Charity strife (and Pattman out)

It's yet to be seen whether the numbers 8-for-21 will still be resounding years later the way the numbers 33-9 are, and the results of the next 10 games will have a lot to do with that.

But if you're a Princeton fan, you're staring at an even scarier statistic having to do with your team's free-throw shooting.

34.

Princeton's leader in the category has taken exactly 34 foul shots.

Never mind that Princeton's played 18 games, and that the stat puts leader Edwin Buffmire 29th in the Ivy League. That's just the beginning.

There are 1,782 players in Division I with more free throw attempts than Buffmire. Put it this way: if each of the other 335 D-I teams had its entire starting five above 34 free throws, that would only be 1,675 players.

And here are your slightly abridged national individual standings:
1. Caleb Green, Oral Roberts, 281 FTA
2. Trey Johnson, Jackson State, 246 FTA
3. Princeton team 230 FTA

Pattman out: Basketball-u.com, citing an article in the Valley News which this blogger is too Internet-unsavvy to find, reports that Leon Pattman is likely to miss tonight's game at the Palestra with an illness.

This one could be ugly. Dartmouth minus Pattman -- clearly the Green's best player -- went 0-6 to start the season.

Quakes (-18) looks awfully good right now (for recreational purposes only of course.)

Top 10: Here are your player rankings for this week. And if you're good, I'll put them in the print edition starting next week. Number in parentheses is the player's ranking as of Jan. 22. Formula the same as always, adjusted to Penn's total of 20 team games played.

1. Zoller, Penn 204.5 (1)
T-2. Cusworth, Harvard 172.5 (2)
T-2. Jaaber, Penn 172.5 (3)
4. Grandieri, Penn 145.5 (4)
5. Baumann, Columbia 144.0 (7)
6. Naeve, Cornell 129.5 (5)
7. McAndrew, Brown 128.1 (6)
8. Hughes, Yale 117.4 (8)
9. Dale, Cornell 101.5 (11)
10. Wittman, Cornell 99.5 (10)
Dropping out of the top 10: Nwachukwu, Columbia.