City of Basketball Love

Zach Drapkin (@ZachDrapkin)
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Ryan Betley knows all about the Big 5. He’s watched it since he was a kid.

“Growing up in the area I got to go out and see all the Big 5 games,” Betley said. “I went to Big 5 games probably every year.”

Now, as a player at Penn, the former Downingtown West star is part of the spectacle.

And, just six games into his college career, Betley has already made his mark on a couple of city contests.

In his Big 5 debut on Saturday night, Betley came off the bench to score a career-high 15 points in a loss at Saint Joseph’s.

Then, on Wednesday night, although fellow freshman AJ Brodeur stole the spotlight with his 35-point showing, Betley played a key role once again as Penn stormed into La Salle and escaped with a 77-74 victory.

The 6-foot-5, 185-pound freshman guard finished with 13 points for the Quakers, also snatching three steals in the team’s only Big 5 win of the season.

It’s safe to say Betley is enjoying the historic matchups quite a bit.

“These are the most fun games. The whole city gets fired up for them and they’re just bragging rights games. Nothing better than that,” he said. “Finally being able to play in them is something special and something that I wanted to do growing up and something that definitely influenced my decision to come here.”

Penn enjoys having him just as much.

Though he occasionally makes the typical mistakes you’d expect from a freshman, Betley’s played a massive role since entering the Quakers’ lineup in late December.

Against La Salle, he scored five of the team’s first nine points to jump out to an early lead and used his length to disrupt the Explorers’ passing lanes all night.

His threes weren’t falling (he went 1-5 from deep on the night), he wasn’t always the strongest on the ball (he turned the ball over right after a steal and also had a fastbreak layup blocked), but he was there when it counted.

“You saw a couple freshman blunders out there, not being real strong with the ball, but he’s got this confidence about him,” Penn head coach Steve Donahue said. “He comes in and he thinks he can score in different ways and we don’t have a lot of guys like him that can stretch the defense yet go off the dribble.”

With 17 seconds to go in the game and Penn up 73-71, Betley noticed La Salle’s extremely tight coverage on an inbounds play and made an instinctive cut into open space. The ball was thrown to a teammate who immediately fed Betley for the easy drive-and-score to push the Quakers’ lead back up to two possessions, an insurmountable deficit for La Salle.

“He’s been terrific,” Donahue said. “I think as he gets stronger, he’s going to be a really good Big 5 player.”

The blunders will start to disappear as Betley gets more game reps, too. Having missed the first nine games of the season with a broken bone in his hand, he’s still adjusting to the college game.

What the missed time did help with was the mental preparation Betley says he’s primarily focused on.

“Missing these first nine games was tough but at the same time, it kind of got my mental side of the game right,” he said. “It kind of made my transition into playing a little bit easier.”

Betley has made a seemingly very smooth transition, averaging 8.7 points and 1.2 steals per game through his first six contests, in each of which he’s played at least 20 minutes.

“Our coaches and my teammates do a great job of getting us prepared for the game so it kind of makes the game the easy part as opposed to practices, where we’re working real hard the entire time,” he said.

Since joining Penn, Betley has already seem immense growth to his game. He’s always a great shooter and scorer, but he’s not so one-dimensional anymore.

Under the tutelage of Donahue’s coaching staff, Betley has learned to use his length as an advantage on defense, and that has clearly translated already to his in-game performance.

“When I came here, I really did not know how to play defense and now I think I’ve taken a couple steps forward in that regard,” Betley said. “I can be a longer defender and that can help me when I’m not necessarily a faster guy. I can kind of play off a little bit, use my length to my advantage on defense.”

As Betley is growing, so is Penn. The Quakers are still developing under Donahue, with numerous other talented underclassmen like Brodeur undergoing the same process as Betley.

Penn has started the season off slowly, currently sitting at 7-9 and winless through three Ivy League contests, but the team isn’t concerned.

Just as it took time for Donahue to turn Cornell around in the 2000s, it will take time for the Quakers to rise back to the top of the Ancient Eight.

Donahue has built a strong core of young Penn players to watch for over the next few seasons, and as the current freshman and sophomores become juniors and seniors, they’ll only improve.

“I think the program’s definitely in good hands,” Betley said. “We’re just going to progress more and more as time goes on.”