take steps forward from their first matchup with the Bulldogs. Up in New Haven, Penn trailed 8-0 from the get-go and were behind by 10 at the break. At the Palestra, Penn was behind just five at half and down two with 11 minutes remaining before tired legs finally caught up.

“I’d say we’ve come a long way,” Foreman said. “On the defensive side we’re much better, even though you couldn’t see it tonight. We play a lot tougher than the first game, we play much grittier than previous so we’re just playing a lot harder.”