NEW YORK CITY – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team was up just 65-64 with a little more than four minutes left in Saturday's matinee game at Columbia, but the Quakers outscored the Lions 11-3 the rest of the way and pulled away for a 76-67 victory at Levien Gymnasium.
 
Penn has now won four in a row, is 11-7 overall, and now sits tied with Harvard and Brown for second place at 3-2 in Ivy League play, just a game behind Yale and Princeton (a 73-62 loser at Cornell on Saturday). In addition, the win was Penn's third straight at Levien, the program's longest win streak there since winning four in a row from 2002-05.
 
Columbia fell to 6-15 overall, 1-4 in Ivy play.
 
Notes
*Penn improved to 3-0 this season when tied at halftime; the Quakers are 11-0 when leading or tied at halftime this season, 0-7 when trailing at the break.
 
*Penn shot 51.8 percent from the field, its best shooting night against a Division 1 opponent since November 23 (52.6 percent at Providence), and improved to 9-0 this season when shooting a better percentage than its opponent (Columbia shot 40.3 percent).
 
*Penn's 2.00 assist/turnover ratio (18/9) was the team's best since a 2.08 ratio (27 assists/13 turnovers) against Long Beach State on December 1.
 
*Senior forward AJ Brodeur scored a game-high 24 points, his best scoring game since he had 33 vs. Saint Joseph's on January 18.
 
*Brodeur has reached 20 points four times in the last six games, eight times this season, and 26 times in his career.
 
*Brodeur also had five assists for the fourth straight game and the ninth time this season.
 
*Brodeur went 10-of-12 from the foul line; his 10 makes were one shy of the Penn player high in the Steve Donahue coaching era. (Sam Jones had 11 against Cornell on February 26, 2016.)
 
*Senior guard Devon Goodman scored 16 points, his fourth straight game and the 14th time in the last 16 games he has reached double digits.
 
*Freshman Max Martz had 11 points, all in the second half, for his fifth double-figure scoring game but his first since he had 22 points at Howard on December 30.        
 
*Junior guard Eddie Scott had eight points, going a perfect 4-of-4 from the field, for his second-best scoring game of the season. (He had 10 in the season opener at Alabama.)
 
*Scott also had four rebounds and tied his career highs with three assists and two steals.
 
*Senior guard Ryan Betley had eight points and seven rebounds before he went down with an injury early in the second half. His status is undetermined for Saturday.
 
How It Happened
Penn jumped out early, 7-2, but Columbia scored 11 of the game's next 15 points for a 13-11 lead. The Lions then used another 7-0 run which pushed their lead to nine points, at 24-15, but Ryan Betley knocked down a pair of three-pointers which spurred Penn on an 11-2 run which put the Quakers up, 29-28. It was 31-31 at the half.
 
It took Betley 11 seconds to open the second-half scoring, and then Max Martz hit the first of what would be three treys in the period, putting Penn up 36-31 and forcing a Columbia timeout just 56 seconds in. The lead hovered in that mid-single-digits range for several minutes after that, before Columbia's Ike Nweke scored a pair of buckets in the paint to make the Quakers' lead just 50-49.
 
Brodeur quickly got the lead back to three points, and then Eddie Scott lit a fire under the healthy Penn crowd with back-to-back fast-break dunks just 18 seconds apart. Suddenly the Red and Blue's lead was 56-49 and Columbia was taking yet another timeout. No matter: another Martz triple, a pair of free throws from Brodeur, and then a driving layup by Goodman had Penn's lead at double digits, 63-53, with eight minutes left.
 
Penn went cold after that, though, and Columbia clawed back. It took more than three minutes, but the Lions built an 8-0 run which got them within 63-61, and then after Brodeur hit a pair of free throws the hosts' Mike Smith drained a three-pointer which made the score 65-64.
 
Jordan Dingle exploded to the rim for a quick bucket which made it 67-64, and then a defensive stop led to two more Brodeur foul shots on the other side of the final media timeout and a 69-64 lead. Brodeur then blocked Smith at the rim and was fouled at the other end for another freebie and a six-point lead.
 
Columbia's Jack Forrest got two of the points back from the charity stripe with 2:32 left, but late in the shot clock Martz scored to get the margin back to six. Tai Bibbs made it 72-67 with 1:41 left, but that would be all of Columbia's scoring the rest of the way as Goodman and Brodeur closed it out.