PHILADELPHIA – Fran McCaffery’s sole focus is on Penn’s next game.
Last Friday, he was focused on beating Columbia.
That same night, his attention shifted to beating Cornell the next day.
This week, he’s worried about trying to get a win over James Jones’ first-place Yale Bulldogs in New Haven on Saturday afternoon.
Although McCaffery is worried about taking things one game at a time, it’s difficult to not look at the big picture about what a pair of wins this past weekend over Columbia and Cornell did
for the Quakers’ chances to compete in Ivy Madness next month.
After a thrilling come-from-behind 76-67 win over Columbia Friday night and an 82-76 win over Cornell Saturday night to complete a season sweep of the Big Red, BartTorvik.com now gives Penn a 97.6% chance to finish in a top-four spot in the Ivy League, and thus, the right to compete in Ivy Madness.
McCaffery’s Quakers are on the cusp of ending a two-year drought of not participating in the Ivy League’s postseason, doing so in McCaffery’s first year at the helm at his alma mater. The weekend sweep was the culmination of Penn’s defensive improvement, getting contributions from guys off of the bench, and the overall maturity of the group showing as the season enters its most pivotal part.
Not even three weeks ago, Penn was 2-4 in conference play, on a three-game losing skid after dropping a close 72-67 contest at Columbia. The Quakers then loaded up their bus, drove across New York state, and arrived in Ithaca in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, slated to play Cornell later that day. Not only did Penn put the previous night’s loss behind them, but it responded by beating Cornell at Newman Arena, and putting up 91 points – a season-high against a Division-I opponent – in the process.
McCaffery knew at this point his team was made up of the right stuff.
Everybody in the Ivy League deals with the same long nights, the same early mornings with their schedule of back-to-back games on weekends.
McCaffery has been through this routine before – while at Siena, his teams played on Fridays and Sundays. When he was at UNC-Greensboro, the SoCon schedule had his Spartans playing on Saturdays and Mondays. The Ivy League schedule doesn’t bother him. McCaffery is more concerned about relaying the information to his players, who have a lot to process in a span of 24 hours.
“We’ve got to get them up to speed in a hurry, and the only way you do that is if you have a mature group, an intelligent group,” McCaffery said after Saturday night’s win at home over the Big Red. “That’s what we have. I think the best example of that is losing a two-possession game at Columbia. We drive four and a half hours to Cornell, get in at two in the morning, and then go win a game in the other team’s building. I’ve coached a lot of good teams. That’s what they do a lot of the time.”
Fast forward to Friday night, and it looked like Columbia was going to get the season sweep of the Quakers. Columbia led for over 33 minutes of the game, only for a win to be stolen from them by Penn sophomore AJ Levine, who quite frankly, stole everything this weekend, tallying 11 steals in two games. Levine recorded three of his six swipes in the final minute against the Lions to seal the Quaker victory. He simply wouldn’t let Penn lose.
“He’s a game changer and an elite competitor,” senior guard Ethan Roberts said. “Having that as your point guard is amazing. You definitely don’t want to go up against him.”
Levine may only be a sophomore, but he’s played enough in the Ivy League to know that each game is going to be a hard one. Although Penn played from behind for much of Friday’s contest against Columbia, that never changed his demeanor. He knows it’ll take a full game from his team to pull out wins in this league, especially on the defensive side, where he has to really take charge.
“We talk about playing a full 40 minutes every single game,” Levine said on Friday night. “We know that every Ivy League game down the stretch is going to be a war. As long as we’re fighting at the end of the game as the intensity is rising, I think we always have a chance to win the game. That’s exactly what we did at the end there, we picked up our intensity defensively.”
Levine plays with a ton of emotion, which at times can be to his detriment, but it’s something that McCaffery won’t ever tell him to stop being. If his point guard needs a second to cool off, he’ll give him a break, but he never wants him to stop Levine from being the fiery competitor that he is.
“He’s an emotional guy and you never want to take that away from him,” McCaffery said. “That’s what makes him great. In the second half, I took him out because he was sideways… he was getting frustrated. I took him out, let him calm down. Then he came back and impacted the game. He and [Roberts] won the game for us.”
