PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team was bullied by Big 5 rival Saint Joseph's in the first half of Friday night's game at Hagan Arena, but the Quakers used a stirring comeback in the second before falling short, 69-61.
Penn was down by 13 at the half, 33-20, and the deficit went to as much as 19 in the second half. However, the Quakers used a 19-2 run to get within two and were still within a possession with less than four minutes to play before the Hawks made the necessary plays down the stretch to pull away.
Penn fell to 2-1 with the loss, while SJU improved to 2-0 on the young season. The Hawks also got a leg up in the Big 5's new pod-play format as these teams and Villanova look to emerge as the pod winner to play in the city series title game on Saturday, Dec. 2 at the Wells Fargo Center.
Quaker Notemeal
*Senior
Clark Slajchert led all scorers with 27 points—in fact, nobody else in the game had more than 13—as he shot 11-of-17 from the field and knocked down five of his eight three-point shots. The five treys matched a career high set twice before.
*Slajchert was the only Penn player to score a double-figure total as freshman
Tyler Perkins had eight points, junior
Ed Holland III added seven, and junior
George Smith scored six.
*Junior
Nick Spinoso scored just four points, but he led Penn with seven rebounds and four assists.
*Sophomore
Johnnie Walter was right behind Spinoso with six rebounds, followed by Perkins and sophomore
Cam Thrower who had five each. Thrower also had three assists.
*Perkins and Smith had two steals each to lead Penn in that category.
*Saint Joseph's got 13 points each from Erik Reynolds II and Lynn Green III, and Greer had a double-double with 11 assists. Christ Essandoko nearly had a double-double with nine points and 10 rebounds.
How It Happened
After cruising through its first two games without much challenge, Penn could be excused for maybe not being ready for the physicality of Friday's city series matchup early on. The Quakers struggled mightily to score, needing nearly three minutes to get on the board and falling behind by six a little more than five minutes in.
The Hawks had their own struggles—typical of a Big 5 matchup—and Penn took advantage midway through the half with a 9-1 run that covered 2:23 of game time. Smith gave the Red and Blue what would end up being their only lead of the night, knocking down a trey to make it 15-13.
However, the Quakers went ice cold the rest of the period, the only field goal over a 10-minute span coming from Slajchert beyond the arc. The senior also scored just before the halftime buzzer, but the damage was done—Saint Joseph's took a 33-20 lead into the locker room.
For the first half, Slajchert shot 5-of-8 from the field in scoring 11 points; the rest of the team was 3-of-24 and scored just nine.
The score was 40-29 early in the second half when SJU went on a 12-4 run that spanned a little more than four minutes of game time. When Xzayvier Brown knocked down a trey—his second in the run—the Hawks' lead was 52-33 and this thing looked over for all intents and purposes.
Penn didn't get the memo. Smith and Holland knocked down treys on consecutive possessions to make it 52-39, forcing a Saint Joseph's timeout, but on the other side of the stoppage Holland hit a pair of free throws and Slajchert followed with a trey. One empty possession after that, Thrower drove from the right side and spun home a reverse layup. In all, it was a 13-0 run that left Penn down by just six, 52-46.
Greer found Essandoko for a dunk to stop the run, but Penn came back with a second-chance trey from Perkins and a Slajchert triple and suddenly this was a one-possession game, 54-52. Greer and Walter traded buckets—Walter's coming off a nice feed from Spinoso—but then Cameron Brown drained a three for SJU and Reynolds converted a Smith miss with a fast break bucket that pushed the Hawks back up by seven as the clock went inside five minutes. However, Penn had an answer as Slajchert got three of them back on his third triple of the half, and Perkins again made it a two-point game off a Slajchert feed with 3:42 left.
A killer sequence came after that, SJU rebounding a miss of its own free throw for the conversion, and then Penn missing the front end of a 1-and-1 and the ensuing putback that Greer converted into two points at the other end. That made the score 65-59.
Thrower made one of two foul shots on Penn's next possession, making the score 65-60 with 2:20 left, but nobody scored again until there were just 35 seconds left and it was Reynolds who got those points. Penn then rushed the ball down the floor but turned it over out bounds, and that essentially put this game to bed.
Up Next
Penn closes out Big 5 pod play on Monday, hosting No. 22 Villanova at The Palestra. The Quakers and Wildcats will tip off at 7 p.m.
For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.
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