PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team fell to Villanova in the Big 5 Classic championship game on Saturday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena. The Wildcats used a strong end to the first half, kept the momentum in the early part of the second half, and cruised to a 90-63 victory.
 
Penn fell to 5-4 and finished the Big 5 campaign with a 2-1 record. Villanova wins its first city series title in this three-year-old pod format and improves to 7-1 with the victory.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn knocked down 11 three-pointers on Saturday night, one shy of the team high for this season (which, coincidentally, came against another Big East program, Providence).
 
*Penn was outrebounded on the night, 38-33, but finished with 13 second-chance points to Villanova's nine.
 
*Senior Cam Thrower was one of three Penn players to score 11 points on the night, his first-double-digit scoring game since he had 16 at American on November 9. Of note, Thrower was a perfect 3-of-3 from beyond the arc.
 
*Junior TJ Power also had 11 points and recorded four rebounds, three assists and two steals.
 
*Michael Zanoni was the third player with 11 points, going 5-of-9 from the field.
 
*Sophomore AJ Levine finished the night with nine points and also had four assists.
 
*Sophomore Michelangelo Oberti led Penn with five rebounds while senior Dylan Williams led the Red and Blue with five assists (without committing a turnover).
 
*Freshman Jay Jones also scored nine points on Saturday night, all of them in the second half.
 
*After scoring 61 points combined against Saint Joseph's and Drexel in pod play, senior Ethan Roberts went scoreless on Saturday and left the game due to injury in the second half.
 
*Villanova got 18 points from Bryce Lindsay, 17 points from Devin Askew, and 12 from Matt Hodge while Duke Brennan finished the night with a double-double (15 points/10 rebounds) as well as two assists, three steals and two blocked shots. Acaden Lewis dished out a game-high seven assists.
 
How It Happened
Penn never held a lead in Saturday's game at Xfinity Mobile, but Zanoni tied it at 8-8 with a second-chance jumper and Lucas Lueth made the score 27-27 when he hit a trey with 5:49 left in the first half. At that point, it looked like the teams were going to battle it out for the hardware.
 
Villanova had other ideas. The Wildcats scored the next five points, then answered a Zanoni bucket with another 12 in a row. A particularly brutal stretch saw Villanova score five points in the final 36 seconds of the half, allowing them to take a 44-29 lead into the locker room off that 17-2 run over the final five minutes of the period.
 
Penn opened the second half with the ball and Levine scored almost immediately. However, Villanova quickly dispelled any thoughts of the Quakers getting back into this thing with 9-2 run that took 1:20 of game time and moved the margin to 20 (53-33). It was a 25-point game five minutes into the half, Lewis finishing an and-1 on either side of the under-16 timeout, before a Jones triple and a Thrower hoop got the margin back to 20.
 
That was the closest Penn got the rest of the night, as Villanova's lead crested at 30 points on two occasions down the stretch.
 
Up Next
Penn is back at home on Monday, hosting Lafayette in the Quakers' final game before fall exams. Tipoff is slated for 6 p.m. at The Palestra.
 
For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.