PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team has one final test before the start of fall-term exams. That comes on Monday night when the Quakers host defending MEAC champion Howard at The Palestra.
 
GAME 12 – PENN (6-5) vs. HOWARD (3-5)
Monday, Dec. 11, 2023 | 7 p.m.
The Palestra | Philadelphia
Watch Live on ESPN+ ($) | Listen Live on QAN | Live Stats
Penn Game Notes (PDF) | Howard Game Notes (PDF)
 
Ivy League on ESPN+
A reminder that the Ivy League is paired with ESPN and you will be able to find all Penn home games, as well as road Ivy matches and select non-conference road games, on ESPN+ again this season with the same high broadcast quality you've come to expect. ESPN+ is a subscription-based service that offers monthly and yearly packages. Click here to subscribe to ESPN+!
 
Quaker Audio Network (QAN)
Penn fans can listen to most of the 2023-24 Penn's men's basketball season through the Quaker Audio Network, a free Internet-based audio streaming service. Matt Leon will be on the play-by-play call Monday, with Brad Fadem providing analysis. To access the Quaker Audio Network, simply type www.pennathletics.com/audio into your computer or device.
 
The Series with Howard
*The Quakers and the Bison are meeting for just the fourth time.
 
*This series started in 2007 when Howard—at the time coached by longtime Penn assistant coach Gil Jackson—came here to The Palestra and emerged with an 80-65 victory
 
*The other two meetings took place in 2017 and 2019 down at HU's Burr Gym—on the campus known as "The Mecca"—and were both Penn wins, 81-68 on December 4, 2017 and 81-62 on December 30, 2019.
 
*Howard won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) last year, going 22-13 and making its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1992. In a preseason vote of the league's head coaches and sports information personnel, the Bison are picked to repeat as champion.
 
Hello, Old Friend!
*Today's game, of course, represents a Homecoming for Howard's Jelani Williams who holds his undergraduate degree from Penn.
 
*Williams represents one of the most inspiring stories in Quakers' history, missing his first three seasons due to injuries and then having another season taken away by COVID-19. He finally saw the court as a co-captain in 2021-22, playing in 25 of 28 games (starting all 25) and earning the program's Bus MacDonald Award.
 
*After helping Howard to its incredibly successful season in 2022-23, Williams was a 2023-24 preseason first-team All-MEAC pick along his teammate Shy Odom by the league's coaches and SIDs.
 
Ivy Honors For Slajchert
Following his 33-point performance against La Salle last Saturday at the Wells Fargo Center, senior Clark Slajchert was named co-Ivy League Player of the Week along with Princeton's Caden Pierce on Monday. It was Slajchert's first Ivy honor this season and the fifth of his career. The weekend before, Slajchert was named to the all-tournament team at the Cathedral of College Basketball Classic along with freshman Tyler Perkins.
 
Penn MBB by the Numbers
2 - Games played by Penn prior to this season at what is now the Wells Fargo Center—a number the Quakers doubled in the last week after playing La Salle in the Big 5 Classic on December 2 (a 93-92 loss) and then Kentucky this past Saturday (an 81-66 loss). The Quakers split a pair of games with Villanova back when it was called the First Union Center, losing 80-51 on February 6, 2001 and winning 72-58 on December 10, 2003.
 
2 - Penn players who have collected a double-double this season: freshman Tyler Perkins (24 pts/11 rbs vs. Bucknell) and junior Nick Spinoso (11 pts/11 rbs at UMES). Spinoso flirted with a triple-double in last Saturday's game vs. the Explorers with 17 points, eight rebounds and eight assists.
 
3 - Overtime games played by Penn already this season: at UMES, against Belmont in the Cathedral of College Basketball Classic, and two Saturdays ago against La Salle at the Big 5 Classic.
 
4 - 20-point games racked up by Perkins already this season; the last freshman with that many such games was Jordan Dingle, who had five in 2019-20.
 
5 - Ivy League weekly honors accumulated by senior Clark Slajchert over his career, after he was named co-Ivy League Player of the Week on Monday with Princeton's Caden Pierce.
 
9 - Double-figure scoring games by Slajchert this season; in the outlier game, a win over Monmouth on November 26, he was "held" to nine points (on a trio of treys).
 
21 - Three-point baskets made by Penn in last Wednesday's win over Division III FDU-Florham, a program record; the Quakers shot 21-34 (61.8 pct) beyond the arc, and nine different players hit treys in the game—one shy of the NCAA Division I record the Quakers set against Delaware State on December 27, 2017.
 
26 - Of senior Andrew Laczkowski's 38 rebounds this season, 26 (or 68.4 percent) of them have come on the offensive glass.
 
30 - Of Penn's 39 first-half points in its win over Monmouth on November 26, 30 of them were scored by freshmen (14 by Sam Brown, 6 by Augustus Gerhart, 5 each by Perkins and Niklas Polonowski).
 
53 - Rebounds snared by Spinoso over the last six games against Division I opponents (8.8 rpg); the junior had averaged 6.3 rebounds per game across the Quakers' first four contests.
 
79 - Points scored by Brown through seven games this season; he missed Penn's first four contests due to injury but has started the last five games and has shot 48.8 percent on 3FG this season (20-of-41).
 
108 - Points scored by Slajchert in the four games Penn has played away from The Palestra; he had 27 on November 10 at Saint Joseph's, 31 a week later at UMES, 33 at the Wells Fargo Center against La Salle, and 17 on Saturday against Kentucky at WFC.