Quaker Meeting House (QMH) can tell you exactly when he knew the men's basketball team had a good chance of beating defending NCAA champion Villanova on Tuesday night.
 
It was last Wednesday. QMH had already seen La Salle go toe-to-toe with Villanova the previous Saturday at The Palestra, and now he was watching the Wildcats host Temple on his TV. The Owls were in the lead late in the game, and it looked like Villanova's incredible Big 5 winning streak might come to an end at 23 games.
 
Instead, the 'Cats made veteran, composed plays down the stretch and Temple, for lack of a better word, unraveled. They took quick shots and tried to play hero ball, and generally got away from the things that had gotten them to that point in the first place. Villanova, meanwhile, stayed true to itself and scored 12 straight points en route to a 69-59 win, its 24th straight Big 5 victory. Three days later, the Wildcats knocked off a shorthanded Saint Joseph's squad to make it 25.
 
QMH didn't know exactly how to say it, but he knew that wouldn't happen to this Penn team. They wouldn't do what Temple did.
 
It wasn't until Penn's 78-75 win over Villanova was in the books on Tuesday, and head coach Steve Donahue had been soaked by his players in the post-game locker room celebration, and Coach and AJ Brodeur and Antonio Woods had met with the media, that he finally found the words.
 
Actually, the words found him.
 
QMH was talking with Kevin Bonner, Penn's Associate AD for Strategic Communications who, like QMH, has seen a lot of college basketball in this city. He worked with the men's basketball program at La Salle for several years, and also had stints in sports information at Temple and Saint Joseph's. A lifetime ago—his words—he was point guard for a state championship team at Pitman (N.J.) High School. (An honor he shares with Darnell Foreman. You might have heard of him.)
 
QMH told Kevin about watching that Temple game and feeling good after that, and this is what Kevin responded with: "I was talking with Vinman (Vince Curran) before the game, and we were saying that if this game stayed close or we had a late lead, we felt like the moment wouldn't be too big for our guys."
 
The moment wouldn't be too big for our guys.
 
There it was.
 
It was almost exactly a year ago that the men's basketball program got what QMH would argue was its first signature win under Coach Donahue, who coincidentally coached his 100th game at Penn on Tuesday. It was a 78-70 win on the road at Dayton, a difficult place to play with more than 13,000 enemy fans. Since then, Penn has run the gauntlet of an Ivy League championship season, played (and won) a pair of pressure-cooker Ivy League Tournament games, and faced Kansas in what was essentially a road game in last year's NCAA Tournament.
 
Along the way, expectations changed dramatically. QMH thought a lot about that after the team lost to Oregon State at the Paradise Jam a few weeks ago, the players were pretty upset just to lose the game and were particularly galled that it had been by 16. A year earlier, in November 2017? A 16-point loss to the Beavers might have been hailed as progress, a step back to respectability.
 
So when Tuesday night's game reached halftime with Penn up, 32-28, QMH wasn't surprised. Still, fans have seen this plenty of times before across any number of sports, right? The underdog putting up a good fight? The real test was still to come. How would Penn react when this game reached the point where the dream became possibility, when the pregame "we can win this game" bravado became the "holy crap, we really can win this game" reality that seemed to doom Temple six days earlier?
 
The first nervy moment came at 53-50. Penn had been up by seven, but Villanova's sophomore guard Collin Gillespie—who has a bit of history in The Palestra—popped home four quick points for the Wildcats. There were less than 10 minutes left, the clock ticking ever closer to the moment.
 
So what did Penn do? The Quakers ran their offense. They moved the ball around. Eventually, Max Rothschild fed Bryce Washington on a great backdoor layup. At the other end, Antonio Woods stole the ball from his man and that led to Rothschild finding Jake Silpe for another backdoor layup.
 
The moment wouldn't be too big for our guys.
 
Just like that, Penn's lead was back up to 57-50, and as Villanova slowly walked the ball up the floor and the Penn players got into their defensive stances the crowd stood as one. The Palestra practically shook with the noise. Fans like to say that the Palestra will make 10 fans sound like 100, and 100 sound like 1,000, and 1,000 sound like 10,000. So you can imagine what the crowd of 8,033 sounded like.
 
It was enough to make your hair stand on end.
 
QMH will tell you what ran through his head during that moment. This is his 14th year working with men's basketball, which might seem like a lifetime to some—Penn freshmen, for instance, who were four or maybe five years old when QMH arrived in University City—but there's still a large contingent of the Penn basketball community who would consider QMH a fresh face, a baby.
 
He was thinking of those people, who might have been students through the halcyon days of the 1970s or the great teams through the 1990s and into the early part of this century. There are many who continue to ring the court in their longtime seats, who have seen so many incredible moments in this building but have been beaten down by a decade or so of play they consider below the program's standards. (How's that for diplomacy?) Those who remember the student section being filled every game, students wearing costumes and riding opponents and singing "Rock n Roll Part 2" at the final media timeout ahead of another convincing win. Heck, those who remember being those students.
 
QMH could hear them. He could feel them. He can almost see them running up into the current student section, grabbing one of the hundreds of red-shirted students who might have been making their first trip to a game at the venerable college basketball institution that sits on their very campus, and shaking them to get them to understand.
 
THIS. What you are witnessing at this moment. This is Penn Basketball.
 
