MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team knew it had a tough mountain to climb on Friday night against an undefeated West Virginia squad. That mountain got a whole lot higher when the Quakers' leading scorer, Jordan Dingle, was ruled out with a leg injury.
 
Without its primary source of offense, Penn predictably struggled against the Mountaineers' physical, in-your-face defense and dropped a 92-58 decision.
 
Penn fell to 1-4 with the loss in its first regular-season trip to the WVU Coliseum, while the Mountaineers remain undefeated in the young season at 4-0.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn played the game without its leading scorer, Jordan Dingle; he made the trip to Morgantown but did not dress due to a leg injury.
 
*Weird game statistically, as Penn took six more shots than West Virginia and outrebounded the Mountaineers 38-29 but were almost never in it.
 
*Junior Clark Slajchert led Penn with 20 points, his third time reaching that mark in the last four contests; Slajchert has scored 78 points across that four-game stretch (19.5 ppg).
 
*Junior Max Martz collected his first collegiate double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds; both were season highs. In fact, Martz entered the game with just two boards all season.
 
*Sophomore Nick Spinoso tied his season high with five rebounds and also came up with seven points and two steals.
 
*Sophomore Reese McMullen got the start in Dingle's place and finished with four points and an assist in 13 minutes.
 
*West Virginia was led by Erik Stevenson's 21 points while Tre Mitchell, Kedrian Johnson and Joe Toussaint all had 11. All 14 WVU players who got in the game scored on Friday night.
 
How It Happened
This game got away from Penn early. It was 11-7 at the first media timeout, but out of the break the Mountaineers scored and that was the start of a 17-2 run that made the score 28-9. WVU was particularly deadly from beyond the arc, hitting six of their first seven three-point shots before the game was nine minutes old.
 
It was 31-11 when Penn used a bit of a burst that further quieted what was already a thinned-out, sleepy crowd. The run started with a pair of Slajchert free throws and ended with a pair of Spinoso baskets, the latter of them making the score 33-20. However, that would be the closest the Quakers got before the break and instead WVU used a late burst to take a 52-31 lead into the locker room at halftime.
 
Penn got after the ball to start the second half, a sequence that ended with Eddie Holland III knocking down a free throw for the first point of the period. However, West Virginia ripped off the next seven points to extend its lead to 27 (59-32).
 
Penn never got closer than 20 points after that, and even that happened only once when Slajchert hit a pair of foul shots out of a media timeout to make the score 68-48. That was the end of a seven-point Quakers run, but from that point West Virginia scored 10 of the next 11 points as Penn went nearly seven minutes without a field goal.
 
Up Next
Penn is at Lafayette Tuesday night to face the Leopards and their first-year head coach, former Penn standout Michael Jordan. The game is the back end of a women's/men's doubleheader and is scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m.