PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team shook off a sluggish start Friday night at The Palestra, and with TJ Power having a career night the Quakers came back from a 12-point deficit to knock off Dartmouth, 80-71.
 
While the Quakers (7-5 in Ivy play) did their part, other results around the league did not. With Cornell beating Yale and Columbia knocking off Brown, Penn still must wait a day to clinch its spot in the Ivy League Tournament. They will do so with a win over Harvard, a Columbia loss to Yale, or a Cornell loss to Brown.
 
Penn won for the fifth time in six games and improved to 14-11 overall. Dartmouth fell to 11-14 overall, 5-7 in league play.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn improved to 11-2 at The Palestra overall and 5-1 in Ivy League play.
 
*Penn is 8-1 when reaching the 80-point mark against a Division I opponent this season, the eight wins coming in a row after the Quakers lost their first such game back on November 11 at Providence.
 
*The eight-point halftime deficit that Penn made up to win was its largest this season; overall, the Quakers are now 3-7 when trailing at the break.
 
*Penn outrebounded Dartmouth on Friday, 44-33; the 44 boards were two shy of the season high against a Division I opponent, topped only by the 46 the Quakers grabbed against Merrimack in the Cathedral Classic opener back in November.
 
*Of those 44 rebounds, 15 came on the offensive glass; that was one shy of the season high vs. a D1 foe, behind the 16 grabbed by the Red and Blue vs. Hofstra in its Cathedral Classic finale.
 
*Penn entered Friday's game having taken more foul shots in league play than anyone else, and the Quakers added 37 to that total against the Big Green—their second-highest total this season, behind only the 41 taken two games ago vs. Cornell.
 
*Power scored 38 points on Friday, the fifth-highest scoring game in program history and most this season by a Quaker. He also had a game-high 12 rebounds for his fifth double-double this season.
 
*Power was efficient offensively, going 14-22 from the field and knocking down six of his eight three-point shots. The six treys were tied for most by a Penn player this season (Michael Zanoni hit six at American on November 9).
 
*At one point on Friday, Power had 38 points and the rest of Penn's team had 32. Along those same lines, he scored 22 of the Quakers' first 36 points in the second half.
 
*Speaking of Zanoni, he was the Quakers' only other double-figure scorer on Friday, with 10 points.
 
*Freshman Jay Jones had another outstanding performance off the bench, playing nearly 25 minutes and finishing with three points, six rebounds, a game-high four assists—his season/career best—and two steals.
 
*Sophomore Lucas Lueth also came off the bench to grab six boards—four of them coming on the offensive glass—and added two steals.
 
*Freshman Dalton Scantlebury finished the night with six points and five rebounds.
 
*Senior Cam Thrower scored five points on Friday night, which doesn't seem particularly noteworthy until you realize they were his first points since January 19.
 
*Dartmouth was led by Brandon Mitchell-Day, who finished with 23 points and eight rebounds. Cameron McNamee came off the bench to drill 18 points, going 4-5 from distance.
 
How It Happened
The teams traded leads six times early, but Kareem Thomas gave Dartmouth a 10-9 lead ahead of the first media timeout and the Big Green started rolling. Before long it was a 12-point margin, at 26-14, the visitors hitting four triples in the 16-4 run. Power hit back-to-back triples that got Penn within six but Dartmouth kept answering, the Green's lead still 11 (40-29) with 3:13 left in the half. However, Niklas Polonowski and Power scored five of the game's next seven points and the eight-point margin (42-34) felt much more manageable as the teams went to their locker rooms.
 
A Jayden Williams triple opened the second-half scoring and put Dartmouth's lead back at double digits. AJ Levine scored three the old-fashioned way, though, then Power sandwiched a pair of three-pointers around a Mitchell-Day bucket. That had Penn within four, at 47-43.
 
Power kept leading the charge and Penn kept chipping away. His driving layup made it a one-point game with 12:25 left, and another layup a minute later tied the game at 53-53, the first tie since 10-10 early. The game would be leveled again at 55-55 and 56-56, and then the Quakers finally got over the hump after Niko Abusara gave Dartmouth a 59-56 lead with an old-fashioned three-point play. Zanoni answered by dialing long distance—his only triple of the night—and then Jones put the Red and Blue in front with a layup. That made it 61-59 with exactly eight minutes left, Penn's first lead since 9-8.
 
McNamee tied it back up with a pair of free throws, and after a Scantlebury layup Mitchell-Day hit one of two free throws. That left the score at 63-62, at which point Power went to work—he scored the game's next seven points covering a span of 2:29, his layup with 3:20 to play giving the Quakers their largest lead of the night at 70-62.
 
Dartmouth wasn't finished. Thomas scored on a driving layup, then Mitchell-Day hit a pair of foul shots with 2:31 left to make the score 70-66. However, the Big Green wouldn't score again until just 52 seconds were left and Penn took advantage with Scantlebury and Roberts hitting free throws. Penn got the ball in the right hands after that with Roberts, Thrower and Zanoni taking the final six foul shots and making all of them.
 
Up Next
Penn concludes this Ivy League weekend Saturday night with Harvard, the Quakers' final home game of the season. The game is scheduled for 6 p.m. and will air in the Philadelphia region on NBC Sports Philadelphia in addition to nationally on the ESPN+ streaming service. Prior to tipoff, the program will recognize and honor its four graduating seniors: Ethan Roberts, Thrower, Johnnie Walter, and Dylan Williams.
 
For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.