Starting slow

The Penn men's basketball team starts off its Ivy season in just about the easiest possible way - at home to Dartmouth and Harvard. Along with Princeton, these are the only three teams I really think don't have a legitimate chance to win the league, but even they could knock some people off. Here's a very brief analysis of each team's schedule coming in. We'll have more to come soon.

Tommy Amaker's Harvard squad surprisingly beat the coach's former team, Michigan, but hasn't done much else

The Crimson are 5-2 at home, but 0-9 on the road. On the bright side, the 6-12 Crimson haven't lost to a team with an RPI over 300, but then again, they haven't played any.

Dartmouth is slightly more consistent than Harvard, but has still gone 5-1 at home and 2-7 on the road. The Big Green are on a tear now (well, three wins has to be considered a tear for Dartmouth), winning against Harvard, at New Hampshire and then against Maryland-Eastern Shore. None of those teams are good at all, but the home wins were by large margins (18 and 16) and they'll take any win on the road that they can take.

Thanks to Dartmouth coach Terry Dunn refusing to allow his players talk to the media with the exception of the 15 minutes after a game, my plans for an "opponent spotlight" article this week have been foiled.

So here are a few sample ideas you won't learn about in the DP this week:

Freshman point guard Ronnie Dixon, from Danville, Ill, is the youngest of 11 children. This is pretty interesting in itself, but why is it particularly odd? It's the exact same situation as comedian and host of the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert. Dixon's also in the Dartmouth gospel band.

Senior guard Michael Giovacchini has brothers that played basketball at Stanford and Harvard, his father played at Washington State and his uncle was also a Cardinal. They were all point guards.

Guard Robby Pride won two Colorado state high school titles in Lacrosse.

Blake Williams went to Blake High School in Minnesota. And he still collects Pokemon cards.