PHILADELPHIA – For the second time in as many nights, the University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team struggled through the first half and let its opponent get up by double digits. And for the second time in as many nights, the Quakers stormed back in the second half for a hair-raising victory. This time the victim was Harvard, Penn coming back from a 10-point halftime deficit to defeat the Crimson 64-61.
With the win, Penn clinched its spot in the 2026 Ivy League Tournament which will take place March 14-15 in Ithaca, N.Y. The Quakers are guaranteed to be the third seed and will meet these same Crimson in a semifinal on Saturday, March 14 at 2 p.m. The other semi will feature top-seeded Yale and fourth-seeded Cornell at 11 a.m., with the winners meeting in the Ivy Madness final on Sunday, March 15 at noon. The winner of that game will clinch the Ivy League's automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.
Penn (15-11, 8-5) has won six of its last seven, while Harvard (16-11, 9-4) saw its seven-game road winning streak snapped with the loss.
Quaker Notemeal
*The 10-point halftime deficit that Penn made up to win the game was its largest this season. The previous best? Eight points, set last night vs. Dartmouth.
*Penn finished the season with a 12-2 record in The Palestra, its best mark since the 2006-07 Ivy champions also went 12-2.
*Penn finished Ivy play with a 6-1 home record, best since 2022-23; this is the 18th time the Quakers have gone 6-1 in Ancient Eight play since the start of Ivy play in the 1950s.
*Interesting stat: Penn is now 7-1 when only two players score in double figures, as happened tonight (
Ethan Roberts, 21;
AJ Levine, 13).
*Penn improved to 10-1 this season when shooting a better field-goal percentage than its opponent.
*Penn is just 2-6 when scoring fewer than 70 points this season—but those two wins have come the last two teams the Quakers finished in the 60s (also a 61-60 win over Princeton on February 7).
*Penn's 21-point first half was the Quakers' lowest-scoring half of the season, and the 10 foul shots they took were a season low.
*Roberts—who was honored prior to the game along with fellow seniors
Dylan Williams,
Johnnie Walter and
Cam Thrower—led all scorers with 21 points, 17 of them coming after halftime.
*By the same token, ten of Levine's 13 points came in the second half. The sophomore also had seven rebounds on Saturday.
*Junior
TJ Power—who torched the nights with 38 points on Friday vs. Dartmouth—was decidedly cooler on Saturday but scored all of his nine points in the second half and very nearly had his second double-double in as many nights with the nine points and a game-high nine boards.
*Sophomore
Lucas Lueth was a huge presence off the bench, with six points and two boards in 24 minutes.
*Junior
Niklas Polonowski also made his presence felt, getting almost eight minutes and scoring five points.
*Robert Hinton and Thomas Batties II led the Crimson on Saturday night, scoring 20 and 19 points respectively with Batties also grabbing eight rebounds to lead the team. Chandler Pigge finished with nine points, seven boards and four assists while Tey Barbour also had nine points.
How It Happened
Penn matched Harvard's first two buckets, but Pigge scored a driving layup and the Crimson were off and running. Harvard scored 11 of the game's next 12 points to go in front by ten points. To say that the Quakers were staggering would be an understatement; they went nearly nine minutes without making a field goal, Roberts finally scoring on a layup with 9:09 left in the first half. Prior to that bucket, the Red and Blue were 2-16 from the field and had turned it over six times.
Penn battled and got as close as four, but Roberts was whistled for a technical foul and Harvard turned it into four points when Barbour hit one of the free throws and then Batties drained a triple. Levine got two of those points back, but Barbour was fouled as he hit a three-pointer and the four-point play gave Harvard at 31-21 advantage at the half. Honestly, at that point the only thing Penn fans had to be thinking was "how is this only a ten-point deficit?"
The second half started with promise, Penn turning Harvard over on the first possession and Roberts scoring on a driving layup. The Crimson responded with a Pigge hook shot, but Roberts dialed long distance and Levine turned another Harvard turnover into a layup. Batties hit another triple, but Power did him one better with a pair of them, the second getting Penn within 36-34 less than three minutes in. When Levine scored in the paint on the next possession, the teams were tied for the first time since 4-4.
Batties and Hinton gave Harvard the next five points, but the Crimson went silent for nearly five minutes after that and Penn took advantage. Roberts drove the train, scoring on a pullup and then feeding Lueth for a layup that got the Quakers within one. Levine finally got the hosts over the hump, hitting a pair of free throws to give Penn its first lead at 42-41 with 11:35 to play. Roberts scored again on the next possession, before Pigge finally ended Harvard's drought with an old-fashioned three-point play.
The score was 46-46 when Power hit his third triple of the half with 8:33 left. Penn would never trail again. Senior
Cam Thrower got the lead to six with 6:42 left on a three-pointer, and it went back to six on a Lueth layup with 5:37 to play.
Harvard never went away, getting within one on pair of occasions, first when Ben Eisendrath scored on a driving layup with 1:33 to play and Hinton doing the same with 34 seconds left after Roberts had scored on a second-chance layup after Levine had rebounded his own missed shot. Out of a timeout, the Crimson pressed but Penn broke it and Thrower fed Roberts for a layup.
Hinton missed a triple to tie it, and both Levine and Roberts came down with the ball and the whistle blew to signal a foul. Roberts stepped to the line but after a review the officials put Levine on the line. He missed the front end of the 1-and-1, giving Harvard one final chance to tie. Barbour got a nice look when his defender tripped in front of him, but his shot never had a chance and Roberts snared the board as the final horn sounded.
Up Next
Penn concludes the regular season next Friday night at Brown, tipping off with the Bears at 7 p.m. in Providence.
For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.
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