Penn Wins to Move into First Place

PHILADELPHIA—Penn used a balanced offensive performance and a late run to beat the Harvard men’s basketball team, 67-53, Saturday night at the Palestra.

Despite a 70-64 double-overtime loss to Princeton the night before, the Crimson (10-12, 3-5 Ivy) was able to hang close to the Quakers (14-8, 5-1 Ivy) until the home team went on a 10-0 run, turning a 50-44 game into a 60-44 runaway with 4:02 left.

The win, coupled with Yale’s 60-59 loss at Cornell, moved Penn into sole possession of first place in the league. Quakers forward Mark Zoller, the Ivy League’s leading scorer with 18.3 points per game, capped the run with two nice passes, finding guards Kevin Egee and Brian Grandieri on consecutive possessions for layups. Zoller finished with a game-high five assists. The layups accounted for just four of the 42 points Penn scored in the paint, compared to just 24 for Harvard.

“Our numbers were down in the frontcourt,” Crimson coach Frank Sullivan said. “I think where fatigue showed up with our club tonight, it was in the second half, it was in the low post.”

Zoller had a game-high 17 points, despite dealing with foul trouble in the second half. Reserve forward Brennan Votel had a career-high 11 points, while Grandieri and center Steve Danley each had 10. Captain guard Jim Goffredo led Harvard with 14 points, but shot only 5-of-19 from the floor. His backcourt mate, sophomore Drew Housman, had a relatively quiet night with just nine points, compared to his career-high 33-point outburst the night before at Princeton.

But Housman made his mark on the defensive end, holding reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Ibrahim Jaaber to nine points on 3-of-7 shooting. All three of Jaaber’s makes from the floor were dunks. But like Housman, Jaaber made his impact on defense, harassing Housman and picking up six steals to spearhead Penn’s 10 fast-break points.

“For my money, Jaaber is one of the best kids to ever play in this league,” Sullivan said. “He’s got pro hands and pro quickness. It’s no fluke that he is as good as he is defensively.”

Jaaber’s baskets all came in an up-and-down first half that featured four ties and five lead changes. The Crimson jumped out to an early 7-2 lead, only to see the Quakers go on a 13-0 run. Yet Harvard weathered that storm and regained the lead at 19-17. But Jaaber’s dunk with 3:59 left in the half gave Penn a 23-21 lead, and it would not trail or be tied again.

The Quakers took a 32-26 lead into halftime, but the Crimson scored the first five points of the second half to pull within three on a three-pointer by Housman and a layup by sophomore forward Evan Harris. That would be as close as Harvard would get, as Penn spent the next 11 minutes trading baskets with the visitors before its 10-0 run.

“We were in it the whole time,” Housman said, “but eventually it’s not good enough to be in it, we’ve got to start winning some of these games.”

The Crimson was able to stay close in part because of its three-point shooting defense. A weak spot all season, Harvard held Penn to just 1-of-10 shooting from beyond the arc.

“It’s something we’ve struggled with all year, but we did a good job tonight,” Goffredo said. “We tried to focus on limiting opponents’ three-point percentage, but that being said, we gave up a lot of inside points. We weren’t quite able to put both of them together.”

Despite being swept on the Princeton-Penn road trip for the 16th straight season, this was one of the Crimson’s better performances on the trip, particularly compared to last year. In 2006, Harvard was blown out, 75-48, at Princeton after taking Penn to overtime the night before. The back-end game this time was much more competitive.

“It’s hard to take something from a loss, but the Palestra is a tough place to play and I think we handled it well, except for that stretch in the second half when we let it get away,” Goffredo said. “We showed poise both nights, so I think definitely, with four of our last six on the road, that is something we can be happy about.”

The Crimson hits the road again next weekend, traveling to Brown on Friday and Yale on Saturday.

—Staff writer Ted Kirby can be reached at tjkirby@fas.harvard.edu.