Penn’s 1979 Final Four Team
Photo credit: University Archives
Penn entered the 1979 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament as an unranked No. 9 seed. Suffice it to say, the Quakers weren’t expected to make much noise.
Penn finished the regular season as Ivy League Champions (for the eighth time in 10 years), and also won the Big Five title. But the team didn’t get respect until the tournament actually began.
In the first round, Penn beat eighth-seeded Iona. The Quakers then shook up the basketball world by upsetting perennial powerhouse (and the East Region’s No. 1 seed) North Carolina, 72-71, on the back of senior forward Tony Price’s 25 points and 9 rebounds. In the Sweet Sixteen, the Quakers juiced the Orangemen of Syracuse. And in the Eastern Regional Final against St. John’s, James Salters hit two clutch free throws with 23 seconds remaining to propel Penn into the Final Four—the first time an Ivy had reached that point since Princeton in 1965.
The National Semifinal, held at the University of Utah, pitted Penn against the Big Ten’s Michigan State Spartans, who were led by sophomore guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson. The Quakers fought valiantly, but fell, 101-67. Asked in 2004 if, in retrospect, he would have had a different player guard Magic, Quaker Coach Bob Weinhauer said, “If our whole team guarded Magic, the results would probably not have been any different.”
Pictured here are cheerleaders at a rally at Franklin Field in March of 1979, prior to the Big Dance.
For more information on Penn’s 1979 Final Four team, visit Penn Athletics at www.pennathletics.com. For more information about historical events at Penn, visit the University Archives web site at www.archives.upenn.edu.
