Link to live streaming audio play-by-play from Matt Provence on NJITHighlanders.com (free)
 
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Link to live video on The Ivy League Digital Network (subscription fees apply)
 
PHILADELPHIA—NJIT men's basketball will take on Penn Saturday in the second end of this season's only basketball doubleheader that finds the NJIT men and women facing their counterparts from the other school, in this case, Penn. The women play at 5 pm and the men are slated for a 7:30 pm tip from the fabled Palestra on the Penn campus.
 
Both games will be carried live with audio play-by-play here on www.NJITHighlanders.com. The audio, with Michael Ventola describing the women's game and Matt Provence with the call on the men's game are presented here for free. Live coverage begins at list 15 minutes before the opening tip, with continuous coverage planned between games of the doubleheaders.
 
The NJIT men are nearing the end of a stretch from December 23 to January 27 that will see them play eight games, seven of which are road contests. Most recently, they dropped a pair last week in North Carolina, on January 16 at North Carolina Central in Durham and two days later at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro.
 
This trip finds the Highlanders visiting Penn and then continuing south to Dover, Delaware, to take on Delaware State on Monday night. After that, the Highlanders will play five of their last seven games at home.
 
The University of Pennsylvania is the only Ivy League opponent on this year's schedule for the NJIT men and the Quakers were the only Ivy foe for the Highlanders last year, as well.
 
Penn edged the Highlanders in Newark, 54-53, to take a 3-0 lead in the all-time series between the schools. That game, on January 17, 2013, saw NJIT rally from down 10 points with 4:39 left to twice pull to within a point of the lead before falling.
 
Penn's Darien Nelson-Henry had a double-double with 12 points and 11 rebounds and Miles Jackson-Cartwright had 12 points and 9 rebounds. But the late-game hero was Patrick Lucas-Perry, who broke a 49-49 tie with a 3-pointer and later hit both ends of a one-and-one to give the Quakers their final five points.
 
Lucas-Perry, who didn't play in the game's first half and finished with nine minutes, had hit 13-of-25 triples coming into the game, but had topped four points in a game once in the preceding 14 contests before his heroics against NJIT.
 
This year, the Quakers have four men averaging double-figure scoring, led by Tony Hicks (15 ppg). Nelson-Henry averages 12.7 ppg, with Fran Dougherty (12 ppg) and Jackson-Cartwright (11 ppg). Dougherty gets 7 rebounds per game, followed by Nelson-Henry (6.8 rpg). Dougherty, a senior missed most of last season, including the game at NJIT, due to illness and injury. Jackson-Cartwright, also a senior has 1,231 career points.
 
Penn's 3-11 record could much be better with some luck. It lost by 5 to Temple, by 3 to Lafayette (which lost in overtime to NJIT), by 6 in overtime to Wagner, by 1 to Rider, and by 3 to George Mason.
 
The Penn head coach is Jerome Allen, a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year for the Quakers, who became interim head coach in December 2009 and was named to the post full-time in March 2010.

One of his assistants, Ira Bowman, is a familiar face at NJIT. A native of Newark who was one of New Jersey's top high school players in the 1990s at Seton Hall Prep, Bowman played in college at Providence and then at Penn, where he was 1996 Ivy League Player of the Year. Following a professional career, Bowman entered college coaching as an assistant at NJIT, working on the first four teams headed by Jim Engles. Bowman returned to his alma mater as an assistant coach before the 2012-13 season.
 
Engles, whose previous job before NJIT was as a top assistant in the Ivy League at Columbia from 2003-04 until he took the Highlanders' helm, is the nephew of John Engles, one of the greatest players ever to come out of Staten Island and who went on to star at Penn in the 1970s, making the Philadelphia Big 5 Hall of Fame.
 
In addition, NJIT assistant coach Jesse Agel, spent six seasons coaching in the Ivy League at Brown (two as an assistant coach from 2008 to 2012 as the head coach.
 
The Highlanders, who played in Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse (opened in 1928) back in December, will take on Penn in the Palestra for the second time. The Palestra, named "The Cathedral of Basketball" by ESPN, opened in 1927 and has hosted more men's basketball games overall and more NCAA Tournament games than any other building in the country.
 
NJIT's scoring leader is freshman Damon Lynn, who set a new program Division I record with 34 points in the last game at North Carolina A&T, as well as making a program record (all divisions) with 9 3-points baskets in the game. He averages 17.2 points and his 3.75 3-point field goals per game rank fifth among the nation's Division I players.
 
Terrence Smith is the main inside threat, averaging 12.2 points to go with a team-best 6.2 rebounds per game. He is making 58.4 percent of his field goal attempts.
 
Winfield Willis (9.2 ppg) and Ky Howard (9.1 ppg) are two other threats and Howard's 70 assists top the team. The Highlanders also got a boost with the return from injury by freshman Tim Coleman, a versatile forward who does a lot of things well and averages 7.5 points and 4.6 rebounds. He had missed five games due to injury, but returned at North Carolina A&T.