Penn edges Harvard for Ivy title

PHILADELPHIA » Look who’s back in the NCAA Tournament.

Darnell Foreman scored 19 points, AJ Brodeur added 16 and 10 rebounds and Penn punched a ticket to the Big Dance for the first time since 2007 with a 68-65 win over Harvard in the Ivy League Tournament championship game at the Palestra on Sunday afternoon.

Foreman scored all 19 of his points in the first half, helping the secondseeded Quakers (24-8) surge in front with a 24-0 run sandwiched around the halftime break.

Still, the Crimson (1813), the top seed playing a road game, rallied despite an injury that sidelined Ivy Player of the Year in the second half.

But Penn senior Caleb Wood connected on two straight 3-pointers, the second a four-point play to give the Quakers a 6360 lead with 3:42 left. Ryan Betley (17 points) followed with a threepoint play before Harvard’s Christian Juzang hit a 3 to cut the deficit to three in the final minute.

Justin Bassey knocked down a pair of free throws with 14.3 seconds left to slice the lead to 6665 and after Betley made a pair of free throws, the Crimson missed on two attempts to tied the game in the final seconds.

“I didn’t think it was possible for us to get to the NCAA Tournament until the horn went off,” said Quakers coach Steve Donahue, who has now led a pair of Ivy League schools to the NCAA Tournament. “In a building I grew up in, and watching the kids storm the floor for our guys, (it was) magical. Unexpected, too.”

Chris Lewis paced Harvard with 16 points and Bassey added 15. Towns had 13 before a knee injury forced him out of the game with 8:30 remaining.

Penn’s reward was a No. 16 seed and a date with top-seeded Kansas in the NCAA Tournament. The Quakers won their 24th overall Ivy title, one behind Princeton’s 25.