SPLIT, Croatia – The University of Pennsylvania men’s basketball team improved to 2-0 during its trip abroad to Croatia on Monday evening, taking a 95-87 decision from KK Kastela.
Nick Spinoso led five Penn players in double figures, scoring 18 points, while George Smith stuffed the stat sheet with 13 points, five rebounds, seven assists and three steals. Niklas Polonowski knocked down five three-pointers for his 15 points, Johnnie Walter hit a trio of treys en route to 13, and Augustus Gerhart scored 11 points and grabbed a team-high seven rebounds. Reese McMullen had six assists, while Cam Thrower matched Smith with three steals.
Penn got out to a quick start and took a 24-19 lead after one quarter. Kastela was red-hot through much of the second period and drew level on a pair of occasions, at 28-28 and 30-30, before a Quakers run pushed them back in front by as many as nine. Kastela scored four points in the final four seconds of the half, though, and Penn’s lead was only three at the break, 49-46.
Penn broke things open in the third quarter, the lead bulging to as many as 13, but once again Kastela came back and got within five after three, 71-66. However, the Quakers opened the fourth quarter on a 15-2 run and that pretty much settled matters.
Kastela plays in the Prva Hrvatska Košarkaška Liga—the equivalent of Croatia’s second division—and finished sixth out of 14 teams this past season with a 15-11 record.
This was the second of three games the Quakers will play while in Croatia; on Saturday, they defeated KK Dubrovnik from Premijer Liga, 72-61. The Red and Blue’s final game will come Thursday night against another Premijer Liga team in KK Dubrava Furnir Zagreb. The team is scheduled to fly back to the United States on Saturday morning, arriving in Philadelphia that afternoon.
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