PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team renews one of the best rivalries in college basketball on Saturday night, making the short trip North to face Princeton at Jadwin Gym. Saturday's game tips off at 6 p.m. and has already been announced as a sellout.
 
GAME 22 – PENN (9-12, 1-5 Ivy League) at PRINCETON (16-3, 4-2)
Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024 | 6 p.m.
Princeton, N.J. | Jadwin Gym
Watch Live on ESPN+ ($) | Listen on QAN | Live Stats
Penn Game Notes (PDF) | Princeton Game Notes (PDF)
 
Ivy League on ESPN+
A reminder that the Ivy League is paired with ESPN and you will be able to find all Penn home games, as well as road Ivy games and select non-conference road games, on ESPN+ again this season with the same high broadcast quality you've come to expect. ESPN+ is a subscription-based service that offers monthly and yearly packages. Click here to subscribe to ESPN+!
 
Quaker Audio Network (QAN)
Penn fans can listen to most of the 2023-24 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 Saturday, with Brad Fadem providing analysis. To access the Quaker Audio Network, simply type www.pennathletics.com/audio into your computer or device.
 
The Series with Princeton
*The Quakers and the Tigers are meeting for the 249th time in their storied men's basketball rivalry, with Penn holding on to a 126-122 advantage in the series.
 
*Princeton has held the upper hand in recent years, with nine wins in a row—including three victories last season—and a 25-5 mark over Penn dating back to the 2008-09 season.
 
*Penn is 1-13 at Jadwin since a 62-55 OT win there on February 17, 2009, the lone win coming in 2018.
 
*In last year's games at Jadwin—played exactly a week apart—Penn held a 17-point halftime lead in the first one but gave all of it away and fell in overtime, 77-69. that gave Princeton a share of the Ivy League title with Yale. A week later, in an Ivy Tournament semifinal, Penn led at the half and was within a possession of the Tigers in the final minute before falling, 77-70.
 
Preseason Picks
In the Ivy League's preseason media poll, released on October 17, Penn was picked to finish fifth in the league while Princeton was picked second (earning two of the 16 first-place votes). The poll featured two media members from each of the eight schools, so 16 votes in total.
 
Ivy Schedule Changes
The Ivy League has undergone some schedule changes from the last two years...
 
*Penn's MLK Day game at Cornell on January 15 came after two years of facing travel partner Princeton on that holiday.
 
*The schedule is backloaded to include four traditional "Ivy weekends" over a five-week span in February and March, starting this weekend. As a result, Penn played just four league games in the month of January this season.
 
*Balance continues to be an issue: Penn opened Ivy play at home (beating Dartmouth 80-51) and will close with three straight Ivy League home games in March. Currently, the Quakers are in the midst of playing four in a row and six of eight conference games on the road, with the two home games coming back-to-back next Friday (Yale) and Saturday (Brown). Taking it a step further, Penn will not play an Ivy League home game between January 20 and February 16, a span of 27 days.
 
Penn MBB by the Numbers
3 - Penn players with a double-double this season: junior Nick Spinoso, who has three; freshman Tyler Perkins; and junior Ed Holland III, who recorded career highs in points (18) and rebounds (11) last Friday at Brown.
 
4 - Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors won by Penn players this season: freshman Sam Brown on December 18 and December 26, then Perkins on January 8 and January 29.
 
4 - Non-conference opponents who were ranked in the AP Top 25 poll at the time Penn played them: Villanova (#21 on November 13), Kentucky (#16 on December 9), Houston (#3 on December 30) and Auburn (#25 on January 2). The last time Penn played four non-conference games against ranked opponents was 1994-95.
 
4 - Overtime games played by Penn this season, the Quakers going 1-3 in those contests. Only three teams in program history have played more—1983-84 (6), 2010-11 (5), 2018-19 (5)—and so far this season only four D1 teams have played more (Kansas State 6, Nicholls 5, NDSU 5, Seattle 5).
 
5 - 20-point games put up by Perkins so far this season; the last freshman with that many such games was last year's Ivy League Player of the Year, Jordan Dingle, who had five in 2019-20 when he was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year. The last freshman with six such games? Tyler Bernardini in 2007-08.
 
6 - Minutes played by Clark Slajchert before he injured his ankle in Penn's loss at No. 3 Houston on December 30; the Ivy League's fourth-leading scorer has not played since then.
 
11 - Penn players with at least one double-figure scoring game this season; among Division I programs, only Texas State (12) has more. Penn's list includes four players with at least one 20-point game (Slajchert 5, Perkins 5, Brown 2, Spinoso 1).
 
11 - Games this season in which Brown has hit at least three three-pointers (actually six games with four 3FG, five with three 3FG); he is second among Ivy players in overall 3FG per game (2.6), behind only Brown's Kino Lilly Jr. (3.1).
 
12 - Games this season in which Penn has started four left-handers (Spinoso, Brown, Perkins, junior George Smith), most recently last Saturday at Yale.
 
16 - Points scored by Smith last weekend at Brown (8) and Yale (8); prior to that, he had just 11 in Penn's first four Ivy games and had not scored eight in a game since going for 10 against Monmouth on November 26.
 
16 - Three-point shots hit by freshman Niklas Polonowski over the last eight games for 48 of his 50 points in that stretch (6.3 ppg)—two each against Houston, Cornell, Harvard, Columbia and Yale; three against Auburn and Dartmouth. 22 of his 25 field goals this season, including 19 of the last 20, have come from beyond the arc.
 
27 - Days between Ivy League home games, as Penn today concludes a stretch of four conference road games played across three weekends.
 
32 - Points scored by McMullen in Penn's six Ivy games, led by a career-high 15 at Cornell on January 15; that's more than he totaled across the Quakers' 15 non-conference games (23).
 
40 - Of senior Andrew Laczkowski's 67 rebounds this season, 40 of them (59.7 pct.) have come on the offensive glass.
 
46 - Points scored by Holland across Penn's last four games, including 15 at Columbia on January 27 and 18 last Friday at Brown; that nearly matches his point total in the Quakers' first 15 games against D1 opponents this season (45).
 
48.0 - Percentage of Penn's points (245 of 511) scored by freshmen in the eight games since Slajchert got hurt (yes, we're counting Houston)—Perkins with 112, Brown with 83, and Polonowski 50.