Yale outdone from onset

After waiting months for the Ivy League slate to start, it took the Penn men’s basketball team just 11 minutes to prove that this season will be different from the previous three.

The Quakers’ 24-6 lead to open the game turned out to be too much for Yale to overcome, as Penn won its first Ivy game of the season, 66-58.

Immediately after the tip-off it became apparent that the Quakers were well-prepared and fired up for the heart of their season.

“I think we played with a sense of urgency from the beginning just because this was our first league game,” freshman guard Miles Cartwright said. “We wanted to sustain our energy throughout the game, especially at the end when they made a run.”

And while Penn sustained enough energy to pull out the win, the Bulldogs certainly made a run.

With 8:41 left in the game, Yale (9-9, 2-2 Ivy) had cut the Penn lead to just four points. The Quakers were able to weather the storm with excellent free-throw shooting — the team shot 88 percent (22-for-25) from the charity stripe.

“We needed to make plays in this game, getting stops when we needed stops, getting rebounds, scoring buckets, making free throws ­— all the things that good teams do,” Penn coach Jerome Allen said.

Yale’s second-half push was led by junior Greg Mangano, a 6-foot-10, 240-pound power forward with whom Penn struggled to match up. During Yale’s second-half run, Mangano was nearly unstoppable. The junior scored 13 points in the second stanza to partner with six rebounds, and totaled 20 and eight for the game.

“He’s a very talented player, and we knew that coming in,” Penn forward Jack Eggleston said of Mangano. “We just really made sure to get a body on him and know where he was at all times.”

While Mangano kept Yale in the game, Penn orchestrated a balanced attack, with four players scoring in double digits. Cartwright led the way with 18 points, 13 of which came in the second half.

Junior Zack Rosen was hot in the beginning of the game, scoring 11 of his 16 points in the first half. Eggleston came close to recording a double-double with 13 points and eight rebounds.

“It’s always a good thing when you have multiple guys who are capable of scoring,” Allen said. “I think that the key to all that is how unselfish the group is, how much they are willing to play for one another.”

The Quakers played with a purpose Friday night that Eggleston and the seniors said they hope to carry through the 14-game conference schedule ­— starting by protecting home court.

“For me and Conor [Turley] and some other guys, this is our last shot, so we definitely want to come out and make the most of it,” Eggleston said. “One of the trademarks of this program is winning at home.”

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