PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team played one of its best games of the season on Saturday night at The Palestra, dominating Brown in nearly every category on the stat sheet in a 90-69 win that wasn't nearly that close.
The Quakers got an added bonus later in the evening, when Yale came back from a 19-point second-half deficit to defeat Princeton in overtime, 93-83. That put Penn in a first-place tie in the Ivy League standings with both the Bulldogs and the Tigers, all three teams now 8-4 in conference play.
Penn (16-11 overall) scored the first nine points on Saturday and led by as many as 27 points before halftime. The Quakers then extended the lead to 34 with 10:31 to play when a
Clark Slajchert trey made the score 76-42. The Bears (13-12, 6-6 Ivy) were able to close the gap over the final 10 minutes but not enough to seriously threaten their hosts.
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn's seven-game winning streak is its longest since the 2011-12 season.
*Penn's six-game Ivy winning streak is its longest since opening the 2017-18 Ivy campaign 7-0 en route to the regular-season co-championship at 12-2.
*Penn improved to 13-0 this season when holding its opponent below 70 points.
*Penn shot 58.7 percent from the floor overall, the Quakers' second-best shooting night of the season; Penn shot 60.4 percent (32-53) in a win over Colgate on November 26.
*Penn had 51 rebounds on Saturday night, the Quakers' highest total against a D1 opponent since grabbing 51 vs. Saint Joseph's on January 27, 2018.
*Even more staggering, Penn had a +28 margin over the Bears on the boards on Saturday night (51-23); that is the Quakers' widest margin against a Division 1 opponent since February 2, 1974 when they had a +37 margin against Columbia (65-28).
*Junior
Clark Slajchert led Penn with 19 points, giving him 50 in two games against Brown this season. He reached double figures in the scoring column in both games this weekend and has done so in three of the last four contests.
*Junior
Max Martz finished the game with his second double-double of the season, grabbing 18 points and 10 rebounds.
*Martz's 18 points were his highest total since Dartmouth on January 14.
*Junior
Jordan Dingle played just 19 minutes but finished with 12 points, extending his double-digit scoring streak to 34 games which is tied with AJ Brodeur (2017-20) as the fifth-longest streak in program history.
*Dingle now has 1,462 career points and moved into 11th place on the program's all-time scoring list; Jerome Allen is 10th with 1,488 points.
*Sophomore
Nick Spinoso hit double figures for the fourth straight game, with 12 points, and added seven rebounds.
*Senior
Max Lorca-Lloyd had seven points and added eight rebounds, two assists and two blocked shots in his 19 minutes of action.
*Brown was led by Paxson Wojcik, who finished with a game-high 24 points. Kino Lilly Jr (12 points) was the only other Bear in double figures, while in a staggering stat Nana Owusu-Anane grabbed 15 of Brown's 23 rebounds.
How It Happened
One night after trading the lead with Yale 14 times in a game neither side ever led by more than six, Penn opened Saturday's game with the first nine points and never looked back.
A Dingle three-pointer forced a Brown timeout inside of three minutes, and then after the Bears closed to within four at 11-7 Penn held their guests scoreless for nearly five minutes while going on a 12-O run. Dingle opened the run with a layup, then followed a
George Smith three-pointer with one of his own less than 30 seconds later. Lorca-Lloyd added to the run with a dunk, and
Lucas Monroe finished it with two free throws.
After a Perry Cowan three stopped Brown's scoring drought, Penn responded with seven more unanswered points to open up a 30-10 lead. The Quakers kept their foot on the gas, opening the lead up to 41-14 before Brown trimmed the deficit under 20 with just over two minutes left in the half.
The teams traded baskets and free throws down the stretch, and the Quakers carried a 47-29 lead into the locker room.
Penn then opened the second half similar to the first, hitting six of its first nine shots as the lead grew back to 24 at the under-16 media timeout (60-36). Martz had six points in the opening mini-game. As the Red and Blue lead slowly grew closer to 30, Spinoso brought the house down with a highlight-reel putback jam. Penn's lead eventually ballooned to 34 with 10:31 left, at 76-42.
Brown's offense finally found some life shortly after that, the Bears hitting four of five from beyond the arc to trim the gap back to 25. In all, Brown shot 9-for-19 from beyond the arc in the second half after going 3-for-8 in the opening 20, but the Quakers maintained at least an 18-point lead over the final 16+ minutes of the game en route to their sixth 20-point win of the year.
Up Next
Penn concludes the home portion of its 2022-23 season next Saturday, hosting Dartmouth at 2 p.m. Prior to the contest, the Quakers will honor four players who will graduate this May:
Jonah Charles,
Max Lorca-Lloyd,
Lucas Monroe, and
Michael Moshkovitz.
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