CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – In an Ivy League Tournament semifinal at Harvard's Lavietes Pavilion, the University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team missed a few shots down the stretch and second-seeded Yale made the plays the Bulldogs needed for a 67-61 win.
 
Penn's season ends with a 12-16 overall record. Yale improved to 18-11 overall and moves on to Sunday's ILT championship game against top-seeded Princeton, which defeated fourth-seeded Cornell in Saturday's first semifinal.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn lost in an ILT semifinal for the third time and fell to 1-1 against Yale at #IvyMadness.
 
*Sophomore Jordan Dingle finished just two points shy of his school-record seventh 30-point game on Saturday, finishing with 28. He was later named to the all-tournament team along with Yale's Azar Swain and Matt Knowling, Princeton's Tosan Evboumwan, and Cornell's Sarju Patel.
 
*Dingle finished the season averaging 20.8 points per game, the best ppg average for a season by a Penn player since Keven McDonald averaged 22.3 ppg as a senior in 1977-78.
 
*Dingle ended the season with 542 points, the best single-season mark since Zack Rosen scored 602 in 2011-12.
 
*Penn's only other double-figure scorer was freshman Nick Spinoso, who dropped 14 points which was a season/career high.
 
*After injuring his ankle at Arkansas on November 28, Spinoso scored 25 points in the last two games against Yale—and a grand total of three in 11 other appearances.
 
*No other Penn player scored more than six points in the game, and that was only sophomore Max Martz.
 
*Martz also led Penn with seven rebounds, while junior Michael Moshkovitz had a team-high four assists.
 
*In his first game action since getting injured against Harvard exactly a month ago, senior Jelani Williams had four rebounds, three steals and two assists in his final game wearing the Red and Blue.
 
*Yale got 25 points from Azar Swain and 10 from Matt Knowling, while Jalen Gabbidon finished with nine points and seven rebounds.
 
How It Happened
After splitting the regular-season series, the home team winning each time, the game on Harvard's neutral court was everything you could have expected.
 
No one ever built up a lead larger than nine—that was Yale, which led 32-29 at halftime and went in front 44-35 with a 7-0 run over three possessions that forced a Penn timeout with 14:49 to play.
 
It was still an eight-point game when Penn made its run. Spinoso got things started with his second three-pointer of the game, and then Max Martz blocked a Gabbidon trey attempt, got the ball ahead of the pack at the other end and, when no one checked him defensively, calmly drilled another triple that got Penn within a bucket at 55-53. A scoreless minute went by before Spinoso got free underneath to tie things up, and after another Yale miss Lucas Monroe was fouled to send the teams to the under-8 media timeout. Out of the break, the junior made the first of his two shots and Penn had its first lead since 18-16 at 56-55 with 6:38 to play.
 
Yale quickly got back ahead, Swain swishing a pair of free throws just six seconds after Monroe's make, and then the Bulldogs senior answered another Monroe freebie with a three-pointer that pushed Yale in front, 60-57.
 
Both teams were scoreless over the game's next 2:26, Swain ending the drought with yet another bucket to put Yale in front 62-57. Dingle finally got Penn on the board, the Quakers' first field goal in more than four minutes, and then after a Swain miss the Red and Blue sophomore got Penn within a point off a nice feed from Moshkovitz. The score was 62-61 with 1:33 to play.
 
The Bulldogs came down, and Bez Mbeng spun into a 10-foot jumper just outside the key that he drained for a three-point lead. Out of a timeout and with less than a minute to play, Penn got Martz open for a trey attempt but his shot rolled around the rim and out. The Quakers eventually fouled Gabbidon, who made both shots with 28 seconds left for a five-point lead. Clark Slajchert then missed a three and, after Yale missed the front end, Dingle drove to the hoop and lost the ball out of bounds. (The refs originally ruled the ball to Penn, but after a review reversed and gave it to Yale.) August Mahoney set the score with nine seconds left on another foul shot.
 
Up Next
Penn's season is over.