COLUMN: Ivy season dangerous for M. Hoops

From Rick Haggerty From Rick Haggerty The top-10 powerhouses have come and gone. The Big 5 closes out on Monday when St. Joe's visits the Palestra. For the next month and a half, the Penn men's basketball team will not face an opponent even close to flirting with a national ranking.From Rick Haggerty The top-10 powerhouses have come and gone. The Big 5 closes out on Monday when St. Joe's visits the Palestra. For the next month and a half, the Penn men's basketball team will not face an opponent even close to flirting with a national ranking. It's time for the Ivies -- time for weekend road trips into the wilds of New Hampshire and past the glaciers of Ithaca. It's time for games against teams with RPI rankings that sound like batting averages. Tomorrow night, Penn travels to New York City to face off against Columbia before heading to Ithaca for a matchup with the Big Red the following evening. Penn won't be seeing the likes of Chris Porter, Jamal Magloire or Eric Chenowith for the remainder of its schedule. But beginning with this weekend, guys like Ray Mercedes, Greg Buth and Onaje Woodbine can be even more of a threat to the Quakers than some of those big-name guys were earlier in the season. It sounds cliched, but tomorrow night is the start of Penn's real season. Because in the end, it really does not matter that Kansas made the Quakers look silly in a 46-point blowout or that Penn couldn't come away with a single upset during its non-conference schedule. All that matters is an Ivy League title and a trip to the Tournament. Sure, Penn's out-of-league struggles will hurt its seeding, but those struggles can't keep the Quakers out of the Big Dance. They win the Ivy title, they're in. It's that simple, and everyone knows that. What's in question is whether they can go out and do it over the next month and a half. In the fall, when my co-editor and I sat down to fill out our ballot in the Preseason Ivy League Media Poll, we ranked the Quakers first without even thinking about it. And we weren't alone either -- Penn received all 16 first-place votes. If I had to fill out that ballot again today, I would still put Penn in the top slot. There is no doubt in my mind that the Quakers have more skill than any team in the league, and I believe that eventually everything will come together for them. Before the end of the season, we will see a cohesive unit that can go out and be competitive with anyone. But league play begins tomorrow night, and that cohesive unit has yet to make an appearance. We've already been through the reasons for their difficulties: turnovers and silly mistakes from the freshmen, poor shot selection, a knack for shooting foul shots like Shaquille O'Neal. The list goes on. Maybe these problems stop as the Quakers trudge through the league schedule. Maybe they get a needed blowout against one of these bottom-of-the-barrel teams, thus gaining confidence and rolling to an Ivy title. My guess is something to that effect will indeed happen, and the Quakers will again be listed on the bracket on Selection Sunday. But the Red and Blue have not done much to convince me that they will walk away with an Ivy crown just yet. Yes, they are coming off a win against Drexel on Tuesday night, and although the Quakers only won by eight, the result was really never in doubt. But Drexel is mediocre at best, and in winning that game, the Quakers still made numerous mistakes and often had trouble converting on offense. Tomorrow, they play Columbia. Columbia has lost to the likes of Quinnipiac, Western Carolina, SUNY-Stonybrook and Davidson this season. Not exactly national powerhouses there. Looking at those results, Penn should really not be concerned. But the Lions also hung with Seton Hall for an entire game before losing by two, and they have beaten Lafayette and Lehigh. I'm sure you remember that the Red and Blue did not exactly have an easy time defeating either of these Patriot League opponents. When the game tips off at Levien Gymnasium tomorrow, however, that all goes out the window. It also does not matter that the Lions are winless against Penn for the last eight years. Ivy League teams look forward to playing Penn and Princeton every year, and as we saw last year, they have the ability to win those games too. Last year, Princeton lost to both Harvard and Yale, and although Penn's only league loss was to the Tigers, both Yale and Cornell played the Quakers extremely tough before succumbing. To think this year would be any different is silly. In fact, the danger of falling to one of the six other Ivy teams is probably even greater this season. The loopiness of the early league games only serves to illustrate that point. Dartmouth, pegged as a threat to Penn and Princeton at the season's start, is 0-4. Perennial doormats Columbia and Yale are undefeated, and Brown -- another usual occupant of the second division -- has beaten both Harvard and Dartmouth already. Cornell, a squad like Dartmouth that was supposed to contend, has already lost twice to Columbia. What does this mean to the Quakers as they enter league play tomorrow? According to coach Fran Dunphy, not much. "We don't have any control over what the rest of the league does until we play them," Dunphy said. "We've started to study it, but we can't be overly concerned by it. We have to take care of our business, and the one thing we can control is going to Columbia and Cornell this weekend and hopefully doing well." Of course, that is what you'd expect Dunphy to say and what he should be saying at this point in the season. But as the Quakers head into the league, there is definitely reason for Dunphy and his team to be concerned. Yes, the Penn-Princeton games are still the biggest league games of the year, but contrary to what some Penn fans might think, they are not the only Ivy games that matter. The winner of the Quakers-Tigers matchups usually ends up in the Tournament, and that is this season's likely outcome. With the imprecise and sloppy play of the Quakers so far, however, an upset by one of the six traditional also-rans only seems more plausible. "I'm sure we're going to have a tough game every time out and wherever we play," Dunphy said. I will stand by my preseason prediction of the Quakers as league champions but, looking at their performance from the first half of the season, their road to the title might be a rocky one. Cornell and Columbia do not have any All-Americans or future NBA stars on their roster, but if the Quakers are not careful, the Lions and Big Red could hurt their postseason chances much more than Auburn or Kansas ever could.