PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team will close out the 2023-24 season on Saturday by hosting Princeton at The Palestra. Prior to the game, the program will honor graduating seniors Colin Chambers, Andrew Laczkowski and Clark Slajchert; festivities are expected to start around 5:35 p.m.
 
GAME 29 – PENN (11-17, 3-10 Ivy League vs. PRINCETON (23-3, 11-2)
Saturday, March 9, 2024 | 6 p.m.
Philadelphia | The Palestra
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 for Saturday's game, with Brad Fadem providing analysis. To access the Quaker Audio Network, simply type www.pennathletics.com/audio into your computer or device.
 
The Penn-Princeton Rivalry
Saturday's meeting marks the 250th in men's basketball between these long-standing rivals, the Quakers holding a slim 126-123 lead. Some notes about the most historic rivalry in Ivy League basketball...
 
*You might be wondering if it's the most-played rivalry in college basketball. It is not even in the top 10! (Tenth would be Kansas and Missouri, who had met 269 times prior to this season.) The most-played rivalry in Division I college basketball? Oregon and Oregon State, who entered this season having played each other a staggering 362 times.
 
*That said, the Penn-Princeton rivalry is in its 121st season, having been played continuously since the first meeting on February 14, 1903 (a 24-14 Quakers win here in Philadelphia). According to the NCAA record book, only two rivalries have gone longer: Princeton-Yale and Columbia-Yale, both of which started a year earlier, in 1902.
 
*While the proverbial rising tide has lifted all boats in the Ancient Eight in recent years, good to remind folks that it'll be awhile before anyone challenges the decades-long dominance of these two programs. Princeton has 29 Ivy League regular-season championships (20 outright) while Penn has 26 and a league-high 21 outright. Yale is third, with nine titles—four outright—followed by Harvard (7/3), Cornell (4/4), Dartmouth (2/1), Brown (1/1) and Columbia (1/0).
 
*These teams have needed overtime to decide things 19 times in the first 249 contests, with 16 of those games coming since the 1978-79 season (when both meetings went OT).
 
*The first overtime game remains historic in Penn annals—the Quakers and Tigers needed FOUR overtimes to settle matters, Penn eventually winning the game in a packed Weightman Gym, 26-23. That gave the Red and Blue the Eastern Intercollegiate League title, and they would go on to beat the Western champion University of Chicago in a best-of-three series to determine the national collegiate champion. Fun Fact: after the teams held serve on their home courts, Game 3 was played on a neutral court...at Princeton! Penn won that game, 23-21.
 
*Far more recently, these teams met three times in one-game playoffs in the pre-Ivy Tournament era, in 1980 (a 50-49 Penn win at Lafayette), 1981 (a 54-40 Princeton win at Lafayette) and 1996 (a 63-56 Princeton win in overtime at Lehigh). They also played the first game in the inaugural Ivy League Tournament at The Palestra (Princeton winning in overtime, 72-64) and in last year's Ivy Madness at Jadwin (a 77-70 Tigers victory).
 
*The series has had 21 one-point games (Penn winning 13 of them), 22 two-point games (Princeton up 12-10), and 15 three-point contests (Penn leading 8-7).
 
*The 249th meeting, of course, took place February 10 at Old Nassau, Princeton emerging with a 77-70 victory at Jadwin Gym. Four Penn players hit double figures that day, led by Nick Spinoso who piled up a double-double with 19 points and a career-high 14 rebounds. Tyler Perkins added 14 points while Clark Slajchert and Sam Brown had 10 each. Princeton got double-doubles from Xaivian Lee (22 pts/10 rbs) and Caden Pierce (17/11).
 
Clark? Or Superman?
*If you were at The Palestra last Saturday, you know that senior Clark Slajchert became the latest member to join the program's prestigious 1,000-point club. He did so with a little more than four minutes left in the first half of Saturday's win over Columbia, hitting a patented running floater in the lane.
 
*Slajchert became the 43rd player in program history to reach the milestone and the third in the Donahue era at Penn (Darien Nelson, AJ Brodeur, Jordan Dingle).
 
*Slajchert reached the milestone in his 73rd game wearing the Red and Blue, tied for 18th fastest with a pair of former Ivy League Players of the Year, Michael Jordan and Ugonna Onyekwe.
 
*On Monday, Slajchert was named the Philadelphia Big 5 Player of the Week for the second time this season.
 
The Future's So Bright…
*Freshman Tyler Perkins has 381 points this season and needs just five points to better Brodeur's freshman scoring record of 385 points set in 2016-17.
 
*In Perkins and classmate Sam Brown (260 points this season), Penn has two 250-point scorers in the freshman class for the first time in program history
 
Penn MBB by the Numbers
1 - Games this season in which senior Clark Slajchert has not reached double figures in scoring (not including the Houston game, when he was injured six minutes in); that was Monmouth on November 26, when he was "held" just shy of double digits with nine.
 
3 - Penn players with a double-double: junior Nick Spinoso—who has five after going for 18 points and 11 rebounds at Dartmouth on February 23—freshman Tyler Perkins, and junior Ed Holland III.
 
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).
 
5 - 20-point games put up by Perkins so far this season; the last freshman with that many such games was Dingle, who also 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 - Seniors the Penn program will honor prior to tonight's game: players Colin Chambers, Andrew Laczkowski and Clark Slajchert, and managers Emily Davidovic-Katz, Amarachi Emezie and Andrew Lopez.
 
11 - Penn players with a double-figure scoring game this season; among D1 programs only Texas State (12) has more. That includes four players with at least one 20-point game (Slajchert 7, Perkins 5, Brown 3, Spinoso 1).
 
13 - Games this season in which Brown has hit at least three three-pointers; he is third among Ivy players in overall 3FG per game (2.5), behind only Brown's Kino Lilly Jr. (3.0) and teammate Slajchert (2.6).
 
14 - Games this season in which Penn has started four left-handers (Spinoso, Brown, Perkins, junior George Smith).
 
20 - Double-figure scoring games by Perkins, the team lead and most by a freshman since Brodeur had 22 such games in 2016-17.
 
21.8 - Slajchert's scoring average the last five games, including a 32-point night at Brown, 21 points at Harvard, and 22 in each game last weekend (against Cornell and Columbia).
 
26 - Points scored by Brown two weeks ago at Dartmouth, a career high and most by a Penn freshman in a game since Ryan Betley dropped 28 at Brown on February 17, 2017.
 
48 - Of senior Andrew Laczkowski's 83 rebounds this season, 48 of them (57.8 pct.) have come on the offensive glass.
 
50 - Three-point baskets made by Penn over the last four games; they have shot 43.1 percent from beyond the arc (50-116) in that stretch. The Quakers have hit a double-figure total of treys in a game 14 times this season.
 
56 - Points scored by sophomore Cam Thrower over Penn's last five games (11.2 ppg); that's more than he had for the entire season against D1 opponents (46) prior to Brown on February 17.
 
105 - Assists by Spinoso so far this season, most by a Penn player in a season since AJ Brodeur had 140 in 2019-20.
 
644 - Points scored by Perkins (381) and Brown (263) this season, the most by a freshman duo in program history; the previous mark of 609 was held by Tyler Bernardini (362) and Jack Eggleston (247) in 2007-08, and the program has never had two freshmen score 250 points in the same season.