TJ Power wills Penn to Ivy Madness upset, NCAA Tournament bid

ITHACA, N.Y. – T.J. Power had his hands on his knees at midcourt. His line of sight covered by the brand new championship t-shirt that he put over his head, but not around his body yet. Did that really just happen? His brain had no other reaction to what had just occurred.

“I was super emotional, I’m sure I’ll be emotional all day,” Power said.

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Everybody was overcome with emotion because not only did Power play the game of his life, but he rode the roller coaster ride of the game of basketball over the last three seasons to get to this moment. Nobody could have possibly believed that he could do this in this game against that opponent on that stage.

To lead your team to the NCAA Tournament is one thing. To do it while scoring 44 points, making two outrageous three-pointers in the final 20 seconds, and upsetting the No. 1 seed in your conference in overtime, less than 24 hours after a hard-fought OT win over the No. 2 seed in your conference? That’s just impossible.

Not if you’re T.J. Power.

His historic performance broke the Ivy Madness scoring record by a significant margin and is the highest scoring individual game that a Quaker player has had since 1989. He scored half of Penn’s points, and it was just barely enough to squeak past Yale, 88-84 inside Newman Arena. In one of the best basketball games of the season, Penn punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018.

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For Fran McCaffery, it marked a homecoming vindication at his alma mater just about 365 days after being fired from his post as the longtime head coach at Iowa. This is the fifth different school that the 66-year old head coach has taken to the NCAA Tournament.

“They’re all incredible,” McCaffery said. “But I do think this one’s a little different.”

It took a bought-in and scrappy group to scrounge together and win seven of the final eight regular-season games to go from 2-4 in the Ivy League to 9-5 and the third seed. Then, it required…

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Publish date : 2026-03-17 06:49:00

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