PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team plays its final non-conference game of 2024-25 on Sunday, making the trip into the center of the commonwealth to renew its intrastate rivalry with Penn State.
 
GAME 13 – PENN (4-8) at PENN STATE (10-2)
Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024 | 1 p.m.
State College, Pa. | Bryce Jordan Center
Watch on Peacock ($) | Listen on QAN | Live Stats
 
Penn Game Notes (PDF) | PSU Game Notes (PDF)
 
Quaker Audio Network (QAN)
Penn fans can listen to all of the 2024-25 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 for Sunday's game, with Stan Pawlak providing analysis. To access the Quaker Audio Network, simply type www.pennathletics.com/audio into your computer or device.
 
The Series with Penn State
*The Quakers and Nittany Lions are meeting for the 49th time in this intrastate rivalry, with Penn holding a 31-17 lead.
 
*This series dates all the way back to February 8, 1902—a 45-10 romp by the Quakers in State College—but Sunday's game is just the seventh in the 21st century and only the 12th since 1958.
 
*Penn leads the overall series, but Penn State has won the last four matchups and eight of the last nine. The outlier in that stretch came on November 23, 2002 when the Quakers grabbed a 62-37 victory over the Nittany Lions at The Palestra.
 
*The last meeting overall took place on November 16, 2013 when Penn State came to The Palestra and downed the Quakers, 83-71.
 
*The last time these teams played at the BJC was a year earlier—December 1, 2012—the Nittany Lions scrapping out a 58-47 decision.
 
Penn MBB by the Numbers
2 – Consecutive one-point wins by Penn to start the season; the last time the Quakers had two straight one-point wins was the 1978-79 Final Four season (59-58 in OT over Princeton on 1/13, then 43-42 over Saint Joseph's on 1/16). Prior to this season, the last time Penn even won ONE one-point game was February 19, 2022, an 89-88 decision at Brown.
 
3 – Transfers who have joined the Penn roster for the 2024-25 season: Ethan Roberts (Drake), Dylan Williams (Triton College) and Michael Zanoni (Mercer). Of the group, Roberts is the most decorated as he was the Patriot League Rookie of the Year at Army in 2022-23 before spending last season at Drake (missing the campaign due to injury). Williams, meanwhile, started at point guard for a Triton team that went 34-3 last season and advanced to the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) national championship game.
 
6 – Rebounds grabbed by freshman AJ Levine last Friday against Rider, a season/career high.
 
7 – Total newcomers on the 2024-25 roster: in addition to the transfers, the Quakers also have freshmen Bradyn Foster—who made his first career starts last weekend—Levine, Alex Massung, and Michelangelo Oberti.

6.9 – Rebounds-per-game average by senior Nick Spinoso so far this season, sixth among Ivy League players.
 
9 – Points scored by Roberts in the final 5:38 in the season opener at NJIT on November 4; he had nine of Penn's last 10 points in the contest, including the winning free throw with 1.6 seconds left.

10 – Players who have started at least one game this season for Penn; only two, Roberts and sophomore Sam Brown, have started all 12 games.
 
11 – Points scored by Zanoni last Sunday at George Mason, his Penn high.

13 – Free throws made (on 14 attempts) by Brown against Maine; that is a Penn player high in the Steve Donahue era and most since Ibrahim Jaaber made 15 against Navy on December 2, 2005. Brown finished with 19 points to go with four rebounds vs. the Black Bears.
 
14 – Points scored by senior George Smith against UMES, his first double-figure scoring game in nearly a year and most points in a game since he dropped 14 in back-to-back games against Harvard and Columbia his sophomore season.
 
17 – Deficit that Penn made up in the NJIT win; the Quakers were down, 52-35, with just over 13 minutes left but outscored the Highlanders 23-5 the rest of the way. It marked the largest comeback in a Penn victory in the Donahue era. (The Quakers made up a 21-point deficit at Princeton on January 7, 2017 before losing, 61-52.)

18.7 – Points-per-game average by Roberts over the last seven contests; he has reached double figures in all of them and is currently fourth among Ivy League players in points per game this season (16.6).

21 – Rebounds grabbed by Maine in its Cathedral Classic Invitational game with Penn on November 30; that is tied for fewest by a Quakers opponent in the Donahue era. Penn outboarded the Black Bears, 39-21.

24 – Points scored in the last two games by sophomore Niklas Polonowski (14 vs. Rider, 10 at Mason); prior to that, he scored just seven points in Penn's first ten games.
 
34 – Consecutive starts made by Spinoso—in fact, he had started 58 of the Quakers' last 59 games—before he came off the bench against Saint Joseph's on November 15; he has started every game since then and nearly had a triple-double (14 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists) in Penn's win over Maine.
 
61 – Three-pointers knocked down by Brown last season, on 141 attempts (.433); he finished third among Ivy League players in 3FG percentage and fourth in 3FG per game (2.44). Brown's 61 treys were the second most by a freshman in program history, behind only Jackson Donahue who had 62 in 2015-16.
 
For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.