Villanova's next run came with just over five minutes left and Penn up 63-55. Saddiq Bey hit an in-your-face jumper and then Gillespie stole the ball and, when no one picked him up at the other end, he drained a trey. Suddenly Penn was on its heels, the Villanova end of The Palestra was waking up, and Coach Donahue was calling a timeout.
 
The moment wouldn't be too big for our guys.
 
Out of the timeout, Penn worked the ball to the block to AJ Brodeur, and some misdirection left Antonio Woods wide open in the lane. AJ fed him for the easy layup. 65-60.
 
Villanova came down and Jermaine Samuels drove into traffic and did something you don't see a lot in the Ivy League. He threw down a monster dunk over a pair of Penn players, the kind that can hype up your own team and discourage your opponent. 65-62.
 
The moment wouldn't be too big for our guys.
 
Penn brought the ball down, the crowd still abuzz from Samuels' throwdown, and the next thing you know the Quakers were tic-tac-toeing the ball around the perimeter to a wide-open Devon Goodman for a spot-up three that he coolly drained. 68-62
 
Now it was the Penn fans back in delirium, but here came Villanova. Phil Booth missed a three, but the athletic Wildcats frontcourt pushed the ball back outside where Booth recovered it and quickly jacked up a second trey attempt. This time it was good. 68-65.
 
The moment wouldn't be too big for our guys.
 
Out of a timeout, Penn methodically worked the ball around until it ended up in Woods' hands. Brodeur cut up to the foul line, but when he realized his defender was going to try and front that pass he quickly ran back to the basket. Woods found him. Layup. 70-65.
 
Villanova missed once…missed twice…but kept getting the board. Eventually Bey was fouled backing his man in and hit two foul shots to make it 70-67.
 
Penn got a shot it likes, a Brodeur hook in the lane, but it was off the mark which gave Villanova the ball and a chance to tie. As a potentially tying three-point shot left Gillespie's hand, the entire crowd held its collective breath. It missed, and Penn got the rebound.
 
After that, it was an endless procession of foul shots for the Quakers, and they made enough to keep Villanova at an arm's length. With 6.2 seconds left, Goodman swished a pair that made the score 78-72, and at that point QMH finally started thinking this is over.
 
Only it wasn't, of course. Booth, a veteran of both of Villanova's national champion squads, hit about a 30-foot jumper to make it 78-75 with 1.3 seconds left. Out of a timeout Penn attempted to throw the ball down the court, but Bryce Washington tripped on his way down the floor and so it went well over his head and bounced harmlessly out of bounds at the other end, untouched. That gave Villanova the ball under its offensive basket with a chance to tie.
 
You could almost hear the resignation. This is so Villanova. There was a sense of impending doom, that the Wildcats' would hit some improbable three-point shot and the game would head to overtime and then, finally, the moment would prove too big.
 
Only it didn't happen. Booth got the ball, the primary option. However, his momentum was carrying him away from the basket and he had three Penn players up in his face to change the trajectory of his shot. From the moment it left his hand, everyone knew there was no way it would even make the rim.
 
Cue pandemonium. The Penn players on the court met their teammates on the bench at midcourt, hugging and laughing, and in short order they were swarmed by the students storming the court from the stands.
 
And hey, this win wasn't just big for Penn. It was an historic night for Big 5 basketball. What Villanova has done in this city, the way they have run roughshod through Penn…and La Salle…and Temple…and Saint Joseph's…it's not just unprecedented. It's unlikely to be duplicated. The Wildcats entered Tuesday night with 25 straight Big 5 wins. Twenty-five. The previous record was 14. After that? Eleven.
 
Needless to say, QMH was getting congratulations on his phone almost as soon as the buzzer sounded. Friends around the city, celebrating the slaying of the beast. Friends around the country who had tuned in to the national broadcast. Friends from Penn years gone by, who had worked at Penn and maybe moved on to other jobs but still felt the stir of such a night from their own history. Friends who picked up on what was happening in The Cathedral—Penn Basketball was trending on social media as the game wore on—and caught the last dramatic minutes.
 
The messages kept repeating the same theme. You guys earned this win. You guys were the better team. Villanova played well, but you took their best shot and still beat them. You guys are fun to watch!
 
Just an incredible, unbelievable, exhilarating, pretty good night.
 
After things had settled down, QMH was in the locker room to grab a water, or maybe a leftover piece of hoagie. Devon Goodman was in there with a teammate, Kuba Mijakowski. Both were sitting at their respective lockers, checking stuff on their phones as kids are wont to do these days.
 
QMH had moved into another room when he heard Devon say to Kuba, "You know that time-out feature they do, Great Moments in Quaker History? Yo, tonight's game will probably be up there someday. I bet like 10 years from now they'll be talking about this night."
 
QMH popped his head back in, looked at Devon and said, "Dev, that game might be the 'Great Moments In Quaker History' when you guys play Monmouth on December 31."
 
Whenever it happens, it will be remembered fondly.
 
***
 
QMH'S REQUIRED READING: QMH will give you two pieces that ran in the aftermath of yesterday's win. One is Mike Jensen's day-after column that you can find on Philly.com, and one was written by former Daily Pennsylvanian staffer Dave Zeitlin for The Athletic. Both of them have way more history to draw on than QMH does, so they seem like good people to reference for historical purposes. Plus it's just fun to read about beating Villanova, isn't it?