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Penn Did Not Cover the +30.5 Against Illinois
Published:
Final score from Champaign:
Brutal game to start the season for the Quakers, but credit where it’s due because they battled the #3 team in the country for the first 10 minutes. Fran had his guys ready to play. This was a one-point game about halfway through the first period, after an Ethan Lin three pointer, then Illinois put their foot on the gas and went on a big run and never looked back.
Penn shot 25-86 from the floor (29%) and 10-35 from three (29%). T.J. Power was 3-15 from the field and couldn’t get anything to go. These top 10 teams from the power conferences are so nasty defensively. They get hands in passing lanes, contest everything, and swarm and slide and rotate all over the court. They don’t give up anything easy. It was the same story with La Salle and Houston earlier in the week, when you saw the Cougars’ defensive intensity just swallow up the Explorers entirely. Drexel faced the same thing with Virginia. Suffocating defense from these stacked and ranked teams.
The good thing for Penn is that they have a solid group of returning players from last year’s tournament team. Ethan Roberts went to Notre Dame*, but Power, Augustus Gerhart, AJ Levine, Michael Zanoni – all back. They played their best basketball late last season and they have plenty of non-conference games to gear up for Ivy play, which doesn’t start until January 4th. They’ve got Saint Joe’s, La Salle, and Drexel on the schedule, plus the Big 5 Classic. There’s also a trip to Michigan State to wrap up the OOC slate, so they’ll get another crack at a top 10 team at that point.
Current Big 5 outlook:
- Villanova (0-1) – vs. Holy Cross Friday night
- SJU (1-0) – vs. Lafayette on Saturday
- Temple (1-0) – vs. Richmond at the Palestra on Sunday, great barometer game
- La Salle (0-1) – vs. Long Island on Saturday
- Drexel (0-1) – vs. Colgate on Saturday
- Penn (0-1) – vs. Howard on Monday
*worth noting that Roberts transferred because he had to, he’s a 5th year guy and the Ivy League rules don’t afford those players eligibility
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