Quaker Meeting House (QMH) got to witness a really cool moment on Saturday night.
 
QMH was outside the visiting team locker room, talking with Brown head coach Michael Martin following Penn's 73-68 win over the Bears. As QMH continued past Coach Martin to a pair of Daily Pennsylvanian reporters, senior AJ Brodeur came out of the locker room on his way to meeting with the DP.
 
Coach Martin stopped him in the hallway and took about a minute to tell AJ that in the 20 years he's been around Ivy League basketball AJ was one of the best players he had ever seen. He told him how much he admired everything AJ had done, he was so impressed with AJ's career, and he ended it by saying that he was glad he wouldn't have to face him again in competition. AJ was caught off guard, but he seemed genuinely appreciative of Coach Martin's kind words and thanked him. They shook hands, and AJ moved on to join QMH with the DP reporters.
 
Better than any other coach in the Ivy League, of course, Martin knows Penn and what a pressure-cooker it can be. He was an assistant coach here for six years, under two head coaches, so he knows well the history of the program—he used it as a selling point, one of the reasons Penn is what it is as a basketball program. But he also knows that Penn's successful history can be a burden, too.
 
So stopping AJ and telling him how proud he was of him was affirming. QMH has always thought the world of Coach Martin, and that moment did nothing to dispel those feelings.
 
AJ has been having a lot of those moments in recent weeks, as teams face Penn for the final time this season and thus the final time in AJ's career. It might be an extra moment or two in the post-game handshake line; it might be a moment like QMH witnessed, outside a locker room. The theme has been the same: we've loved watching you these last four years, but boy are we happy to see you go.
 
AJ Brodeur is absolutely one of those guys who, if you're a fan of any other Ivy League team, you saw him take the court this season and thought to yourself: wait, that guy is still at Penn?!
 
Yup. He is. At least for one more weekend.
 
AJ's final regular-season games will take place this Friday and Saturday, when the Penn men's basketball team hosts Cornell and Columbia. It seems like a good time to take stock in just where his career stacks up among the all-timers in program history.
 
It seems appropriate to start at the beginning. Remember AJ's first game? It was at Robert Morris, against a team coached by former Penn player Andy Toole. It was Coach Donahue's second season at Penn, but essentially his first recruiting class. AJ had been the whale, of course, the big splash.
 
AJ went out and dropped 23 points on 11-of-14 shooting. He grabbed 11 rebounds, three of them at the offensive end. He blocked two shots. He had a steal. He did all of this in 29 minutes.
 
AJ forced QMH to spend some time in the Archives Room when the team got back home from Moon Township, Pa. After all, who knew the last time a Penn freshman had collected a double-double in his debut? (Never, it turned out.) And who knew the last time a freshman scored 23 points in his collegiate debut? (Also never, it turned out.) One game in, AJ was sharing sentences with guys like Tony Price and Stan Pawlak, names who are certainly on the short list of all-time greats.
 
He hasn't slowed down. Entering this weekend…
 
*Let's see, AJ already holds the program's career records for field goals made (734) and games started (116).
 
*He is expected to tie the record for games played (117) on Friday and break it on Saturday.
 
*A center throughout his career who essentially lived on the blocks or at the elbows, he is unique in that he needs four blocked shots to become the program's record-holder (currently he has 192) but he's also seventh all-time in assists (373).
 
*AJ is just the fourth Penn player to collect 900 career rebounds, and the first since Joe Sturgis who played for the Quakers from 1954-56.
 
*Most notable, and the number everyone has an eye on, is the all-time scoring record. AJ enters this weekend with 1,789 career points. He needs 38 to tie the great Ernie Beck.
 
Ah, Ernie Beck.
 
A few weeks ago, QMH got an irate phone call from a longtime fan. This was shortly after AJ had broken Ernie Beck's record for career field goals, and since he did it so late in the game the program had honored the occasion with an announcement after the singing of "The Red and Blue." The fan had called to express his indignation, pointing out that Ernie had recorded his 704 field goals in only three seasons while AJ had needed four to get to 705.
 
QMH had to tell the fan that, yes, AJ had broken the record, and the feeling at this end was that it was something to be celebrated. Penn would never apologize for celebrating a record, especially one that was broken after standing for so long. QMH also pointed out that freshmen have been playing varsity ball since 1978-79, and it had taken 41 years of four-year players before the mark was broken. So, yeah, it was a noteworthy accomplishment.
 
