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PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men’s basketball team opens the Fran McCaffery Era on Friday night, hosting NCAA Division III Rowan University in the back half of a season-opening doubleheader with the Penn women at The Palestra.
 
Penn jumps right into it in 2025-26; Friday night’s opener is the first of three games the Quakers will play in five days. The Red and Blue is at defending Patriot League champion American on Sunday at 1 p.m., then at Providence on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
 
GAME 1 – PENN (0-0, 0-0 Ivy League) vs. ROWAN (0-0)
Friday, Nov. 7, 2025 | 7 p.m.
Philadelphia | The Palestra
Watch on ESPN+ ($) | Listen on QAN | Live Stats | Program (PDF)

Penn Game Notes (PDF) | Rowan Game Notes (PDF)

 

Ivy League on ESPN+

A reminder that the Ivy League is paired with ESPN and you will be able to find all Penn home games, as well as road Ivy games and select non-conference road games, on ESPN+ again this season with the same high broadcast quality you’ve come to expect. ESPN+ is a subscription-based service that offers monthly and yearly packages. Click here to subscribe to ESPN+!

 

Quaker Audio Network (QAN)

Penn fans can listen to all of the 2025-26 Penn’s men’s basketball season through the Quaker Audio Network, a free Internet-based audio streaming service. Matt Leon will be on the play-by-play call again this season, with Stan Pawlak providing analysis. To access the Quaker Audio Network, simply type www.pennathletics.com/audio into your computer or device.

 

The Series with Rowan

*This is the first meeting between the Quakers and the Profs in men’s basketball.

 

Penn MBB By The Numbers

2 – Transfers who have joined the Penn roster for the 2025-26 season: TJ Power (Virginia/Duke) and Lucas Lueth (Kirkwood CC). Power was a five-star recruit out of high school who started his career at Duke and spent last season at UVA. Lueth helped Kirkwood go 33-3 overall and win the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division II national championship last year; he was named the tournament’s MVP after recording 46 points, seven steals and nine blocked shots across four games.

 

4 – Penn players who have played in the U20 Eurobasket Championships over the last three summers: senior Johnnie Walter (Germany in 2023), junior Niklas Polonowski (Denmark in 2024 and 2025), sophomore Michelangelo Oberti (Italy in 2024), and freshman William Kruse (Norway in 2025).

 

7 – Total newcomers added to the 2025-26 roster: in addition to the aforementioned transfers, the Quakers also have a freshman “starting five” in Ryan Altman, Jay Jones—son of current Boston University head coach Joe Jones and nephew of Yale head coach James Jones­—Payton Kamin, William Kruse, and Dalton Scantlebury.

 

9 – Starts made by senior Cam Thrower two years ago as a sophomore; he did not see any game action last year due to injury, but you can expect to see him playing a role immediately for the Quakers this season.

 

16.8 – Points per game last season by senior Ethan Roberts, which led the Quakers and was sixth overall in Ivy League play. He also led the team and tied for sixth among Ivy players with 59 three-pointers.

 

26 – Steals last season by sophomore AJ Levine, which led the team and was 12th among Ivy League players; in Ivy play, his 1.4 steals-per-game average was fifth among Ancient Eight players.

 

27 – Points scored by senior Michael Zanoni in last year’s loss at Penn State; just when it looked like he was going to be a major part of the lineup heading into Ivy play, he was knocked down by a virus and struggled to find minutes when he came back healthy.

 

82.6 – Iowa’s points-per-game average the last five years under Fran McCaffery; expect Penn to play that same up-tempo game under his leadership.

 

2025-26 Penn MBB Schedule Notes

*The Big 5 continues with its “pod” setup again for the third straight year. Penn’s pod this year includes Saint Joseph’s and Drexel. From those “group stage” games, the teams will be paired up for the second annual Big 5 Classic on Saturday, Dec. 6 at the Xfinity Mobile Area. At that event, the third-place teams in each pod will play for fifth overall, the second-place teams will play for third, and the pod winners will meet to determine the Big 5 champion.

 

*Penn’s 11/17 home game with the Hawks will mark a Palestra return for the Quakers’ most recent head coach; Steve Donahue took over SJU in September when previous head coach Billy Lange left the program for a job with the NBA’s New York Knicks.

 

*Penn’s 11/21 “road trip” to Drexel will be the shortest road trip at the Division I level this season—per Google Maps, the distance from The Palestra to the Daskalakis Athletic Center is 0.5 miles.

 

*Penn will host a Thanksgiving tournament for the fourth straight season; the Cathedral Classic will feature the Quakers along with Big 5 rival La Salle, Merrimack and Hofstra. The teams will play doubleheaders on Friday, Nov. 28; Saturday, Nov. 29; and Sunday, Nov. 30. Penn will play the second game each day and is scheduled to face, in order, Merrimack, La Salle and Hofstra.

 

*A relative newcomer to NCAA Division I, Merrimack is the only first-time D1 opponent on the docket for this season. That said, this will only be the third meeting between the Quakers and Hofstra and the first since they met at Madison Square Garden in the 1998 ECAC Holiday Festival final.

 

*Penn will play five home games in both November and February, but in between those two months the Quakers are home just four times combined in December and January.

 

*Penn renews a dormant rivalry on December 20 when it makes the trip up to Rutgers. The Quakers and Scarlet Knights were traditional early-season foes through the 1950s and 1960s and have played 23 times overall, but the holiday matchup will be the first between the programs since 1975.

 

*Penn will play on New Year’s Eve, hosting NJIT at 2 p.m. The last time the Quakers played on NYE was 2018-19, the Quakers falling in OT to Monmouth at The Palestra.

 

*The Ivy League schedule is new this season and Penn will have some work to do early on—the Quakers will play five of their first seven league games on the road, then five out of six at home before ending the campaign at Brown on Friday, March 6.

 

*That said, Penn will play just one road “Ivy weekend” this season—January 30-31 at Columbia and Cornell. The Dartmouth-Harvard trip will be a Saturday/Monday weekend, the game against the Crimson coming on MLK Day.

 

*Two of Penn’s Ivy League games will air nationally on ESPNU—the January 24 home game with Yale and the February 7 home game with Princeton.

 

For the latest on Penn men’s basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.

 

#FightOnPenn

 
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