34th Street Magazine's "Toast" is a semi-weekly newsletter with the latest on Penn's campus culture and arts scene. Delivered Monday-Wednesday-Friday.
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With a new year full of big games, fresh faces, and untold stories on the horizon, it’s time to suggest a few New Year’s resolutions for Penn Athletics.
The Quakers struggled to score throughout the game, ultimately losing to Toledo, 77-45. One of the biggest reasons for the Quakers’ tribulations was an early injury to freshman forward Michael Wang.
This is the grittiest team I’ve ever seen. Everything they do is gritty. The way in which the Quakers came up with two of the biggest wins in their career in a span of a week made me sure of it — Penn men’s basketball is the grittiest team in Philadelphia.
If the Quakers keep this up — or even if they don’t blow away Ivy opponents, but at least grind out results well enough to make it through — then fans could be clearing their calendars for mid-March. Hell, maybe even April.
Could this be the year the Quakers break the losing streak? It very well might be — the reigning national champion Wildcats have shown major vulnerabilities early on this season, and Penn is off to its best start in years.
Even though he’s a freshman, this 6-foot-10 forward is impossible to ignore on the basketball court. Now, the Ivy League and the Big 5 are honoring him off of it.
In this week's edition of Is Stat So?, track and field set all kinds of records in wins over Harvard, while men's and women's basketball earned comfortable victories over non-conference opponents.
Despite only playing for a total of 42 minutes in games against Miami (Fla.) and La Salle this week, Wang was a force on offense, leading the Quakers in scoring in both contests.
Aided by four players in double figures scoring, Penn took an 83-65 victory to keep its four-game win streak alive entering Tuesday’s showdown against Villanova.
Each of these teams overcame sub-par finishes from years past to blow away all expectations the outside world had of them. Here are the most surprising Ivy League regular season championships from the past 10-plus years.
If someone had told me three years ago that Penn men’s basketball would play an ACC team off the court and it wouldn’t even be all that big a surprise, I would have laughed until my sides split.
Coming off big wins against Stockton, where the Quakers surpassed 100 points, and Delaware State, Penn will face Atlantic Coast Conference standout Miami (Fla.) at home on Tuesday.
The point guard that averaged a mere 4.3 points per game as a freshman and 3.8 as a sophomore has absolutely exploded, improbably establishing himself as Penn’s leading scorer.