Penn Athletics Game Notes for Cornell

Men's Basketball Hosts Cornell, Columbia 

Penn Athletics

PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men’s basketball team struggled through its first Ivy League weekend at Dartmouth and Harvard, getting swept on that Northern New England trip for the first time since the 1987-88 season. The Quakers return to The Palestra this weekend hoping to reverse fortunes, as Cornell is here Friday and Columbia arrives on Saturday.

GAME 18 - PENN (4-13, 1-2 Ivy League) vs. CORNELL (1-17, 0-4)
Friday, Feb. 7, 2014 * 7 p.m.
The Palestra (Philadelphia)
TV: Ivy League Digital Network (there is a fee for this service)
Radio: WNTP 990 AM (Matt Leon, Vince Curran)

GAME 19 - PENN (4-13, 1-2) vs. COLUMBIA (13-8, 2-2)
Saturday, Feb. 8, 2014 * 7 p.m.
The Palestra (Philadelphia)
TV: Ivy League Digital Network (there is a fee for this service)
Radio: WXPN 88.5 FM (Brian Seltzer, Vince Curran)

The New York Home Weekend
*Penn has hosted Cornell and Columbia on the same weekend 54 times; the Quakers have swept the weekend 40 times, split it 12 times, and been swept twice (in 1968 and 2009).

*Penn has split this home weekend three of the last four years; last season, the Quakers opened with a win on Friday over Columbia (62-58) but then fell to Cornell on Saturday (71-69). Penn swept two years ago, beating Cornell Friday and Columbia Saturday.

The Series with Cornell
*The Quakers and the Big Red have met 218 times, with Penn holding a 144-74 lead in the series.

*Penn has won three of the last four meetings, after dropping seven of eight to the Big Red from 2008-11.

*Penn and Cornell split last season’s series, each team winning on the road. The Big Red won for the fourth time in its last six trips to The Palestra, 71-69 -- Patrick Lucas-Perry led Penn with 14 points -- but the Red and Blue returned the favor in Ithaca, 79-71, behind 29 points from Tony Hicks.

The Series with Columbia
*The Quakers have met the Lions 223 times, more than any opponent except archrival Princeton (229 meetings); Penn leads the series, 137-86.

*Penn had won four in a row over Columbia -- including a 62-58 decision here at The Palestra in the first meeting last season -- before the Lions stunned the Quakers in New York City in the second meeting, 58-41. In that game, Columbia hit just two field goals the entire second half, yet still managed to turn a 10-point halftime lead into a 17-point victory.

*Two years ago, Penn beat Columbia here in overtime, 61-59, when Fran Dougherty laid in Miles Jackson-Cartwright’s inbounds pass at the buzzer.

Home is Where the Wins Are
Penn entered the 2013-14 season with 803 wins at The Palestra, which opened in 1927. In an informal survey of the other NCAA Division I programs, only Washington (932 wins at Hec Edmundson Pavilion) and Butler (826 wins at Hinkle Fieldhouse) boast more wins in their current home than the Quakers. The Edmundson Pavilion was opened in 1927, while the Bulldogs opened Hinkle in 1928.

Up The Scoring Chart
Senior Miles Jackson-Cartwright has 1,277 points for his career which is 18th in Penn history; he passed Perry Bromwell (1,265 points from 1985-87) last Friday at Dartmouth. Joe Sturgis (1,292 points from 1954-56) is 17th, while Tyrone Pitts (1,301 from 1985-88) is 16th.

Lists and Lists
Some other all-time lists that bear Jackson-Cartwright’s name...
  *7th all-time in minutes played (3,510)
  *t-7th all-time in free-throw percentage (81.6)
  *9th all-time in assists (304)
  *10th all-time in games started (96)
  *11th all-time in 3-point FG made (145)
  *11th all-time in free throws made (328)
  *11th all-time in steals (115)

The Quaker Notemeal of Note
*Penn played a game on every Saturday in January this season. Seems reasonable, right? It is, until you realize that the Quakers haven’t done that since the 2002-03 season.

*Penn has held 13 of its 17 opponents this season below 45 percent shooting from the field; George Mason was one of those other four teams, but barely -- the Patriots shot 45.3 percent (24-53) on January 2.

*Penn is 4-4 this season when leading at the half; before last Friday’s game at Dartmouth, when the Quakers surrendered a seven-point halftime advantage and lost to the Big Green, the halftime leads they had lost were 1 point (Lafayette), 1 point (Wagner), and 2 points (George Mason).

*Penn entered the week sixth nationally in assist/field goal ratio, at .650; that is behind only Denver (.684), Utah State (.682), Creighton (.655), UC Santa Barbara (.651) and American (.651).

*In Penn’s 17 games so far, head coach Jerome Allen has played 15 players in a game twice this season, 14 players four times, and 13 players six times; last weekend, all 13 players who dressed saw time in both games.

*Nine different players have made at least two starts for Penn this season, and only senior Fran Dougherty has started all 17 games.

*Penn has used eight different starting lineups in its 17 games this season -- five of them in the last 11 games -- and has put out the same lineup in consecutive games just seven times.

*Penn has four players averaging double figures in scoring -- Tony Hicks (14.8), Miles Jackson-Cartwright (11.8), Dougherty (11.7), Darien Nelson-Henry (11.5) -- but the Quakers have had more than three double-figure scorers in a game just once this season (January 25 against NJIT).

*Through the first 17 games, five different players have led Penn in scoring (Dougherty, Jackson-Cartwright, Hicks, Nelson-Henry, Julian Harrell) and all five have had at least one 20-point game.

*After recording 14 rebounds combined in Penn’s first four games (3.5 rpg), Dougherty has 105 in the last 13 contests (8.1 rpg); he has snared nine or more boards in nine of Penn’s last 12 games.

*Hicks has led Penn or shared the lead in scoring in six of the Quakers’ last seven games (18.8 ppg in that stretch); the outlier came last Friday at Dartmouth when he had four points.

*Jackson-Cartwright has hit six three-pointers in one game this season (Rider), five treys in another game (Monmouth), and four in three other games (Villanova, George Mason, NJIT).

*Jackson-Cartwright enters the weekend having hit 19 of his last 21 free throws.

 *Jackson-Cartwright has started 96 of the last 99 games he has played at Penn; earlier this season, he came off the bench at Marist due to a thumb injury. The other times he played in a game but did not start during this stretch? Dec. 10, 2011 at UCLA, and March 8, 2011 against Princeton (Penn’s Senior Day of his freshman year).