PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team opened Big 5 pod play with an 86-69 loss to Saint Joseph's Friday night at The Palestra. The Quakers were down 13 at the half, and the Hawks ran away with it in the second half in moving to the Big 5 Classic championship game for the second year in a row.
 
Penn fell to .500 on the young season, at 2-2, and will conclude pod play on Tuesday at Villanova. Saint Joseph's improved to 3-1 and won its second pod game this week.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Senior Nick Spinoso was Penn's leading scorer on Friday, with 14 points on 7-of-10 shooting from the field. He also had two assists and two steals.
 
*Sophomore Sam Brown scored 13 points and dished out three assists, tying for the team lead with George Smith.
 
*Junior Dylan Williams was Penn's other double-figure scorer, with 10 points.
 
*Junior Ethan Roberts was held to single digits in the points column for the first time this season, with nine, but led the Quakers with four rebounds.
 
*Freshman Michelangelo Oberti saw his first collegiate action and finished with four points, two rebounds and an assist in nearly nine minutes.
 
*Saint Joseph's had five players score in double figures, led by Derek Simpson, Erik Reynolds II and Rasheer Fleming who had 15 each. Xzayvier Brown scored 11 points and recorded game highs in rebounds (7) and assists (4).

How It Happened
Friday night's game was evenly played through the first five minutes, as Spinoso spun home a layup that made the score 12-11 SJU as the clock went under 15 minutes to play in the first half. However, the Hawks responded with the game's next 11 points as Penn went more than five minutes without scoring before Augustus Gerhart ended the skid with a layup off a Brown feed. Roberts followed with a floater in the lane that made it an eight-point margin, and it was still an eight-point game (31-23) at the under-4 media timeout. Out of that stoppage, Fleming scored twice and Simpson followed that, upping SJU's lead to 14, and it was still 13 at the break, 46-33.
 
St. Joe's opened the second half by scoring the first seven points, getting the lead to 20 points, and another 11-0 run made this a 32-point game before the second half had reached its midway point. Penn used a nine-point run late in the game to get the margin back under 20, an Oberti second-chance layup making the score 80-61, and the teams essentially traded points the last three minutes as the final margin was set at 17.
 
Up Next
Penn closes out pod play in the city series on Tuesday night, making the trip out to the Main Line to face Villanova 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.