QMH also told the fan that nothing AJ does will diminish the career that Ernie Beck put together at Penn or his legacy within the program.
 
QMH never saw Ernie Beck play—heck, QMH was born 16 years after Ernie's Penn career ended—but doesn't need to. If film exists from those days, QMH doesn't need to see it. The numbers bear it out. Ernie Beck is the greatest player in Penn men's basketball history. End of story. It's not even close.
 
Ernie Beck played 82 games of varsity basketball at Penn, from 1951-53. He scored 1,827 points, and while that record is being threatened his per-game average (22.3) is not. He also remains the program's all-time leading rebounder by a staggering 529 boards, collecting 1,557 of them. In other words, the dude averaged more than 20 points and nearly 20 rebounds a game for three seasons. Incredible, especially when you consider he was a 6-foot-4 player who rotated between guard and small forward. The rebounding numbers are almost laughable for a player of that height and position.
 
The NCAA did not officially track blocked shots and steals back in Ernie's day, but think about this: the NCAA did track assists his junior year and Ernie was credited with 102 that season. Who knows how many assists, blocked shots and steals he really had over his 82-game career?
 
As a senior, Ernie scored 673 points in 26 games, a 25.9 per-game average. He made 183 free throws. Those records still stand, 67 years later. He dropped off in rebounding a bit—he averaged only 17.3 after going for 20.6 boards as a sophomore and 19.0 as a junior—as Penn made the NCAA Tournament for the first time, losing to Notre Dame in the first round before defeating DePaul in a consolation game in Chicago.
 
Ernie Beck's career points total has been the standard at Penn for 67 years. It's the longest-standing scoring record of any Division 1 program in the country, although you might be surprised to learn that one other school's record has stood since 1954 (Furman) and the record at four other schools has stood since 1955 (Duquesne, Fordham, Wake Forest and Wichita State).
 
Is AJ Brodeur one of the all-time greats at Penn? There is no doubt. You can book him for Penn Athletics and Big 5 Hall of Fame inductions down the road. He has established standards that all future Quakers will look to equal. He will be in the lineup when Penn fans debate their all-time team going forward.
 
However, it should be noted that AJ's per-game scoring average over his career (15.3 ppg) does not even threaten the program's top 10. That said, it should also be noted that everyone who is in the top 10 in that category played just three years of varsity basketball; none of them played their freshman season, when ostensibly you would expect their scoring averages to be at their lowest.
 
See, this three-year career vs. four-year career argument can work both ways.
 
QMH has heard that argument as long he's been at Penn. Of particular note, some three-year players bristle a bit when they get passed in the record book by four-year players. It's understandable; their competitive nature is probably what made them the players they were. And yes, it's legitimate to wonder just how many points, say, Keven McDonald might have piled onto the 1,644 he scored in his three years of varsity ball had he been given that freshman season.
 
We'll never know, though.
 
So let's celebrate all of this. Let's celebrate AJ Brodeur on this final weekend and recognize his incredible record of durability and consistency over four long years, from his debut at Robert Morris to this weekend's games at The Palestra. But let's also appreciate how truly amazing Ernie Beck was wearing that Penn uniform. You think, when he was walking off the court following that DePaul win in 1953, he would have believed it if someone had told him that day, "by the way, your scoring record isn't going to be in danger until 2020"? Of course not. In some ways, it's impossible to wrap your head around.
 
AJ is not the only senior who will be honored on Saturday night, of course. There's also Devon Goodman and Ryan Betley, who have joined AJ on the All-Ivy teams the last two years. There's Ray Jerome, who has bounced in and out of the lineup during the course of the last two seasons. There's Kuba Mijakowski, who is sitting out this season and plans to be a grad transfer next year. There's even a manager to be honored, Garrett Colvin.
 
All six of them will be honored at approximately 5:40 p.m., ahead of a 6:02 tip. The program understandably thinks that the ceremony could play out a little longer than normal, and so some additional warm-up time has been built in after the seniors have been honored.
 
QMH hopes you'll be in your seat to honor them.
 
Ernie Beck will be there. In fact, he'll be a part of Saturday night's Senior ceremony.
 
QMH hopes you'll be in your seat to honor him, too.