Penn men's basketball glides past lowly Delaware State, 76-48

Penn entered the Hornets' nest and came out unscathed.

On Tuesday night, Penn men's basketball went on the road to defeat Pomeroy's worst rated Division I team, Delaware State, 76-48.

The opponent's low ranking didn't change the team's mindset.

“We don’t like to take anyone lightly. We try to approach each game with the same mentality and that is worried about our principles … no matter who it is,” senior forward Max Rothschild said. “Whether we play Stockton, whether we play Delaware State or we play Villanova. It doesn’t matter who we play, we just try to stick to our principles.” 

Freshman guard Bryce Washington led the Red and Blue (6-2) with a career-high 16 points, while adding eight rebounds. Junior forward AJ Brodeur was close behind with 10 points and 13 rebounds, his second consecutive game with a double-double.

“Bryce brings so much to the table for us in terms of shooting, defense – he’s going to be a great player for us,” Rothschild said. “Games like this are the fruit of his labor … it’s all because he works really hard. He’s going to help us a lot going down the road.” 

“The more I play with this team, the more confident I’m getting every single day,” Washington said. “I just want to keep learning from these guys and keep trying to get better.”

A total of eight players made three-pointers for Penn, just two shy of last year’s count of three-point scorers in the 2017 contest against the Hornets.

“It’s good to see that guys are stepping up. We have a ton of guys who can go out there and make threes every night,” Brodeur said.

Penn’s free throw shooting improved against Delaware State compared to the past four games, as the Quakers shot 65.2 percent from the line. The only two games of the season in which Penn has beat this percentage were against Rice and Lafayette — both played in the Palestra.

The Quakers had 13 assists in the game, with Brodeur tallying five. Junior guard Devon Goodman was close behind, adding four to the total.

This game against the Delaware State comes right after a 112-63 drubbing of Stockton on Saturday. It is the Quakers’ second consecutive win after dropping two games to Kansas State and Oregon State in the Paradise Jam.

“It’s good to get back in it, especially on the continental side of America,” Brodeur said. “We saw that more guys are doing more things and you can see that they’re actually getting better at it, so hopefully that carries over to when we play Miami next Tuesday because we’re going to need guys stepping up like they did today.”

With two consecutive convincing victories, the Red and Blue will go into next Tuesday's game against Miami (Fla.) with some momentum.