PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team fell to defending champion Yale Saturday at The Palestra, 77-60.
 
The Bulldogs held a 10-point lead at halftime (40-30), the Quakers drew as close as four with a little less than 14 minutes to play, but Yale had an immediate five-point response and was never really threatened after that.
 
Penn fell to 2-3 in Ivy League play and is .500 overall at 9-9. Preseason favorite Yale is now alone in first place at 4-1 and improved to 15-3 overall.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn matched its season low with 60 points, set previously in a loss to Hofstra on November 30.
 
*Penn set a season high for blocked shots in a game with eight as Augustus Gerhart had three, Lucas Lueth had two, and TJ Power, Ethan Roberts and Dalton Scantlebury had one each.
 
*Sophomore AJ Levine had another strong overall game on Saturday, tying for game-high honors with 17 points, leading all players in assists (7) and steals (4), and grabbing four rebounds.
 
*Power scored 12 points, led the Quakers with seven boards, and added four assists.
 
*Roberts also had 12 points, grabbed six rebounds, and dished out two assists.
 
*Yale got a double-double from Isaac Celiscar (12 points/12 rebounds) while Nick Townsend flirted with one (17 points/9 rebounds). Trevor Mullin also had 17 points while Casey Simmons recorded 14.
 
How It Happened
The teams went back and forth early, the lead changing four times before the first media timeout as Power hit a pair of three-pointers. Yale's lead was 11-8 at the first break and 18-16 at the under-12 timeout, but the Quakers scored all the points in the mini-game to the under-8 timeout and took a 22-18 lead into that break.
 
Yale was nonplussed. The Bulldogs scored immediately out of the stoppage, then converted again after a Penn miss to tie things up at 22-22. Roberts stopped the modest run with a free throw, but Townsend scored on a hook shot, drew an offensive foul at the other end, then drained a triple. That capped what was a 9-1 run that left the Bulldogs up by five, 27-22.
 
Niklas Polonowski dialed long distance from the right wing with 4:30 left to get Penn within a point, at 29-28, but Jordan Brathwaite scored and then Riley Fox drilled a trey. That was the start of an 11-2 Yale run that left the visitors with a 10-point lead at the break, 40-30.
 
It was still a 10-point game four minutes into the second half when Penn made what would be its only real move of the period. Power hit a jumper in the paint, then Roberts drilled a three-pointer to answer a Devon Arlington bucket for the Bulldogs. A Yale miss led to a Penn breakout and Roberts was fouled going up with 13:53 left. He made the first, getting the margin to four, but missed the second.
 
Yale immediately came down and Fox fed Samson Aletan for an alley oop. That was the start of a five-point run that got the margin back to nine less than a minute later. Levine converted an and-1 to make it a six-point game with 11:51 left, 53-47, but Celiscar scored in the paint and Simmons followed with a layup a little less than a minute later. That got the margin back to ten as the second half hit its midpoint.
 
It would be nearly four minutes before either team hit another field goal, Penn unable to take advantage of a rare Yale scoring drought. The Quakers were only able to get as close as nine on two occasions the rest of the way, at 57-48 with 7:09 to play and then 59-50 with 5:40 left, but at that point the Bulldogs scored on back-to-back possessions and the margin never got into single digits again.
 
Up Next
Penn is back on the road next weekend, making the New York swing for Ivy League play. The Quakers are in the Big Apple to face Columbia on Friday night at 7 p.m., then are on the road to Ithaca to meet Cornell Saturday night at 6 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.