PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team allowed a late Brown run and it was too much to overcome, the Bears escaping The Palestra with a 71-64 victory Saturday night.
 
The game was tied, 47-47, with less than eight minutes left in Saturday's contest. However, the Bears rattled off the next five points and 13 of the next 15, opening up a double-digit lead that the Quakers could not make up.
 
Penn fell to 9-15 overall and is 1-8 in Ivy League play. Brown improved to 6-18 overall and 3-6 in Ivy play.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Playing just his third game since getting injured on December 30, senior Clark Slajchert had a stupendous performance with 32 points (one shy of his season and career highs).
 
*Slajchert scored half of Penn's points on Saturday night; the last time a Penn player had at least half the team's points was November 13, 2012 when Fran Dougherty scored 31 of Penn's 53 points in a loss to Fairfield.
 
*This was Slajchert's third 30-point game this season and the fifth of his career. Two of them came against Brown.
 
*Slajchert has hit double figures in the scoring column in all but one game this season, and had nine in the outlier. (This does not include the Houston game, when he got injured in the sixth minute of the contest.)
 
*Junior Nick Spinoso flirted with a double-double, scoring eight points and pulling down a team-high nine rebounds; he also dished out a team-leading four assists, giving him 10 for the weekend.
 
*Freshman Tyler Perkins finished the night with seven points and four rebounds.
 
*Freshman Sam Brown and sophomore Cam Thrower both finished with five points.
 
*Kino Lilly Jr.—the Ivy League's leading scorer—finished the night with 25 points, going 12-of-12 at the foul line to offset a poor night from the field (5-of-16). Nana Owusu-Anane nearly had a double-double, with eight points and a game-high 11 rebounds. Both of them also had four assists. AJ Lesburt Jr. and Kimo Ferrari had 11 points each.

How It Happened
Penn was in desperation mode, trying to fight its way to an Ivy League Tournament berth. That showed early, the Quakers scoring the game's first six points en route to a 12-7 lead. However, Brown went on an 8-0 run to go up 15-12, the freshman guard Brown ending the Penn skid with a trey to tie things at 15-15.
 
The teams traded points and leads for several minutes after that. Penn was up, 23-21, when Brown went on a 5-0 run that extended to 10-2 when Malachi Ndur (who had six points in the stretch) finished a fast break. That had Penn calling timeout. The Bears' lead was 31-27 at the half.
 
Slajchert opened the second half with a steal at one end that led to a floater at the other, making it 31-29, but Brown ran off seven points in 53 seconds to go in front 38-29 and force another Penn timeout.
 
The stoppage worked. Spinoso scored in the lane, and then a Slajchert three made it a four-point game. Brown went back up six, but triples by Perkins and Thrower on back-to-back possessions leveled things at 40-40. Anya and Slajchert matched buckets to 42-42 with 12:49 left.
 
The game stagnated after that, the two teams combining for just 10 points across a 5:03 stretch, but when Slajchert came out of the under-8 media and scored a twisting turnaround on the block the score was tied at 47-47.
 
Penn would hit just one field goal over the next 6:40 of game action—a Spinoso transition layup with 5:55 left that made the scored 52-49, Brown—and the visiting Bears took advantage. They responded to Spinoso's bucket with the game's next eight points, a Lilly 3FG capping what was ultimately a 13-2 run that gave Brown a 60-49 lead with 3:14 left.
 
Penn never got closer than seven the rest of the way.
 
Up Next
Penn makes the long trip North next weekend, traveling to Dartmouth and Harvard in their final two road games of the season. The Quakers and Big Green will meet on Friday, then the Red and Blue travels to Beantown to tip with the Crimson on Saturday. Both games have 7 p.m. start times.
 
For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.