T.J. Power scored 44 points, including a 3 to force overtime, and 3rd-seed Penn upset top-seed Yale 88-84 to win the Ivy League Championship at Cornell University’s Newman Arena in Ithaca, N.Y. Penn, under 1st-year coach Fran McCaffrey, earned its first NCAA Tournament berth in eight years. Wit h the win, McCaffrey became only the fifth coach in college basketball history to take five different schools to the NCAA tournament. Power, a 6-9 junior from Shrewsbury, Mass., who previously played a year at Duke and a year at Virginia, made 14 of 26 shots and was 7-for-14 from 3 with 14 rebounds. His previous scoring high was 38 points in a win over Dartmouth last month. He’s the first Penn player ever with 40 points and 14 rebounds in a game and the first from the Ivy to do that since Princeton’s Bill Bradley had 58 points and 17 rebounds against Wichita State in the NCAA National Third-Place Game in Portland, Ore., in 1965. With five seconds left, Yale’s Trevor Mullin made two foul shot to give Yale a 75-72 lead and a 94.4 percent chance to win. But Power buried a 25-footer from the right wing to send the game into overtime.  In OT, Power made two foul shots with 3:02 left to give Penn the lead for good. Yale’s Riley Fox made a 3 with 11 seconds left in OT to cut Penn’s lead to two at 86-84, but Michael Zanoni hit both fouls shots with 0:07 on the clock – his only free throws in the game – to clinch the win. Power’s 44 points match the most by a Penn player in 74 years. In 1952, Ernie Beck scored 47 against Duke in the Dixie Classic in Raleigh, N.C., and also had 45 at Harvard. Hassan Duncombe also scored 44, in a game against Navy in Annapolis in 1989. Penn shot 50 percent from 3 on 14-for-28. Penn’s last trip to the NCAAs was 2018, when they lost by 16 to Kansas in Wichita as a 16 seed. Their last win in the tournament came in 1984, when they beat Nebraska by 10 as an 11 seed in Uniondale, N.Y. Penn, which lost to Yale by 4 and 17 points during the regular season, improved to 18-11 with its fifth straight win and dropped Yale to 24-6. Cam Thrower, a senior from Manhattan Beach, Calif., scored 19 for Penn, including a 3 and two foul shots late in overtime. Ivy League Player of the Year Nick Townsend had 17 points, seven rebounds, six assists and two steals for Yale. Penn reached the NCAA Tournament 10 times between 1993 and 1997 but this is only the Quakers’ second trip since 2008. McCaffrey has now taken five schools – Iowa, Siena, Lehigh, UNC Greensboro and Penn – to the NCAA Tournament. McCaffrey grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and attended Ancillae-Assumpta Academy in Wyncote and La Salle. ...read more read less