Allen tries to guide Penn through a lot of growing pains

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Ivy League has two standard-bearing programs that have dominated the league for much of its existence. Penn and Princeton have combined to win 51 of the league’s 65 titles to date in men’s basketball, with Penn claiming 25 of them. The Quakers have often been right there with Princeton in the years the Tigers were champions as well, and they have done it with veteran and young teams alike. They seemed immune to having to rebuild like so many programs must.

So it would surely surprise someone to look up at the Ivy League standings and see Penn with a 5-18 overall record, not to mention 2-4 in the Ivy League. That’s where they stand after Friday night’s 73-54 loss at Harvard. The records have an explanation, but they would surely still surprise many.

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Rosen carries Penn to a big road win

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The band stayed around after the game, and why not? They had traveled all the way up from Philadelphia and just saw their team win a big game on the road with first place, and really, the season, on the line. When Zack Rosen walked out and down the stairs from the locker room, he got a hero’s welcome from them, more so than head coach Jerome Allen and other players.

And who can blame them? Rosen had just willed Penn to a 55-54 win at Harvard that kept the Crimson from clinching a tie for the Ivy League title and kept Penn in control of their own destiny.

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Harvard’s path to the elusive NCAA Tournament bid just got tougher

Harvard is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning. Many of the brightest young people grow up dreaming of attending the school, unless you’re like me and dreamed of going to MIT (or Cal Tech) because of engineering. The university has produced a number of high achievers in just about every field imaginable.

On the hardwood, it’s been a different story. Harvard has had seasons of 20 or more wins, and they’ve been to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament and NIT the past two seasons. But they have yet to get to the holy grail of college basketball, the NCAA Tournament. That has eluded them, including last year when they went to a one-game playoff against Princeton and lost on a buzzer-beating jumper in New Haven. And after Saturday night, they might be on a path to such a game once more, as Penn came to Lavietes Pavilion and stunned Harvard 55-54 on Senior Night.

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Early Ivy League showdown looms

The stage is now set for a showdown in Philadelphia, at one of the most storied arenas in college basketball. On Friday, Harvard and Penn will battle with first place in the Ivy League on the line, set up in part by Penn bouncing back last Saturday night with a convincing 65-48 win at Brown.

Harvard will enter the weekend alone at the top with a 6-0 mark. Yale will be right behind at 5-1, while Penn is now 4-1. Princeton, thought to be the top contender behind Harvard before the season, is now 2-3 after losing at Yale on Saturday night and needs help. While one can expect the Palestra to be a great place to be on Friday night, the Quakers aren’t looking at it as anything more than the next game on the schedule.

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A Much-Needed Weekend Sweep for Penn

Penn needed to get back in the win column in a big way. To do that, they turned to a surging star who started to look like the player he could be a couple of years ago, then their leader came up big late in their win at Brown. For good measure, they took the positive energy to New Haven and came away with a road sweep as they pulled off a last-second win at Yale a night later.

Penn entered the weekend with a four-game losing streak, with three of those losses coming in overtime. The Quakers had also not won on the road in nearly two months, dating back to a December 22 road win at Delaware. Two losses came by one and three points, and one of the overtime losses was by 11, meaning they were in it but didn’t play well in the extra session.

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Penn: Quakers Ditch Glen Miller After Bad Start

At 0-7, Penn has decided to fire coach Glen Miller, replacing him with assistant coach Jerome Allen, according to a university press release.

After three-plus seasons with the Quakers, Miller finished with a 45-52 record. He took the team to the NCAA Tournament in his first season, but the team has struggled since. Under former coach Fran Dunpy, who left Penn for Temple in 2006, the Quakers were a perennial Ivy League contender. However, they have lost that status to Cornell.

With Allen at the helm, the Quakers hope to return to Ivy League glory. As a Quaker player in the 1990s, Allen led Penn to three consecutive Ivy League titles, and the team was 42-0 in the league during that run. Penn also pulled off a first-round upset against Nebraska in the 1994 NCAA Tournament.

Allen has lots of ties to the Philadelphia community. He founded a charity in the city  and attended high school at nearby Episcopal Academy.