HANOVER, N.H. – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team used arguably its best offensive performance of the season on Friday night, and the result was a convincing 82-69 win over Dartmouth at Leede Arena.
The Quakers used a 13-0 run—one shy of its best run this season—midway through the first half to turn a 9-8 deficit into a 21-9 lead and never looked back. The advantage was 17 by halftime, as large as 24 in the second half, and 22 with less than three minutes to play as Penn was never seriously threatened.
Penn won in Hanover for the first time since 2019 and improved to 10-15 overall and 2-8 in Ivy League action. Dartmouth fell to 5-18, 1-9 in Ivy play.
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn's 82 points were its second highest against a Division 1 opponent this season, behind only the 92 the Quakers put up in an overtime loss to La Salle.
*Penn hit 14 three-point shots on Friday night, tied for its season high against a D1 opponent. That number was originally hit on January 6 against…the Big Green, at The Palestra.
*Penn shot 52.5 percent from the floor (32-61), its second-best shooting performance this season against a D1 opponent (37-68, 54.4 pct vs. La Salle).
*Penn had 23 assists on its 32 baskets, a 71.9 percent ratio, and had a staggering 4.60 assist/turnover ratio (23/5); the 23 assists were a season high against a D1 opponent, while the five turnovers were one shy of the program low in the
Steve Donahue coaching era at Penn, set last Friday vs. Yale.
*Penn shot 100 percent at the foul line, but it was a small sample size—the Quakers matched their season low for FT made (4) and set the season low in attempts (also 4).
*Penn got 40 points from the bench on Friday night, a season high.
*Penn improved to 8-0 when shooting a better field-goal percentage than its opponent.
*Freshman
Sam Brown came off the bench for the first time since November 24 against Lafayette, but he didn't seem too bothered by it. Instead, he scored a career-high 26 points, going a scorching 6-of-7 on three-point shots (missing his last attempt to ruin a potentially perfect night).
*Brown's 26-point night marked the most points by a Penn freshman in a game since Ryan Betley dropped 28 at Brown almost exactly seven years ago (February 17, 2017).
*Brown's 6-of-7 performance from beyond the arc is tied for the best by a Penn player in Donahue era, matching Devon Goodman who was 6-of-7 against Yale on February 28, 2020.
*Brown's six treys match the season high by a Penn player, originally set by senior
Clark Slajchert who had six against Howard on December 11.
*Brown also tied his season/career high with five assists, set originally against Kentucky on December 9, and did not have a turnover; in fact, he has gone three games (79:12 of game action) without committing a turnover.
*Sophomore
Cam Thrower set a season/career high with 16 points and matched his season/career best with four treys.
*
Slajchert got Penn out quickly on Friday night and ended the game with 12 points, five rebounds, three assists and two steals.
*Freshman
Tyler Perkins was Penn's fourth player in double figures in the scoring column, with 10 points; he also had five boards.
*Junior
Nick Spinoso dished out a game-high seven assists and tied for team-high honors with five rebounds (sharing the honor with Slajchert and Perkins).
*Dartmouth (which scored just 22 first-half points, an opponent low this season) got 23 points from Dusan Neskovic and 10 from Jayden Williams, while Brandon Mitchell-Day finished with four points, a game-high eight rebounds, and four assists.
How It Happened
Penn was up 8-4 early, but Dartmouth hit for five in a row before Slajchert answered with a trey to make the score 11-9 Quakers at the under-12 media. That turned out to be the start of a 13-0 run, the last eight points coming from Perkins and Brown as they came in off the bench.
The Red and Blue led by as many as 13 (24-11), but Dartmouth scored five straight and Donahue took a timeout. The stoppage worked, Penn scoring nine in a row out of it (five coming from Thrower) to go up 33-16. Dartmouth got back within 33-20, but Brown sandwiched treys around a Big Green bucket and the score was 39-22 at half.
Dartmouth cut seven points off the lead by the under-16 break in the second half, but Thrower hit a trey out of the stoppage to end an 8-0 Big Green run and then Brown drained one from distance on the next possession to get the advantage back up 14 (49-35). A Dartmouth trey made it 49-38, but a 6-2 run had Penn up 55-40 at the under-12 media.
Dartmouth's Niko Abusara hit a pair of free throws out of that stoppage to make the score 55-42, but then Penn delivered the knockout blow. Brown scored five points over the Quakers' next two possessions, and then after Williams scored a second-chance layup for the Green Slajchert knocked down five points in mere seconds—the second bucket coming when
Reese McMullen stole the ball at one end and led the senior for an easy layup—and then Thrower again found the range from distance. Overall, it was a 13-2 run that pushed Penn's lead to 24 (68-44) with less than seven minutes to play.
Dartmouth scored five in a row to break the Red and Blue run, but Thrower sandwiched a pair of baskets around a Perkins conversion to keep Penn's lead at 23 (75-52) at the under-4 timeout. It was stil 22 with less than three minutes to play when Dartmouth went on a game-ending 14-5 run to make the score a bit more respectable.
Up Next
Penn continues this traditional Ivy League weekend with its final road game of the 2023-24 season tomorrow night, facing Harvard—66-53 losers to Princeton on Friday night—at Lavietes Pavilion in Cambridge, Mass. Tipoff is slated for 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.
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