City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Penn senior Darien Nelson-Henry describes himself as a having a “traveling mentality,” which makes perfect sense.

That’s how a young man from Washington state, from a town just outside Seattle, found his way down to the East Coast and the City of Brotherly Love, to the hallowed halls of the Ivy League institution.

It fits his signature facial hair, which has slowly progressed from a well-manicured mane when he arrived on campus to a wild, scraggly, beard that would fit in well in the forests and mountains of his home state.

And soon, his travels will take their next step.

The larger-than-life center has just three games left in his Penn career, a fact he’s only beginning to come to terms with.

The Quakers celebrated their senior day on Saturday, honoring Nelson-Henry and fellow senior Jamal Lewis before a game against Columbia. After finishing with 18 points and seven rebounds in his final Palestra appearance, Nelson-Henry exited the game with his classmate to a standing ovation with 90 seconds remaining, taking time to hug each coach, player and manager along the way.

“It finally hits you once you’re sitting there on the bench when the game’s still going on,” he said. “I’m used to being in there at the end of the game. It just kind of finally hit me.

“I said it a million times, it’s bittersweet,” he continued. “I had a great career here with a lot of guys but I’m sad to see it end, especially with a loss. I had a lot of great games in the Palestra, myself and with the team, and so I can’t be sad, I’m happy that I get to move on but I’m sad that it’s over.”

Like all who have come through Penn’s program over the last 80-some years, Nelson-Henry’s time on campus involved a love affair with the building he called home for the last four seasons.

“Being from Seattle, I didn’t know what the Palestra was when I first came here,” he said. “It didn’t hit me probably until the end of my freshman year, how much this building means to not only Penn but all of Philadelphia and the Big 5, and even in the Ivy league--people hate coming here to play because we have some of the best fans in the league, we have the best alumni in the league, we have the best support in the league.

“The Palestra means everything to me, it’s been my home for four years now and I wouldn’t have wanted to play anywhere else,” he added, throwing in a “go Quakers” for emphasis.

As much as he’ll miss playing in the Cathedral of College Basketball, the Penn faithful will equally miss seeing the big man dominate the paint.

With his 6-foot-11, 265-pound frame, Nelson-Henry was one of the more massive players in the Ivy League, but he was more than just a big body. He came into school with a well-developed offensive game, and has always had great hands and footwork.

In his Penn career, Nelson-Henry has played in 105 career games, averaging 9.8 ppg and 5.6 rpg. Finally healthy after two years of battling injuries and the subsequent conditioning problems that accompany them, he’s averaging career-best 13.1 ppg and 8.4 rpg, helping stabilize a young program that’s trending upwards under first-year head coach Steve Donahue.

“He’s a first team all-Ivy League player,” Donahue said. “It’s helped us cover up a lot of warts that we have because we don’t have a lot of experience out there. For us to be able to compete the way we have, stay in the upper half of this league, has a lot to do with his ability, for us to play through him, take a look of pressure off our younger guys and he’s got a great future if he continues to play basketball.”

Unfortunately, the loss to Columbia brings with it a feeling Nelson-Henry’s experienced too often. Even if Penn wins its final three games of the year, he will leave the school’s campus with a 40-75 record and not a whiff of the postseason.

But it doesn’t seem to bother him.

He just goes with the flow.

“It’s always easy to look at all the things that are happening and going wrong but you just have to keep in perspective the things that are going right and the opportunities that you have,” Nelson-Henry said. “I’m at an amazing school in Penn, I get to play Division I basketball with a bunch of teammates that love me and I love, and I have great family, I’m getting a great education, there’s a lot of positive things that are happening. Focusing on those negative things is never going to help you, if you focus on the things that are happening around you that are positive, then more positive things will happen.”

Though he leaves the school without an Ivy League title--making him part of the sixth consecutive four-year class at Penn to do so--Nelson-Henry certainly takes solace in the fact that things finally seem to be looking up.

Donahue has guided the Quakers already to more overall wins (11) than the previous three years under Jerome Allen, and a win in one of their three final games would give them more Ivy League wins than any year in that same span as well.

“If my career here has taught me anything,” Nelson-Henry said, “it’s perseverance. Three of the years I played here, things were looking down, down, down and there was a lot of criticism of the program. Once Coach Donahue got here (he) kind of changed the tone of things a bit, amped up the momentum that we had.

“It feels so much better to leave this place with the program going up than leaving with the program going down--and I hope that (juniors) Matt Howard and Dylan Jones and the people that come behind me can keep trend going and keep the train rolling in the right direction.”

Where Nelson-Henry ends up next is up in the air. In May, he’ll graduate with a degree in Sociology, concentrating in Law & Society. At some point thereafter he’ll sign a contract to play professional basketball, most likely overseas.

A graduate degree is planned for his post-playing career.

“I might come back to the East Coast, I might go down South, I might go to Chicago or something, I’m not sure,” he said. “I might go to school overseas, I really don’t know. I’ve always been a go-with-the-flow kind of person, and whatever opportunities are presented to me, I’m confident that the people around me will support me and I’ll make the right decision at the time.”

But before the next step in his life, Nelson-Henry might get rid of the most signature part of his last one--his beard.

“I think it might go after the season,” he said. “I’m thinking about it.”