Levine tallied 11 steals last weekend, which was nearly a third of the 36 turnovers Penn forced as a team (20 against Columbia and 16 against Cornell). With Levine being the head of the snake for Penn’s defense, McCaffery sees that side of the ball as the biggest area of improvement his team has made since Ancient Eight play tipped off for Penn on Jan. 5.
“Our defense has grown,” McCaffery said after Saturday night’s win. “I think it’s obvious that there’s been times where our offense has just been okay. Against Columbia, we didn’t score the ball early at all. We got behind, but the defense got us back in it.”
Additionally, Penn got some contributions outside of their starting lineup, which are all the more important when you play two games less than 24 hours apart, even more so when that second game is against Cornell and its blistering pace, while going 10 guys deep in its rotation.
The Quakers got two productive evenings from Lucas Lueth, who transferred in from Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The 6-foot-7 forward gives McCaffery an athletic forward who can guard up and down the lineup and be a Swiss army knife wherever he’s needed.
Lueth played arguably his two best games of the season when the Quakers needed him the most. He didn’t play in Penn’s last meeting with Columbia, but when his number was called, he was ready.
“He was spectacular,” said McCaffery after Friday’s win. “He’s got length, athletic power, and he’s on the glass. He can guard the point guard, the center, and everyone in between. His activity and feel are so impactful. I felt that he needed to be out there.”
Lueth scored nine points Friday night, where he made just his sixth 3-pointer of the season. He followed it up on Saturday with his first double-digit outing of the season with 11 points and two blocks. He credits McCaffery and the rest of the staff for believing in him, whether he played the minutes that he wanted to or not.
“The coaches have been instilling confidence in me since I got here,” Lueth said after Saturday’s win over Cornell. “It’s been great to have coaches pushing you every day.”
Freshman Jay Jones, nephew of Yale head coach James Jones, who he’ll see on the opposite sideline on Saturday afternoon, also gave a huge lift to Penn in Saturday’s win over Cornell. The first-year player scored a season-best 17 points, made nine of his 11 free throws and dished out three assists.
“The coaching staff has done a great job of giving me a bunch of confidence,” Jones said. “I got a lot of trust in them. They’ve been great for me.”
Additionally, the 6-foot-5 Jones can seamlessly play alongside Levine on the defensive end. While the smaller Levine harasses the ball handler, Jones at his stature can do the same. He enjoys being out there with Levine, with the ability on the defensive end that they have together.
“Me and AJ talk about it a lot,” Jones said with a wide grin. “We love being on the court together. We can pressure the other team. I feel like we have a really good connection on the defensive end and do a great job.”
He, like Lueth, gave the credit to his coaches first, thus further showing the connectedness of this Penn team. When he’s not out there, Jones is always active on the bench cheering his teammates on.
This time of year, players that don’t see extended minutes can oftentimes start thinking about what’s next for them. McCaffery saw this past weekend as evidence that his team, with Lueth and Jones in particular, aren’t thinking that way.
“Those two guys are an epitome of what character is,” McCaffery said. “In the locker room, in the weight room, at home, and on the road, and in crunch time… They’re really smart and prioritize winning. There was a time where neither of them were playing very much. We all know at that point, some guys pack it in, some point fingers, they figure out where they’re going to transfer. These guys kept working. If you look at our bench, the guys that aren’t playing are into the game and cheering on their teammates.”
Penn may sit at 6-4 in Ivy League play, currently in third place, and sitting favorably with the metrics as they look to play in Ivy Madness, but McCaffery doesn’t care. Last weekend is behind him, and now he’s now all in on how he and his Quakers can stack another win Saturday at Yale. It’s all about them.
“We don’t look at, okay, we’ve got to win two this weekend,” McCaffery said. “We focus on the next game. We did some things well when we played Yale, and we didn’t do some things well. You work on that, try to get better, then you prepare to win that game… You don’t look at the standings or what other people are doing. I concern myself with what we’re doing.”
