The Ivy League announced its 2006 basketball end-of-season awards today, and several players from Penn earned the conference's highest honors.
Ibrahim Jaaber was selected unanimously selected by the eight Ivy League coaches as the Player of the Year after leading Penn to a 12-2 conference record. The junior guard recorded 18.4 points per game, the highest in the league. In addition, he tallied 95 steals over the course of the season, breaking his own record from last year. Jaaber's 3.4 steals per game was the best not only in the league, but in the entire nation.
Junior Mark Zoller joins Jaaber as a First Team All-Ivy honoree. Zoller started off the year slowly, but carried Penn through much of the Ivy League season. He averaged 13.1 points and an Ivy-best 9.0 rebounds in conference play.
The rest of the First-Team All-Ivy selections were Princeton's Scott Greenman (a unanimous selection), Yale's Dominick Martin and Harvard's Matt Stehle. The unanimous Rookie of the Year was Cornell's Adam Gore.
Two other Quakers were honored as well, receiving All-Ivy honorable mention. Senior captain Eric Osmundson and junior Steve Danley were cited for their role in helping Penn to an overall 20-8 record.
The Penn women's basketball team had two honorees as well. Senior Jen Fleischer and junior Joey Rhoads were named honorable mention All-Ivy. Fleischer averaged 8.4 points per game and led the team in rebounds, with 9.7 per game. Rhoads scored 13.7 points per game and hit 87.1 percent of her free throws, 17th-best in the nation.
Brown's Sarah Hayes was the league's Player of the Year, and Jeomi Maduka of Cornell was the Rookie of the Year. Besides Hayes, the All-Ivy First Team consisted of Princeton's Becky Brown and Meagan Cowher and Dartmouth's Jeannie Cullen and Angie Soriaga.
