Penn Quakers Basketball
The Penn Quakers men's basketball team is the college basketball program representing the University of Pennsylvania. As the ninth-winningest men's basketball program of all-time, the team from Penn has had great success over the past 40 years. Penn plays in the Ivy League in NCAA Division I.
On March 20, 1897 Penn and Yale played in the first basketball game with five players on a team. Prior to the formation of the Ivy League in 1954 Penn was a member of the Eastern Intercollegiate League (EIL) from 1903 thru 1955. Penn won 14 EIL Regular Season Championships - 1906, 1908, 1916, 1918, 1920, 1921, 1928, 1929, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1945, 1953, 1955.
Penn has appeared in one Final Four, in 1979. Penn trails only Princeton for the most Ivy League regular season championships with 25 (1966, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007). Their main Ivy League rivalry is with Princeton, whom they always play as the last regular season game.
One of Penn's most memorable seasons came in 1979 when the Quakers advanced to the NCAA Tournament Final Four. With players such as Tony Price, the Quakers stunned the nation with victories over Iona, North Carolina, Syracuse, and St. John's to advance to the Final Four. The Quakers faced Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Michigan State in the national semifinals in Salt Lake City, Utah, but ultimately were met with defeat, 101–67. Other notable Penn teams include the team led by guards Matt Maloney and Jerome Allen during the mid-1990s and the nationally-ranked teams of the early 1970s led by Dave Wohl, Steve Bilsky, Corky Calhoun and Bob Morse. Penn's 1970–71 team completed an undefeated regular season (26–0) and advanced to the Eastern Regional Final in the NCAA Tournament, losing there to a Villanova team it had defeated during the regular season. Villanova lost to UCLA in the national championship game, but was later found to be using an ineligible player, Howard Porter.
The last NCAA Tournament victory for the Quakers came on March 17, 1994, at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. The No. 11 Red and Blue defeated the No. 6 Nebraska Cornhuskers, 90–80, in the first round. The Quakers fell in the second round to No. 3 Florida on March 19, 1994, as the Gators prevailed, 70–58.
Read more about Penn Quakers Basketball: Coaches, Players Awards, General, Coaching Staff, Team Information, History, Roster, 2012-13 Basketball Schedule, See Also, External Links
Famous quotes containing the words penn, quakers and/or basketball:
“the pomp
Of pain swells like the Indies, or a plum”
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)
“If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)