Penn men's basketball head coach, Steve Donahue, looks at the scoreboard against Harvard on Jan. 20.
Credit: Jon WongSteve Donahue will not return as head coach of Penn men’s basketball, Penn Athletics announced Monday.
The decision comes after Donahue’s ninth season at the helm of the program, which saw the Quakers finish 4-10 in the Ivy League for a seventh-place conference finish.
“I'm appreciative of Steve’s long tenure of leadership and service to Penn basketball and our student-athletes, both as an assistant and head coach,” Athletic Director Alanna Wren wrote in a statement. “Steve has been steadfast in his commitment to the program and the development of our student-athletes. I’ve always had great respect for his commitment to Ivy values, and he has been a strong representative of Penn during his career. Unfortunately, the competitive success on the court has not been up to our standards.”
The program will immediately begin a national search for Donahue’s replacement, according to Penn Athletics.
A source also confirmed to the DP that assistant coaches Nat Graham, Joe Milalich Jr., and Kris Saulny will not return.
Donahue, an assistant coach at Penn from 1990-2000, was first hired as head coach in 2015. During his tenure, the Quakers went a combined 131-130 and won an Ivy League title in 2018.
In recent years, the team has struggled to a historic degree. Penn finished 3-11 in the Ivy League in 2024, its worst conference finish since 1957. The 2025 season followed a similar pattern, with the Red and Blue finishing 8-19 for their first single-digit win season since 2015.
Donahue also closes his Quaker career on a 13-game losing streak to Princeton, once regarded as Penn’s biggest rival.
“While difficult, a change in leadership is necessary to provide the championship-caliber experience our student-athletes, alumni and fans expect,” Wren wrote. “We wish Steve and his family the best moving forward.”
Donahue has coached a number of Penn’s most iconic players. A.J. Brodeur, who played under Donahue from 2017-20, was named Ivy League Player of the Year in 2020 and left the Palestra as the program’s all-time leading scorer. Jordan Dingle, who starred for the Quakers from 2019-23, took home the Ancient Eight Player of the Year in 2023 and finished second in the nation in points per game during the 2022-23 season before transferring to St. John’s.
Dingle’s departure was part of a larger trend that saw Donahue fail to recruit and retain top talent toward the end of his tenure. In addition to Dingle, star freshman Tyler Perkins left Penn after leading the team in total scoring in 2024. From a recruiting standpoint, Penn has fallen behind the rest of the Ivy League, with junior guard Ethan Roberts the only member of Penn’s six-player junior class averaging more than seven points per game.
The Quakers’ struggles under Donahue are part of a larger decline in Penn men’s basketball. From 1960-2008, the Red and Blue finished with a losing record in the Ivy League just once. In the 16 seasons since, they have finished with a losing conference record nine times, including four in Donahue’s nine seasons.
“We had a meeting this morning with the team, and I think I could kind of tell based off of the energy in the call and seeing that all the athletic directors were in there,” senior forward Nick Spinoso, who recently played his final game for the Quakers, said in the wake of the move. “I got a lot of love for the coaching staff. They gave me the opportunity to play here, and I've been fortunate enough to play a lot of games for Penn, and I wish them all the best.”
“The reality is, we’re in seventh place,” Spinoso added. “Not everything can fall on coach Donahue for that. There’s a lot of blame for us … There’s missed foul shots, there’s fouls, there’s missed assignments, and that’s not something that he can always be blamed for.”
Donahue’s previous head coaching stops include Cornell, where he led the Big Red to three Ivy League titles and a Sweet Sixteen appearance in 2010, as well as Boston College, where he coached from 2010-14.
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