Penn will host Villanova over at the Palestra in Philadelphia in a Big 5 contest on Wednesday night. For the Quakers it is one of the biggest games of the year in what has been a brutal start to their season.
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The game (7 p.m. ET start time) isn’t on TV, but anyone in the US can watch Villanova vs Penn live on ESPN+:
ESPN+ will have exclusive coverage of hundreds of college basketball games during the 2021-22 season. It also includes dozens of other live sports, every 30-for-30 documentary and additional original content (both video and written) all for $6.99 for a month or $69.99 for a year.
Or, if you also want Disney+ and Hulu, you can get all three for $13.99 per month. Separately, the three streaming services would cost a total $20.97 per month, so you’re saving about 33 percent:
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Once signed up for ESPN+, you can watch Villanova vs Penn live on the ESPN app on your Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Firestick, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation 4 or 5, Xbox One or Series X/S, any device with Android TV (such as a Sony TV or Nvidia Shield), Samsung Smart TV, Oculus Go, iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet.
You can also watch on your computer via ESPN.com.
Villanova vs Penn Basketball 2021 Preview
Villanova vs Penn
For the Penn Quakers the 2021-22 started out in a fast and furious manner as they played nine games in a span of 19 days. Of those nine encounters, eight of them were on the road. This makes this home game quite the rarity at this stage go the season.
So much so, that Penn is the only team in all of division one basketball that played that many games in the month of November. Only one team played more games- Coppin State (10).
During this stretch, if you include Villanova, Penn will have faced three Top 25 teams in their first games. Needless to say, it is quite brutal.
With the Villanova Wildcats on the horizon, the 3-6 Quakers face their crosstown rivals in their rival’s gym and as Big 5 games tend to be, this one also looks to be filled with lots of passion.
For the Ivy Leaguers, this is the beginning of what will be four consecutive away games all over the City of Brotherly Love.
Despite being on the short side of this series, Penn are quite aware of their recent history as the last time that these two teams collided at The Palestra back in 2018, the Quakers came out on top. More importantly, they also won the Big 5 title that same season.
Where history does favor the visiting Wildcats is that their rivals never beat a sixth-ranked team in their four previous attempts. The last time they did face a team in that position was back in 1988 when they played Temple. However, they last time they beat a team in the top six was back in 1971 when they defeated fifth-ranks USC.
They are also coming off a win against LaSalle at The Palestra 72-46. In that game, the Wildcats limited La Salle to just one assist over the course of the entire game. The team showed signs of improvement compared to the losses they suffered to both UCLA and Purdue earlier in the year.
The defensive effort was led by redshirt sophomore forward Eric Dixon to switch on to and maintain solid defensive position against La Salle's backcourt.
They were also led by Collin Gillespie’s 13 points, Brandon Slater’s 12 and 11 points from both Eric Dixon and Caleb Daniels.
This win helped the Wildcats climb to sixth in the rankings knowing full well that they have an upcoming stretch of games that will be quite difficult to get through when they play St. Joe’s, Syracuse, Baylor and Creighton before coming home for the Christmas holiday.
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