City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Penn’s Ivy League semifinal matchup against Yale on Saturday afternoon was, of course, a battle for the right to play Harvard in the league’s second-ever tournament championship game the following day.

But it was also a matchup of two of the most talented sophomores in the league, a pair of first team All-Ivy selections in the Quakers’ A.J. Brodeur and the Bulldogs’ Miye Oni. Both teams were counting on their stars to come out with their best games to get within a win of the NCAA Tournament.

Oni struggled. Brodeur thrived.

With Yale’s star wing missing every shot he took, Brodeur couldn’t be stopped, as Penn jumped out to a 23-point lead in the first half and dominated its opponent in nearly all facets for an 80-57 win at the Palestra.  

If the Quakers (23-8) can beat the  Crimson (18-12) -- which earlier dispatched Cornell -- on Sunday afternoon, they’ll be back in March Madness for the first time since the first year of the disastrous Glen Miller era back in 2007.

It’s quite the improvement over the last few years for the once-dominant program, which had only single-digit wins from 2012-13 to 2014-15 but has gone from 11 victories two years ago to 13 and now a major jump this year.

“Living the dream,” senior guard Darnell Foreman said. “And I just want to keep it going...I’m in awe of it. Like the team, we’re in awe of what’s going on. We’re still focused on the now, and we’re focused on how can we make it sweeter, how can we make it better? And that’s just fueling us for the next game.”

If the Quakers play like they did against the Bulldogs, their chances of going dancing are quite strong.

Penn made more than half of its shots (28-of-52, .538) and was nearly perfect from the line (15-of-16), won the rebound battle 45-25 and held Yale to only just above 30 percent (19-of-61, .311) from the floor.

“It's very satisfying," Penn head coach Steve Donahue said. "For us to execute like that, against that team, in this environment, I feel great about that, absolutely."

Brodeur, Penn’s 6-foot-9, 230-pound two-way force in the paint, finished with 25 points and 10 rebounds in only 27 minutes of action, during which time the Quakers were +35 on the Bulldogs.

“Early on in the game, I found I was being single-covered in the post, I was able to get to my go-to moves with relative ease,” the Northfield Mt. Hermon (Mass.) product said. “I didn’t feel much pressure down there, so I just kept going.”

He was 10-for-13 from the floor and a perfect 4-for-4 from the foul stripe; even when he wasn’t scoring, his presence on the floor made a world of difference.

That was clear in the second half, when a three-minute stretch with Brodeur on the bench saw Yale score eight straight points to close the gap to 20, almost threatening to make a largely one-sided contest competitive with 10 minutes to play. But as soon as he came back in, a Brodeur layup started a 9-0 run that slammed the door shut.

“I look at a lot of different numbers, and I know what we’re like when he’s not on the court,” Donahue said. “I said we have to get him back...I would have loved for us to maintain the lead, but we’re a much better basketball team when he’s on the court.”

Oni, who averaged 15.5 ppg and 6.1 rpg this season and scored 23 points in an 80-79 Yale win over Penn in New Haven just last weekend, finished with a season-worst five points in the final Ivy League game of his sophomore year.

The 6-7 wing couldn’t get anything going in the first half, missing all 10 of his shots as he was scoreless at the break, by which point Yale already trailed 44-25. He finished 2-for-14 overall, missing all five of his 3-point attempts, and grabbed only three rebounds.

“He was definitely a big name on our scouting report, because he did a lot of damage to us last time,” Brodeur said. “The emphasis was to cut off the downhill drives to the basket...make him take contested 2s, long jumpers, and I thought we did a good job of that, so I feel that’s why their offense stagnated.”

Joining Brodeur in double figures for Penn were Foreman and junior center Max Rothschild, who had 11 points apiece. Seven different other players scored for the Quakers, who had strong bench play from the likes of Caleb Wood, Devon Goodman and Matt MacDonald to make up for a quiet game from sophomore Ryan Betley, who averaged 14.7 ppg this season but finished with only five points on 2-of-8 shooting.

Penn and Harvard split their two regular-season meetings, with the Crimson winning 76-67 in Cambridge on Feb. 10 and Penn winning 74-71 in Philly exactly two weeks later.

The two programs both finished 12-2 in the Ivy League regular season, meaning had this been any year prior to the last two, the Quakers and Crimson would have played a one-off game anyways for the right to go to the NCAA Tournament.

It took an extra win for each, but it’s the matchup the whole season seemed to be pointing towards.

“I’m excited, to be honest,” Brodeur said. “I know I can speak for my whole team when I say we’re ready for them tomorrow.”