Penn absolutely dismantled Yale tonight, 86-58, to clinch the Ivy League title and book a third straight trip to the NCAA Tournament. It's the second time out of those three that the Quakers have earned the nation's first automatic bid, and it does guarantee that Philadelphia will have one team in the Big Dance.I'm not saying the game was over early, because it wasn't quite, but Penn had a 20-point lead with only 7:36 gone by on the clock. The Bulldogs (whose band deserves credit for making the trip from New Haven) didn't hit double figures until 10:12 remaining in the first half, by which time Penn had 31 points on the board.
Yale cut a 20-point halftime deficit to 14 after 1:20 of play in the second half, but Penn launched a 13-2 run over the next 4:40 to take a 25-point lead and leave no doubt whatsoever. The lead got as high as 31 and was at 27 when a media timeout came with 5:11 left in the game and the Penn band struck up Rock and Roll Part II, as most of the bands traditionally do when the game's out of reach. That doesn't normally come with so much time remaining, but tonight there wasn't much question.
Line of the day goes not to Ibrahim Jaaber, who had the honor of sitting atop the Palestra's east basket after the nets came down, but to fellow senior Mark Zoller for leaving no category unfilled in his box score line:
Name |
Min |
FG |
3pt |
FT |
OR |
TR |
A |
TO |
S |
Blk |
PF |
Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
M. Zoller |
36 |
9-15 |
1-3 |
3-3 |
3 |
17 |
6 |
2 |
4 |
4 |
2 |
22 |
Zoller's 14 defensive rebounds were just short of half the team's total of 32. Penn's defense was also quite impressive, holding Yale to 35.3 percent from the field and 3-of-12 from three-point range. The Quakers pulled down 13 offensive boards to Yale's 15 on defense, and out-rebounded the Bulldogs as a whole by a whopping 45-22.
And it's a good thing that Penn got this over with early, because Quakers fans might have to take a while to save up enough money to get out to Spokane.
I promise I will try hard to force myself to get the Drexel Crunchy Numbers up tomorrow morning. It really needs to be done before the Northeastern game tips, and I might as well hold myself to my word by putting it up on here.
The photo of Ibrahim Jaaber inheriting the seat once held by Jerome Allen and (Penn's) Michael Jordan, among many others, was taken by Ron Cortes of the Inquirer.
