PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team had another up-and-down game with Cornell on Saturday at The Palestra, the two teams playing high tempo throughout. And just like two weeks ago in Ithaca, the Quakers were able to outscore the Big Red. This time the score ended up 82-76 in Penn's favor.
 
Penn's win broke a tie with the Big Red and moved the Quakers into third place alone in the Ivy League standings, at 6-4. Beyond that, wins by Columbia at Princeton and Brown at Dartmouth put the Lions, Tigers and Big Green at 4-6—two games behind the Quakers in the standings with four to play.
 
Penn (13-10 overall) has won four in a row in Ivy League play, its best streak since winning seven in a row during the 2022-23 conference campaign.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn improved to 10-2 at The Palestra this season, reaching double digits in wins for the first time since the 2022-23 team went 11-4 at the Cathedral of College Basketball.
 
*Penn is 8-1 this season when scoring at least 80 points.
 
*Penn took 41 free throws and made 27, both season highs. The last time the Quakers met both of those numbers was February 2, 2018 when they took 44 foul shots and made 30 against Brown.
 
*Penn scored 46 points in the second half of Saturday's game, a season high.
 
*Penn had just nine turnovers while Cornell had 16; for the weekend, the Quakers had 19 combined turnovers while their opponents had 36, and the Red and Blue scored 45 points off turnovers while their opponents had 15.
 
*Penn had 21 fast-break points to Cornell's six, a stunning stat given the pace at which the Big Red play.
 
*For the second straight night, Penn won despite getting outrebounded (41-40); the Quakers entered the weekend 1-7 in such games.
 
*Two weeks after putting six players in double figures in Ithaca, Penn had five score in double digits Saturday at The Palestra.

*The biggest push came from freshman Jay Jones, who nearly doubled his previous high with 17 points Saturday (11 of them coming in the second half). He was 4-7 from the field, 9-11 at the foul line, and added five rebounds and three assists without a turnover.
 
*Junior TJ Power also scored 17 points and led the Quakers with eight rebounds.
 
*Sophomore AJ Levine finished the night with 16 points, grabbed three boards, dished out four assists, and came up with five steals to give him 11 for the weekend.
 
*Senior Ethan Roberts scored 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds, four of them coming on the offensive glass.
 
*Sophomore Lucas Lueth had his first double-figure scoring game as a Quaker, with 11 points, and also recorded six rebounds as well as both of Penn's blocked shots.
 
*Cornell put six players in double figures on Saturday night, led by Jake Fiegen who had 17 and tied for game-high honors with eight rebounds. Cooper Noard, the Ivy's leading scorer, had 13 points while four other players finished with 10 each.
 
How It Happened
The first half was a back-and-forth affair, the teams changing leads six times and tying five others, and both teams leading for at least seven of the 20 minutes. A Power jumper right at the halftime buzzer was good and gave Penn a 36-31 lead at the break—the largest lead by either team to that point.
 
The Quakers never trailed in the second half but could not shake the Big Red, either. It wasn't until the midpoint of the period that Penn opened things up a bit, as Lueth scored six in a row—two of them at the line and the other four in transition. When he threw down a pass from Levine, the Red and Blue had its biggest lead of the night at 59-50.
 
Penn did well not to allow Cornell to get back into it after that point. There was a brief scare as the clock went under five minutes, after Roberts got the margin to double digits for the first time of the night at 64-54. The Big Red's Kaspar Sepp scored inside, and then a bad pass led to a Fiegen three-pointer and suddenly the 10-point lead had been cut in half.
 
The Quakers settled things. Cornell went more than a minute without any points, and Levine scored five all by himself in that span, three of them at the line and two more on a driving layup. The Big Red was able to get as close as four playing the foul game in the final few minutes, but that came on a layup with just four seconds left as the Quakers held on for the victory.
 
Up Next
Penn hits the road next Saturday, facing Yale at 2 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.