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Penn Did Not Defeat Illinois in the NCAA Tournament, but the Quakers Had a Great Season
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#3 Penn lost to #14 Illinois in March Madness, final score 105-70. They stuck with the Illini for 17-18 minutes but just didn’t have the horses and got crushed on the glass, giving up 20 offensive rebounds and losing the free throw battle by 21 attempts to two.
The students had a good time regardless:
“Obviously we tried to give it our best effort to limit them to one (shot),” said Penn’s Cam Thrower. “Those are some pretty big dudes out there, but ultimately I think the biggest thing is that we fought until the end and we tried our best, but their size was pretty tough to contend with. It was a good experience overall. They’re a great team (in addition to) their size and lineups, so I thought we tried to fight our best but it just wasn’t good enough.”
Fran McCaffery noted that TJ Power “wasn’t himself” after being sick throughout the week. Power finished with six points on 2-8 shooting and just didn’t have it after pouring in 44 points to win the Ivy League tournament final against Yale.
The head coach echoed the Thrower’s sentiments:
“Coached against them quite a bit (in the Big 10), but even if you didn’t know (about the size), you watched them on film and you could see it. When you physically see them and see how big they are…
I thought we did a good job defensively in the first half. They only shot 39%. But when you get 14 (shots) back and get 16 second-chance points, that’s the difference in the game. We’re down 10, they had 16 second-chance points and we had none. It was more of the same in the second half with their size.”
Penn went into this one as a 25-point dog and they weren’t going to win with a sick Power while also missing leading scorer Ethan Roberts. But they had themselves a great season, finishing 18-12, winning the conference tournament with back-to-back overtime victories, and earning a berth in the Big 5 Classic final. They won 9 of their last 10 just to earn a March Madness invite and finished above .500 for only the 5th time since 2012.
McCaffery was a slam dunk hire. He’ll have the Quakers playing solid basketball while being relevant in the Ivy League, and hopefully in the greater Philly sports landscape.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com