Midnight madness

With the official start of NCAA basketball preseason today, the Ivy League has compiled the preseason rankings and awards from various college basketball outlooks.

Penn won't be having any midnight madness festivities like many larger basketball programs — and coach Jerome Allen reportedly won't be holding any late night practices at the Palestra. In fact, the first few team practices will be closed to the media, a policy implemented under Allen's one-time coach Fran Dunphy.

But the program's twitter gave fans a look into the first practice of the season:

So with just 4 weeks until Penn tips off for Allen's first full season as head coach, here's a look at what the experts are predicting for Penn in 2010:

Athalon Sports, Blue Ribbon College Basketball, Lindy's and Rivals are all predicting that Princeton will take home the League trophy this season. The Quakers were picked to finish third by Blue Ribbon and Lindy's (which is in line with my own predictions from the beginning of the school year), fourth by Athalon and Rivals and fifth by Sporting News. This shows a slight jump from last year's 5th place finish, tied with Columbia and Brown.

Junior point guard and co-captain Zack Rosen was picked by all four publications as a preseason all-Ivy candidate, and was also a unanimous player of the year for Athalon, Lindy's Blue Ribbon and Rivals. Lindy's named Rosen 'best playmaker' as well.

Highly touted freshman Miles Cartwright made an appearance with two 'newcomer of the year' selections, and senior co-captain Jack Eggleston was named 'best rebounder' by Lindy's.

What these lists fail to recognize is the expected impact of the returns of Andreas Schreiber and Tyler Bernardini (the 2007-08 Ivy Rookie of the Year), who both missed most of last season with injuries.