The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team fell to Princeton Friday night in another close finish between these two rivals, 61-59.

  The teams were tied, 59-59, when Princeton's Xaivian Lee took the ball to the rim but stumbled on his way to the basket. He passed the ball off to Jackson Hicke, who went up with a shot and was fouled going up with just 0.6 seconds left. Hicke made both of his shots, and Penn was unable to get a final shot off before the horn.

  Penn fell to 6-14 overall and 2-5 in Ivy League play, while the Tigers improved to 16-6 and 5-2 in league play.

 
*This game was truly a rock fight as both teams struggled offensively, Penn shooting 21-59 from the field (35.6 percent) and Princeton 20-58 (34.5).

  *In a game decided in literally the last second, Penn (17) took more foul shots than Princeton (13) but made fewer (Princeton 12, Penn 10).

  *Penn set a season high with nine steals and forced Princeton into more than twice as many turnovers (13-6); the Quakers won the points-off-turnovers battle, 18-5.

  *The six turnovers tied the Red and Blue's season low.

  *Senior Nick Spinoso and sophomore Sam Brown were Penn's leading scorers on Friday night, with 12 points each. Brown hit 3-of-7 from beyond the arc in the game.

  *Spinoso also had five rebounds, while Brown dished out three assists without a turnover and collected three steals.

  *Sophomore Niklas Polonowski and freshman AJ Levine scored nine points each, with Levine also recording four rebounds, two assists and four steals (most by a Penn player this season).

  *Senior George Smith scored seven points, led the Quakers with eight rebounds—his high this season—and had three assists without a turnover.

  *Sophomore Augustus Gerhart also scored seven points and snared five boards.

  *Penn played the game without the Ivy League's leading scorer, junior Ethan Roberts, who sat due to injury. Junior Michael Zanoni also missed the game, his sixth in a row.

  *Princeton got 13 points and eight rebounds from CJ Happy, while Lee and Hicke scored 11 each and Lee nearly hit a double-double with a game-high nine rebounds. Last year's Ivy League Player of the Year, Caden Pierce, finished with nine points and seven rebounds while Malik Abdullahi also grabbed seven boards.

 
Princeton blitzed Penn early, Pierce knocking down a three-pointer and Happy following with two of his own; it was 9-0 and Penn was taking its first timeout just 2:18 into the contest. It was still 11-2 at the first media timeout, but the Quakers settled down and were within five at the next media timeout. It was still a five-point game out of the under-8 timeout when Polonowski scored at the elbow to make the score 20-17. However, at that point Princeton used a 7-2 run and ended up with a 31-24 lead at the half.

  The Tigers' lead was nine early in the second half, at 37-28, but Smith and Brown drained back-to-back triples to get the Quakers within three, forcing a Princeton timeout. Princeton got the lead back up to seven, at 44-37, and it was a five-point game when Spinoso scored in the paint. Two possessions later, as the game entered its final 10 minutes, Brown took a pass on the right wing, spun away from the oncoming defender, and coolly stepped back into a three-pointer that tied the game for the first time, at 47-47. That brought about another Tigers timeout as the Palestra crowd of more than 3,000 was in full throat.

— Penn Men's Basketball (@PennMBB) February 8, 2025

 

Princeton went to its veterans, Pierce and Lee scoring the game's next four points, and the run extended to 9-3 with less than six minutes left which brought about a Penn timeout. Out of the stoppage, Spinoso scored a second-chance layup—after Polonowski was fouled rebounding his own missed trey—and then Levine got a steal at the defensive end and turned it into a transition lefty layup that got the Quakers within two.

  Spinoso scored the game's next point with 3:11 left, making one of two free throws, and nearly a minute later Johnnie Walter gave the Red and Blue their first lead of the night when he finished a nice feed from Brown—again a second-chance point, after Gerhart rebounded a missed Brown triple. There was 2:15 left on the clock.

2H (2:11) | Penn 57, Princeton 56

JOHNNIE FROM SAM! FIRST LEAD OF THE NIGHT!!#Whanau | #FightOnPenn ??????

— Penn Men's Basketball (@PennMBB) February 8, 2025

 

Both teams continued to stagnate offensively, the next point coming with just 53 seconds left when Brown hit the front end of a 1-and-1. Critically, he missed the second, and that came back to bite the Quakers when Dalen Davis knocked down a triple—Princeton's first points in 5:24 of game time—to put the Tigers in front, 59-58.

  Penn took a timeout, and out of the break Brown and Spinoso played pick-and-roll which ended with the senior getting fouled on his layup attempt with 19.8 seconds left. He made the first, tying the game, but missed the second.

  Princeton got the ball up the floor and let Lee make a move to win the game. Instead, Levine—who played strong defense on the first-team All-Ivy guard all night—was again equal to the challenge, and Lee briefly lost the ball at the right elbow. That touched off a mad scramble, but Lee got the ball back and fed it across the lane through a pair of Quaker defenders to Hicke, who immediately went up for a shot and was fouled. After a review in which officials put 0.6 seconds on the clock. Hicke hit both of his foul shots.

  Penn took a timeout, and then Princeton took a timeout after the teams lined up. Finally, the Quakers tried to inbound to Smith near midcourt, but he needed to tip the ball to himself and was unable to get his shot off before the final horn went.

 
Penn is on the road next weekend, traveling to New England to face Ivy leader Yale on Friday night and Brown on Saturday.

  For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.

| #FightOnPenn