PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team gave No. 16/17 Kentucky a good run for much of Saturday's matinee game at the Wells Fargo Center, but the Wildcats used a decisive 9-0 run just after the midpoint of the second half to pull away for an 81-66 victory.
 
Penn fell to 6-5 with the loss, while the 'Cats improved to 7-2.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Senior Clark Slajchert tied for game-high honors with 17 points on Saturday, his tenth double-figure scoring game this season.
 
*Freshman Tyler Perkins finished the day with 15 points, knocking down three treys.
 
*Another freshman, Sam Brown, knocked down four triples for his 12 points, tied his season/career high with six rebounds, and dished out five assists which was a season/career best.
 
*Junior Nick Spinoso threatened a double-double yet again with 10 points and nine rebounds. He also had five assists and set a new season/career high with four blocked shots (all in the first half).
 
*Junior George Smith finished the day with seven points, four boards and assists and two steals (which tied him for team-high honors with Perkins and senior Andrew Laczkowski).
 
*Kentucky got 17 points each from Rob Dillingham and Aaron Bradshaw, Bradshaw—a freshman who played his high school ball at Camden—also leading all players with 11 rebounds for a double-double (as well as blocked three shots). Antonio Reeves had 16 points, while Tre Mitchell had four points, nine rebounds and four assists..

How It Happened
Penn trailed almost all of this game, tying it at 2-2 and 5-5. By no means were the Quakers a pushover, though.
 
Slajchert jumpers on back-to-back possessions made it a 23-21 game with 6:55 left, but Penn went scoreless for 4:28 after that and UK took advantage with a 10-0 run that pushed its lead into double digits. Smith ended the skid when he converted a contested layup, but the Wildcats responded with the next six points to go up by 16, 39-23.
 
Just when it looked like Penn might get run out of the building before halftime, the Quakers responded. Spinoso backed his man down for a bucket, then Perkins hit a putback. UK took its use-it-or-lose-it timeout for a final shot but turned it over. Instead, Slajchert was laying in a transition bucket just ahead of the buzzer and the margin was 10 at the break (39-29).
 
Penn kept the momentum going to start the second half, Spinoso opening the period with four points and then Perkins draining a transition three from up top. It was a 7-2 run to start the half and UK was calling a timeout to settle things. The Wildcats did, briefly, going up 45-38 before Penn used another run to get within a point. Slajchert even had a chance to put the Quakers in front just ahead of the under-16 media timeout but missed his three-point shot with the score 47-46.
 
UK then scored the first four points out of U16, but Smith hit a trey to stop the bleeding and make it a one-possession game again, 51-49. A Bradshaw three started UK on a 10-2 run that made the margin 10 (61-51) with 11 minutes to play, but back-to-back treys by Brown and Perkins got the Quakers back within four and had Kentucky head coach John Calipari calling another timeout.
 
UK established itself out of the stoppage, shutting Penn down for more than three minutes and scoring nine points in a row in that time. That extended the Wildcats' lead to 13 with a little more than seven minutes remaining and forced a Penn timeout. The Quakers were unable to get the margin to a single-digit number the rest of the way.
 
Up Next
Penn is back at home on Monday night, hosting defending MEAC champion Howard at 7 p.m. The game will represent a homecoming for Bison guard Jelani Williams, who played for the Quakers as an undergrad.
 
For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.