The Daily Pennsylvanian is a student-run nonprofit.

Please support us by disabling your ad blocker on our site.

Once again, Ivy basketball season is upon us, and we at Roundup are asking the eternal question: Who friggin' cares? Let's face it -- the Quakers should just mail in the results of their Ivy games, because the chance of Penn losing to any of these weak excuses for Division I basketball teams is about the same as the chance Rick Hielscher has of going to the NBA. Really goddamn small, that is. Not that Rick won't be okay if he doesn't. His parents are members of an exclusive North Shore country club back in Chicago ("The Glen View Club"), so we here at Roundup are sure they can provide for him even if his meagre basketball skills don't. Despite this, Roundup is required by federal mandate to give our predictions. In addition, the Surgeon General requires us to warn you that these predictions are a hell of a lot funnier after consuming large amounts of malt beverages. Our sympathies if you happen to be sober. With that said, without further ado? IVY ROUNDUP'S 1994-95 IVY LEAGUE PREDICTIONS. 1. Pennsylvania. Enough said. The only question here is when Penn will be in Sports Illustrated (we guess one or two weeks, considering the presence of Jack McCallum at a recent game). The only way the Quakers could lose a game to any of these jokers is by shooting at their own basket. We see "The Streak" at 43 consecutive games in March. Interestingly, computer simulations undertaken by Roundup indicate that next year's team could have gone 12-2 in last year's league. Ergo, next year's Penn team will still be the class of the league, although "The Streak" may be in danger. Draft them now for your Ivy League fantasy basketball leagues! The only drawback is that although Penn coach Fran Dunphy is a great coach, his press conferences tend to be somewhat cliche ridden -- including the classic, "We've got some good kids." We here at Roundup have but one thing to say: We want Skip! 2. Princeton If there's anything Ivy basketball has in the upper echelons of college basketball, it is funny coaches and ugly, awkward stiffs. And you start that list with Rick Hielscher and Pete Carril (although not in that order). When a reporter asked Pete Carril about his team, Yoda replied that he'd rather talk about "growing rice in Madagascar." Since we here at Roundup don't know jack about rice or Madagascar, we assume Pete has the standard boring Princeton team composed of guards who can gun from international waters and ugly, awkward forwards who set a lot of screens and are the benefactors of a lot of "sneaky" back-door passes. A quick glance at the media guide reveals that this is in fact the case. That means the Tigers will likely finish second again, at about 11-3 or 10-4. Always looking ahead, Carril recruited Steve Goodrich to replace Hielscher as King Stiff. Carril recently said precocious freshman Goodrich has "the shooting range but not the making range." Man, Yoda cracks us up. 3. Brown We here at Roundup have been fearing this Brown team for a long time. The Bears have three solid guards in Eric Blackiston, Alan Cole, and Brian Lloyd. Lloyd is almost the mirror image of Scott Kegler -- a great shooter from international waters, except he's not even close to 6-6. Unfortunately for Brown's two die-hard fans, the Brown front court is about as talented as the La Salle dance team, only the Bears aren't quite as overweight. Because of that, Brown meets the previously-mentioned stiff guidelines set by the Ivy office. Special note: Brown coach Frank "Happy" Dobbs is by far the least interesting Ivy coach to talk to. And he is in some fashion associated with Villanova, so we here at Roundup blame him in part for the breakup of the Big 5. 4. Dartmouth The Big Green are here only because they beat Princeton earlier. Otherwise they bite. Holding with current Ivy trends, they have a plethora of stiffs, and coach Dave Faucher should have been a stand-up comedian. Faucher quote: "The way Penn's been playing, I don't even think we'll show up." He took that right out of our mouth here at Roundup. Really wacky Dartmouth fact: center Asa Palmer (a fully accredited stiff) is the younger brother of ex-Dartmouth center Crawford Palmer (also a fully-accredited stiff) who is the younger brother of -- can you guess -- ex-Dartmouth center Walter Palmer (a -- surprise -- fully accredited stiff). If this were a family of thoroughbreds, they'd be racing in $5,000 claimers races in Phoenix (for non-horse racing literate fans, that means they suck). 5. Cornell Some of us here at Roundup have ranted and raved about the great Cornell recruiting class ad nauseum. Then we saw Cornell play Notre Dame, at which point we affirmed our determination that Al Walker is a fantastic recruiter and a absolutely horrific game coach despite being an assistant at North Carolina at one point. How anyone could finish last in the Ivy League with two solid forwards (Justin Treadwell and Zeke Marshall) and a decent guard (Brandt Schuckman) is beyond us. He is a pretty funny guy, though. The Big Red did beat out the other Big Red for Bo Buettenback, who turned down Tom Osborne (and therefore a pseudo-National Championship) to play for this clown. Cornell also maintained its reputation as an institution of academic integrity when it admitted 27 year old forward Eddie Samuels, a transfer from Pensacola Junior College. Nothing like finishing up that degree in hotel and restaurant management at SUNY-Ithica. 6. Yale We guess so, anyway. There's really no factor that makes Yale any better than Harvard or Columbia except the coach. Coach Dick Kuchen is a riot and he got thrown out of the Penn game last year. He once categorized a player who turned out to be his starting point guard for two years as "he was a football recruit." We can respect things like that, here at Roundup. Kuchen was also a Digger Phelps assistant, which means he'd probably make an even worse color commentator. (Not that we here at Roundup don't like Digger. He's a great guy -- he's just better behind the bench instead of behind the mike.) 7. Harvard Considering the Crimson gave Penn its closest Ivy game last year, you'd think we'd rank them higher. But Harvard coach Frank Sullivan is so un-funny (by Ivy standards) that we don't like him very much. Did you know: Harvard is the only Ivy team never to win a basketball title. That won't change anytime soon. If you see any signs of life in the Harvard program or humor in Frank Sullivan, please notify us at: Ivy Roundup c/o The Daily Pennsylvanian 4015 Walnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19104 (215)-898-9866 8. Columbia Coach Jack Rohan is really old. He coached a team that beat Fran Dunphy's team once. Twice, actually. Once when Dunphy was a coach (Penn's last Ivy loss, 31 games and eons ago) and once when Dunphy was a player (for a great LaSalle team). How about that! Remember that game a few years ago when Penn clinched a tie for the '93 Ivy title at Columbia? When Tim Krug made that four-point play? And when everyone got in fights with obnoxious Columbia fans? And chanting "CBA" when the Columbia fans chanted "NBA" for Buck Jenkins? And running on the court at the end and the only player you saw was Skip Metz so you gave him a high five? We have these memories too, but usually the medication helps us forget. That concludes Roundup's predictions for the '94-95 Ivy season. Granted, they may seem a bit flippant, but if you're not flippant, you really have no understanding of what Ivy Roundup is all about. Flippancy, you see, is the lifeblood of Roundup. Without it, we'd be the Yale Daily News or some other piece of crap paper -- and aren't you thankful for that. Well, probably not. But to say the least, you should be. Peace, y'all, or we'll sic the Gimp on you.

Comments powered by Disqus

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.