The Penn Quakers punched their ticket to March Madness in Fran McCaffery’s first year as head coach following their 88-84 win against Yale in the Ivy League Tournament to earn the conference’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid.
Penn was powered by a former Duke player in TJ Power who exploded for a game-high 44 points. He also had 14 rebounds in the game, and hit a 3-point shot as time expired to send the game into overtime.
This is the first time in seven years that Penn is going back to the NCAA Tournament. The last time that Penn took part in March Madness and the Big Dance was in 2017-18 when they were a No. 16 seed under former head coach Steve Donahue.
Since that appearance, Penn suffered three losing seasons in six years, and the program opted to fire Donahue and replace him with former Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery. McCaffery spent 15 seasons at Iowa, leading the Hawkeyes to seven NCAA Tournament appearances during that time.
In his first season at the helm as Quakers head coach, he led the team to an overall record of 17-11, and 9-5 in Ivy League Conference play.
One area where McCaffery has begun to make his mark on the program is on the recruiting trail. He brought in seldom-used Duke guard TJ Power, who has been one of the Quakers’ key cogs in a breakout season. He’s started all 28 games he’s played in at just about 35 minutes per game.
Power is averaging a career-best 15.8 points, a huge jump from the 1.3 he averaged at Duke last season. He’s also averaging 7.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.1 steals with splits of 44.9 percent shooting from the field, 42.7 percent shooting from the 3-point line and 61.2 percent shooting from the free-throw line.
