PHILADELPHIA– Welcome back. Welcome home.
The Palestra, the historic 8,725- seat gym on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania that is one of the cathedrals of college basketball, is open for business again. After 619 seemingly never-ending days, the the Ivy League Quakers’ men’s team, which had last season canceled by the league because of the Pandemic, took the court again for a non-league game against Lafayette.
Penn shook off the rust, defeating the Leopards, 85-75, before a small crowd of 3,000, who needed to show evidence of Covid clearance to enter the sainted building. Those in attendance got a feel for what the college game means to coaches like Fran O’Hanlon of Lafayette and Steve Donahue of Penn who grew up in this building along with others like Fran Dunphy and Dave Pauley and dedicated sportswriters like John Feinstein and Mike Jensen, who felt compelled to make the pilgrimage to the shrine one more time.
I’ve been coming since I was 10 years old, 64 years ago. It’s like a second home to me. O’Hanlon has been part of the fabric of the building almost as long. .
“I still get chills every time I walk in here” O’Hanlon said. “First time I came was as an eighth grader for the Catholic League playoffs. I been cut by the CYO basketball coach, so I focused on football and basketball. Then i came here, sat in the top row. My life changed. I said to myself I want to be good enough some day to play in this place.”
the baby-faced O’Hanlon, who grew up in West Philadelphia and used to watch Wilt Chamberlain walk to Overbook when he was in first grade, became good enough to lead St. Tommie Moore to the 1966 Catholic League championship. He received a scholarship to Villanova and played on an Elite Eight team with Howard Porter and Chris Ford in 1970, before becoming a basketball nomad, playing for the ABA Miami Floridians before coaching and playing overseas in Sweden and Israel. When he returned, he latched on as an assistant to Fran Dunphy at Penn before taking the Lafayette job. Dunphy’s other assistant was Donahue and he was in the building with his family to watch his two former assistants coach against each other.
Donahue has been at Penn since 2015
Before this week, the last game he coached here was Columbia in 2020 when the Quakers defeated the Lions to capture the fourth and final spot in the four team Ivy tournament at Harvard. The league canceled the tournament for health reasons before it ever took place. “Nobody got a chance to say their goodbyes,” junior co-captain and guard Lucas Monroe said.
Donahue did his best to keep his players’ interest in endless practices.
Some players had to wait even longer for live action. Junior guard Jonah Charles, who scored 18 points and four threes, hadn’t played a game in 996 days after missing the 2019 season with two broken feet, then sitting down last year. “Before we opened a lot of freshmen said, ‘What do I do to get ready to play my first college game?’ I said, “I have no idea, I haven’t played mine yet either.”
Donahue suited up 17 players for Lafayette and played everyone. Eleven were new faces. All played for the Quakers (2-2), who looked much improved after being overwhelmed in their opener at Florida State. “I probably shouldn’t have put our guys in that atmosphere for our first game– a nationally ranked ACC power on the road in Tallahassee.”
Penn had other distractions to weather before tipoff. All but three of Penn’s men’s players sat on the team bench during the national anthem, some linking arms. Two assistant coaches sat. Donahue stood just past the bench. “We want people to notice,” Monroe said “We want them to ask us about it. People see us sitting for the flag. Obviously, a lot of people don’t like it. We saw that in Tallahassee. And even here, some people aren’t going to like it. But it gets them thinking. Why are they doing this?”
The back of the Quakers’ warmups offer a hint. they say either Equality or Say Her Name, a reference to Brianna Taylor. Monroe said it has a lot to do with issues dividing America and its disadvantaged populations.
The game itself was uneventful. And it was nice to see red and blue streamers fly at the end of the game and the players and cheerleaders singing Harrah for the Red and the Blue. The Palestra has always been about tradition.
