Gamecenter: Penn 85, Seton Hall 94

1st 2nd Final
Penn (6-5) 31 54 85
Seton Hall (7-2) 44 50 94
Continental Airlines Arena – East Rutherford, NJ Boxscore
 
Keys to the Game
Key sequence Penn led 14-9 just before the 15:00 mark of the first half, but Paul Gause hit a three-pointer and Eugene Harvey tied the game with a layup. Brian Laing put home an alley-oop to give the Pirates the lead, before another Gause three-pointer finished off a 10-0 Seton Hall run. With the Quakers trailing 23-18, they missed a number of inside looks, with Kevin Egee scoring the only Penn bucket during a long field goal drought. After a 13-3 run, Seton Hall had run out to a 36-21 lead.
Key sign it was over Ibby Jaaber led a 21-9 Penn charge to cut the deficit to four at 70-66 with just over six minutes left. But Harvey drove in for a layup with the shot clock running low, Larry Davis intercepted a Quaker pass that led to a Laing layup, and Harvey came up with a steal and took it in for a layup for six points in 18 seconds, as a four-point game ballooned to double digits. Penn would get no closer than six points the rest of the way.
Key performance Glen Miller admitted after the game that Davis wasn’t a key part of his staff’s gameplan, and the freshman certainly surprised. He scored a team-high 27 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in 30 minutes off the bench. Davis shot 8 of 10 from the floor, 8 of 9 at the line, and perhaps most importantly was 3 of 5 from outside the arc for a team that had been struggling with its outside shooting.
Key statistic Seton Hall only shot six more free throws (30) than Penn (24), but the Pirates were much better marksmen at the line, hitting at an 86.7-percent clip, compared to just 58.3 percent for the Quakers. Seton Hall was 15 of 16 from the stripe in the first half, while the visitors were just 7-for-14. The Pirates’ 12-point edge at the line played a signficant role in the outcome.
Notes

– Jaaber was the high scorer on the afternoon with 32 points — 28 of which came after halftime — on 15-for-22 shooting. However, the Penn senior missed all five three-point attempts and was just 2 of 6 at the line — including two missed front ends of one-and-ones.

– Mark Zoller registered a double-double with 23 points and 12 rebounds.

– Penn fared better inside, outscoring Seton Hall 52-40 in the paint and rebounding at a 41.9-percent rate offensively, while holding the Pirates to 29.4-percent rebounding at their offensive end.

– In addition to Davis’s 27 points, Jamar Nutter also had a big game off the bench for Bobby Gonzalez with 18 points. Seton Hall owned a huge 49-9 edge in bench scoring.

– The Pirates came in struggling from the three-point arc at 28.2 percent, but like Fordham in the Quakers’ last loss, Seton Hall got hot from the outside, hitting 8 of 21 (38.1 percent). Meanwhile, Penn entered the game at 39.2 percent from three, but hit on just 3 of 16 (18.8 percent) from long range on the afternoon.

– After shooting just 11 of 33 (33.3 percent) in the first half, the Quakers hit 23 of 37 (62.2 percent) after halftime.

– Penn will take time off for the holidays, returning to action on January 3 for its toughest game of the season against second-ranked North Carolina (10-1) at the Dean Dome in an 8:00 pm ET tip televised on ESPN.

Jake Wilson

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Basketball U.

Jake Wilson wrote 754 posts

Post navigation


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>