ITHACA, N.Y. – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team will play for the Ivy League Tournament title on Sunday, after
AJ Levine provided the heroics in Saturday's semifinal against Harvard.
With just seconds left on the clock in overtime, Levine got an opening along the right baseline and took it, hitting a layup with 6.1 seconds left. He then contested Tey Barbour's potential game-winning three-point shot just enough to force a miss, giving the Quakers a 62-60 win.
Third-seeded Penn (17-11) will now play top-seeded Yale in Sunday's championship game, which will tip off at noon and air live on ESPN2. Harvard's season ends at 17-12.
Quaker Notemeal
*This was Penn's first overtime game of the season and the first for the program since December 23, 2024 (a 77-73 win over Rider).
*Penn is now 1-1 in OT games in Ivy League Tournament history; the Quakers famously lost the very first Ivy Madness game in history in OT, when they were a 4 seed and fell to top-seeded (and undefeated) Princeton at The Palestra.
*Penn "improved" to 3-6 this season when finishing a game in the 60s—but interestingly, those three wins have come the last three times the Quakers have ended up in the 60s (February 7 vs. Princeton, 61-60; February 28 vs. Harvard, 64-61; and Saturday).
*Penn entered the game leading the league in turnover margin and that was a factor again on Saturday, the Quakers going +9 with just eight turnovers while Harvard had 17.
*Penn took just eight foul shots, a season low, but Harvard only took two free throws which was an opponent low for the season.
*Levine's winning shot capped a game that saw him finish with nine points, three rebounds, two assists and two steals.
*Junior
TJ Power lifted Penn in the first half, with 13 points, and grabbed eight second-half rebounds on the way to a 16-point, 12-rebound performance as he led all players in both categories.
*It was Power's sixth double-double this season; Penn is 5-1 in those games.
*Power also tied a season/career high with four steals, something he did for the first time just last weekend at Brown.
*After scoring just two points in 49 combined minutes against Harvard in the regular season,
Michael Zanoni scored 11 points on Saturday. He added four rebounds.
*Senior
Cam Thrower—who stepped into the starting lineup in place of
Ethan Roberts, who was injured earlier this week in practice—also scored 11 points, his sixth double-figure scoring game this season but his first since December 28.
*Freshman
Jay Jones once again provided solid minutes off the bench, scoring six points and grabbing five boards in 23 minutes of action.
*Another freshman,
Dalton Scantlebury, recorded four points and two rebounds.
*Barbour led Harvard with 16 points, while Ben Eisendrath had 15 and added five rebounds and six assists. Thomas Batties II led the Crimson with 11 rebounds, but the Quakers did a good job of holding first-team All-Ivy selection Robert Hinton to six points.
How It Happened
Penn broke an early 10-10 tie with an 8-2 run, all of the Quakers' points coming from Power. Both teams went ice cold at that point, nearly four full minutes going without any scoring before Austin Hunt scored and Thrower answered with a triple. Penn's lead grew as large as nine, at 27-18, but Harvard scored eight of the last 11 points in the period and a Chandler Pigge bucket at the buzzer left the score at 30-26.
Zanoni opened the second-half scoring with a mid-range jumper along the right baseline, but then Harvard came to life with seven points in a span of 1:20, a Barbour triple putting the Crimson in front 33-32 (their first lead since 3-2). Pigge followed with another trey, building the lead to four, but those were the only Harvard points during a stretch that saw Penn go nearly four minutes without scoring before a Levine layup ended the skid.
Harvard's lead was 44-39 as the second half went past its midpoint, but the Quakers quickly tied things as Jones found Scantlebury for a freshman-connection layup and then Thrower dialed long distance. That brought about a Harvard timeout.
Barbour and Power traded buckets as the game went under seven minutes, but then Eisendrath scored the game's next five points to push the Crimson back up 51-46 at the under-4 media timeout. After a review, Harvard was only given one second on the shot clock out of the stoppage, and the Crimson couldn't convert. Instead, Penn came down and Zanoni drilled one from distance to end a 3:22 scoreless drought for Penn, getting the Quakers within two. Barbour missed at the other end, and then Jones hit a floater that tied this at 51-51 with 2:30 to play.
Both teams had empty possessions after that, before Eisendrath drained a fallaway shot over Jones along the left baseline with the shot clock dying and just 1:12 left on the game clock. Penn answered quickly, Zanoni scoring from the right elbow on a curl play to tie things at 53. Eisendrath and Jones had chances to be the hero but both missed the mark, and this game was heading to overtime.
Jones scored off an and-1 immediately in the overtime period, giving Penn its first lead since 32-30 early in the second half, and then
Augustus Gerhart finished inside off a
Lucas Lueth feed to make it 58-53 just a minute into the session
Barbour got three of those points back on a triple, and then after a Gerhart free throw Hunt was fouled and hit both of his shots. That made Penn's lead 59-58 with 1:34 to play.
A critical sequence occurred after that. Zanoni missed a jumper, but Power got the offensive rebound—his only one of the day—and Penn got a second chance. This time Zanoni was forced into a turnaround fallaway that also missed, but Lueth hustled to get the long rebound in front of the Penn bench, staying inbounds and getting a timeout before Harvard could force a jump ball. Head coach
Fran McCaffery drew a play up for Power, who was fouled getting to the hoop; he missed the first but made the second, making the margin two with 47 seconds left.
Barbour tied it up with a driving layup, but that only set the stage for Levine's heroics.
Up Next
Penn will play Yale in the Ivy League Tournament championship game on Sunday at noon; the Bulldogs defeated fourth-seeded Cornell in Saturday's first semifinal, 88-76. Sunday's game will air live on ESPN2, with the winner earning the Ivy League's automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.
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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