Penn secures No. 3 seed in upcoming Ivy tournament, Drexel women win share of CAA; La Salle loses season finale
Rounding up a busy day of regular season final games for men's and women's City 6 teams.
Penn made a good run of it.
The Quakers took Ivy League leader Princeton into overtime but fell, 77-69, in men’s basketball action at Jadwin Gymnasium on Saturday.
A win would have given Penn (17-12, 9-5 Ivy) a share of the Ivy League regular-season title. Instead, Princeton (19-8, 10-4) took a share of the crown with Yale (20-7, 10-4), as the Bulldogs were winners against Brown while Penn dropped to the No. 3 seed in the upcoming Ivy tournament setting up a run-it-back against Princeton beginning Saturday, in Princeton (1:30 p.m., ESPNU).
Top-seeded Yale will play No. 4 Cornell (17-10, 7-7) in the early game on Saturday (11 a.m., ESPNU).
Penn had it ... and then dropped it
By all accounts, Penn’s game plan to press Princeton and force mistakes worked, especially early. The Quakers went into the half up, 42-25. Led largely by junior guard Jordan Dingle, who finished with a team-high 28 points, the Quakers executed and hit shots when it mattered.
But a second-half surge from Princeton served as shock treatment. The Tigers shot effectively and gave the Quakers a bit of their own medicine, pressing and getting in front of shots to force overtime and outscore Penn, 11-3.
Drexel takes a three-way share of CAA women’s crown
After losing to visiting North Carolina A&T, 59-57, the Drexel women’s basketball team shares the Colonial Athletic Association regular-season title with Towson and Northeastern.
Towson (19-10, 13-5 CAA) earned the tournament’s top seed because it went 2-1 against the Dragons and Huskies in the regular season. Drexel (21-8, 13-5) is the No. 2 seed after going 2-2 against the Tigers and Northeastern (18-11, 13-5).
» READ MORE: Drexel dominates Monmouth to advance to CAA conference quarterfinals
Drexel will play the winner of No. 7 Monmouth vs. No. 10 Charleston on Friday (5 p.m., FloHoops) at Towson University.
The Dragons are led by mid-major player-of-the-year candidate Keishana Washington. The 5-foot-8 guard is second in the nation in scoring at 27.0 points per game. Washington, a graduate student from Pickering, Ontario, has 2,288 career points, good for second all-time in Drexel history behind Gabriela Marginean (2,581).
On Saturday, Washington scored a game-high 23 points to break Drexel’s single-season scoring record with 783 points. This season, Washington has eclipsed 40 points three times, most recently coming in a win over Delaware. With CAA awards coming soon, Washington is the frontrunner for the conference’s player of the year.
Fifth-year guard Maura Hendrixson is also having a stellar season for the Dragons, breaking the Drexel single-season record for assists with 219. Freshman forward Kylie Lavelle is one of the top first-year players in the conference and averages 10.9 points per game for the Dragons.
Explorers drop regular-season finale to Loyola (Ill.)
La Salle’s losing streak extended to five games after a 76-73 setback to last-place Loyola Chicago at Tom Gola Arena on Saturday.
La Salle (13-18, 7-11 Atlantic 10) trailed for most of the game, finding themselves in a nine-point hole by halftime. The Explorers pulled within one, but Loyola Chicago’s (10-20, 4-14) nine steals and rebounding efforts put the Ramblers back in front by as much as 13.
Leading the Explorers was Jhamir Brickus, who had 18 points and 7 assists on 8-for-10 shooting. Daeshon Shepherd chipped in 11 points, and Khalil Brantley added 12.
La Salle’s losing skid comes directly on the heels of a five-game win streak against mainly conference opponents.
The first round of the A-10 tournament begins on March 7 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.