PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team ended the regular season with a 93-70 loss to archrival Princeton on Saturday at The Palestra.
 
The Tigers shot better than 55 percent from the field and committed just two turnovers on Saturday. That was more than enough to overcome a Quakers squad that continues to play without Jelani Williams and also was missing freshman guard George Smith as he went into COVID protocols.
 
Penn—which also played on Saturday without head coach Steve Donahue, who went into COVID protocols earlier in the day—ends the regular season 12-15 overall and finishes third in the Ivy League standings at 9-5. Princeton clinched the outright Ivy League title with the win (12-2) and goes into the Ivy League Tournament as the top seed and 22-5 overall.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*In Coach Donahue's absence, the K. Gelb Family Associate Head Coach, Nat Graham, took over as head coach for Saturday's game.

*Sophomore guard Jordan Dingle scored 31 points to lead Penn; it was his sixth 30-point game this season and his fifth in Ivy League play.
 
*The last Penn player with six 30-point games in a season? Ernie Beck, who had six his junior year (1951-52) and then five more as a senior.

*Dingle went 14-of-25 from the field on Saturday and was 14-of-17 on two-point shots; his 25 overall shots marked a Penn player high in the Donahue coaching era.
 
*Sophomore guard Clark Slajchert scored 12 points, his fifth straight game hitting double figures in the scoring column and 15th such game this season (11 in Ivy play).

*Slajchert also tied his season/career high with five rebounds.
 
*Senior guard Bryce Washington had another impressive outing on Saturday, playing more minutes than anybody (37:30) and scoring 10 points; after scoring eight points all season before last weekend, he has 23 across the Quakers' last two games.
 
*Junior co-captain Lucas Monroe swallowed up a game-high 14 rebounds, a career high. He also tied his season best with three assists.
 
*Junior Michael Moshkovitz was plagued by foul trouble all day, but finished the game with six points, six rebounds and three assists.
 
*Princeton committed just two turnovers on Saturday, an opponent low since the stat started being kept in 1970-71; the previous low of three was originally set by Cornell exactly 39 years ago, on March 5, 1983 (a 55-51 Penn win) and was matched by Brown on February 22, 1986 (a 95-89 Penn win).
 
*Princeton was led by Tosan Evbuomwan who scored 23 points, grabbed eight rebounds, and dished out seven assists without committing a turnover. Jaelin Llewellyn led the Tigers with 24 points, while Drew Friberg added 18.
 
How It Happened
The Quakers came charging out of the gates with a quick 6-0 spurt over the first two and a half minutes of action, capped by a jumper from Slajchert. The Tigers answered with a surge of their own, though, taking a 10-9 lead following a Drew Friberg triple with 15:49 to go in the opening half.
 
The two Ancient Eight foes went back and forth for several minutes after that, and a bucket from Dingle tied the game at 19 apiece heading into the under-12 media timeout. Out of the break, Dingle drove the lane and missed a contested layup, but Monroe was there for the putback which gave Penn a 21-19 lead.
 
Things went south quickly from there.
 
Penn went scoreless for more than five minutes and the Tigers took advantage, scoring 11 points in a row to take a 30-21 lead. Michael Moshkovitz and Max Martz scored on consecutive possessions after that, getting it to 32-25, but Princeton scored the game's next five points en route to a 45-31 halftime lead.
 
The torrid tempo from the first half continued into the second, as Penn hit eight of its first 11 shots from the field. The Quakers struggled to make headway, though, as the Tigers were 7-of-9 over the first seven minutes of the period.
 
The Quakers cut the deficit to eight with a modest five-point run, Dingle scoring in the lane and Washington drilling a second-chance three-pointer to make the score 50-42. The teams traded baskets after that, and it was still a 10-point game (48-38) after Dingle again converted in the lane with 13:59 left.
 
Elijah Barnes scored an and-1 three-point play, however, and that set Princeton off again. The Tigers scored nine unanswered over a span of 1:34 and suddenly the visitors' lead was 19.
 
Washington scored the game's next five points to get Penn back within 14, at 67-53, but that was as close as the Quakers got in the game's final 12 minutes. Princeton's lead bulged to 20 with more than four minutes left, and after that it was mop-up duty in front of a sizable Palestra crowd.
 
Up Next
Penn will play in the Ivy League Tournament next weekend at Harvard's Lavietes Pavilion. (Purchase tickets here.) The Quakers will be the third seed and face second-seeded Yale in a semifinal on Saturday at 2 p.m. That game will air live on ESPNU. Top-seeded Princeton and fourth-seeded Cornell will play Saturday's first semifinal at 11 a.m., also on ESPNU. The championship game will take place Sunday at noon on ESPN2.