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Penn
To understand where Penn sits in the Ivy League, you sort of have to understand where they came from. As noted above, the Quakers have historically dominated the Ivies along with Princeton. Further, they are the only Ivy team who has made the modern final four. Lastly, they play Princeton in the traditional final Ivy League regular season game which used to determine the Ivy Champ most of the time. Add all that together, and Penn fans have a sort of sense of entitlement to the league crown, or at the very least, being in the mix for the league crown.
It goes without saying then that three straight seasons of 9-18 or worse which led to the firing of Penn legend Jerome Allen have been just a little tough for the Quaker faithful to take.
Enter Steve Donahue. After an unsuccessful run at Boston College, Donahue is back in the Ivies trying to resurrect the Penn program. Donahue's Cornell teams were known for firing away from the outside with an anchor presence in the middle. Donahue doesn't have a team with that skillset at Penn, but that hasn't stopped him from starting to run his system. Last year Penn shot 448 three pointers all season (34.8%). Halfway through this season, they've attempted 332 (shooting at only 28.6%). The pace of play will likely slow in the league, so I don't see them taking over 600 3s but they will certainly see an increased number over last year.
Penn does have a pretty good guy in the middle in Darien Nelson-Henry. He's one of those guys who seems like he's been around forever. Finally a senior, DNH is averaging almost 13 points and 9 rebounds a game. Matt Howard, Sam Jones and Antonio Woods also average just over ten points a game each. Beyond those four, there are a host of young and unproven guys who are battling for playing time and not really standing out.
Expecting a complete rebuild, Penn fired out of the gates 4-1 with good wins over Robert Morris and LaSalle. Since then, they've come back to earth a bit, barely avoiding a major crash landing by escaping with a close win over Division III Ursinus. They are grouped with Cornell, Brown and Dartmouth in most of the computer rankings, and like Cornell and Brown have better offensive metrics than defensive.
For Penn, I think a successful season is one where they look at themselves at the end of Ivy League play and say we're better than we were when the season started. They haven't been able to say that the last three seasons.
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