Some of you might still be awake when you read this. Others will be checking this out in the morning.
But I'm here to assuage any fears you might have of Princeton shocking Penn Tuesday night.
Yes, weird stuff happens in this rivalry, but here are five reasons why nothing catastrophic will happen to the Quakers:
1. Jan. 13 vs. Columbia
Somehow Princeton sent a game to overtime without hitting a field goal in the final 10:52 of regulation. The Lions committed fouls twice in the last 15 seconds to let the Tigers tie the game both times.
Then in overtime, Dalen Cuff pulled a Chris Webber, called a timeout he didn't have while trailing by two, and sent Princeton to the line to ice the game.
2. Feb. 10 at Harvard
Princeton trailed by six with 1:17 to play. After a Princeton bucket, the Tigers got two steals without any fouls, despite some accounts of the game that made it look like a mauling, and hit a three and a jumper with 0.2 seconds left to win the game.
3. Feb. 11 at Dartmouth
OK, there was no miracle here, but Princeton only beat the Big Green by three. Dartmouth is not very good. It also lost by three to Stony Brook.
It is worth noting that despite these three escape jobs by Princeton, Penn has won its six Ivy League games by margins of 40, 32, 17, 22, 19, and 13. That's an average of 23.8. Princeton's margin of victory in its five wins is 8.0. Add in the loss to Cornell at home a day after Penn beat the Big Red by 40, and the Tigers' average scoring margin in league play is 5.3. That's a difference of 18.5 points per game for those of you scoring at home.
4. Princeton's center is 6-foot-4
Pete Carrill used to say that he could take any five guys off the street and plug them into the Princeton offense and still win. It seems his former player Joe Scott has taken this literally. I wrote about Justin Conway in Tuesday's DP, and he certainly brings a bunch of intangibles to the table.
"I think that all the stuff that I read about Conway and all the comments that I hear from his fellow players and coaches all reflect what you see on film ... that he just does what he needs to do to make his team better," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "Whether it's getting key rebounds, making the offense run through him, being in the right place at the right time, he just looks like a guy with a lot of intangibles in his game and he just finds a way to get it done."
But Conway is outsized against Mark Zoller (6-7) and Steve Danley (6-8), and if the duo can play so well against people who are bigger than them, they should dominate him in the post.
"I have a little bit of a height advantage," Zoller said. "It doesn't really happen too often. I guess if I do have that height advantage I'll try to work inside a little bit more. It'll probably affect Steve's game a little bit more. I think playing against a little bit of a smaller guy will be beneficial to him."
5. Penn's transition game will dull the Tigers' slow game
Princeton wins by slowing the game down and limiting the number of shots its opponents takes. A big part of Penn's offense is points off turnovers and fast breaks. Princeton turns the ball over 13 times a game. The Quakers force an average of 18. Turn those into at least 20 Penn points, and the Tigers' offense will be hard-pressed to keep up. Also, the quick possessions in transition will make for more possessions for Penn, giving them a better chance to score more.
So there you have it, Penn should have little trouble Tuesday night. But as we have found out in this rivalry, anything can happen.
Just 20 hours until the Penn-Princeton game tips off, and here are some notes to get you ready.
Quakers guard Eric Osmundson said at practice today that he survived his two run-ins at Harvard and will be ready to go for tonight's matchup.
Osmundson twisted his knee as he tripped over a Penn cheerleader under the basket after making a layup. He later took a pretty good whack from the Crimson's Michael Beal in his shoulder, but he has shaken both off.
Bad news for Princeton, as Osmundson was the one who sparked the big comeback at the Palestra last year.
The smart money is on not betting when the Quakers and Tigers meet, since we all know that all logic is thrown out the window in this rivalry.
But if you must know, Penn was listed as a 14.5 point favorite on the sports betting Web site Pinnaclesports.com.
At first, I thought there just wouldn't be enough possessions in a Princeton game for either team to win by that many, but then I looked back through the years. Of the teams' last 20 meetings, half were decided by 14 points or more, with the widest margin coming in Penn's 73-48 win at Princeton on March 2, 1999.
Maybe a little revenge for Black Tuesday 21 days earlier.
See you at the Palestra.
I stopped by the Penn ticket office this morning on the way to class and was told that around 7,000 tickets have been sold for tomorrow night's big Penn-Princeton game. That's about 1,700 short of the Palestra's capacity. It really would be a shame if the marquee game in Ivy League basketball can't draw a full house, especially when the teams are in first and second place in the Ancient Eight yet again.
The last two years I have been to Columbia to watch Penn, I've heard it referred to as 'Palestra junior' because of all the Quakers fans in the house. After seeing the crowd Saturday at Harvard, I propose christening Lavietes Pavilion 'Palestra North,' because it's just like a Penn home game. Mark Zoller thought so: "There certainly were a lot more Penn Quakers fans than Harvard Crimson fans."
It really was a sight to see 60 percent of the crowd singing the Red and Blue after a road game. Penn at least had a band, although they had to compete with canned music for the second straight night. That's more than Harvard could say.
You may have seen Eric Osmundson take a hard foul late in the second half. He went to the bench and was icing his right shoulder for the last few minutes of the game. He told me after the game that it was sore but he would be fine -- he was more concerned about his ankle after tripping over a cheerleader earlier in the game.
If Osmundson is not 100 percent Tuesday night, there is no reason to panic. Brian Grandieri spent more time handling the ball this weekend and should have no trouble if he's called on for more minutes. Plus, this team has enough experience that it can run its offense effectively without Osmundson in the game. Plenty of Dartmouth players were quick to praise the Quakers for how well they played together and created shots for themselves.
I would nominate Friedrich Ebede's dunk at the end of the Harvard game for 'Dunk of the Year.' Good marks for style and bonus points for great elevation.
You know you are on an Ivy League road trip when: the clock operator fails to start the shot clock for the second time in as many nights. At Harvard I swear it cost Penn a good look because the game was halted for more than a minute which took the offense out of its rhythm, and that possession ended in a poor shot. What can you do.
In case you missed it, four of the five Big 5 teams won yesterday -- La Salle beat Xavier, Penn beat Harvard, Temple beat Duquesne and Villanova beat DePaul.
Only Saint Joseph's failed to win, blowing an early lead and losing in heartbreaking fashion at the end of the game to No. 8 George Washington, 64-62.
The near miss of a 5-0 day in the Big 5 got me thinking -- has that ever happened before?
And literally, after hours of research, the answer is yes.
The day was January 16, 1971.
The scoreboard looked like this:
La Salle 91, Western Kentucky 76
Penn 91, Manhattan 68
Saint Joseph's 85, at Davidson 84
Temple 67, at Fordham 66
Villanova 82, at Niagara 79 (2 OTs)
Obviously, there were a few close calls here to let it happen. Also, both city teams that were home -- La Salle and Penn -- played their games that day at the Palestra.
If I find another day like this I will amend this post. But now I need a break.
Update: Drexel, which lost yesterday, may have either beaten Swarthmore or lost to Moravian on 1/16/71 -- none of the school's Web sites or media guides have that information.
Update No. 2:I have finally completed the research. Since Big 5 play began in 1955-56, only on that day in 1971 was there ever a 5-0 mark.
However, before '55-'56, there were four such occasions, including two in one month.
Here they are:
12/11/54
La Salle 76, at Niagara 75, OT
Penn 71, Muhlenberg 52
Temple 59, at Navy 55
St. Joe's 70, at Albright 58
Villanova 76, St. Francis (PA) 71 (Palestra)
2/28/53
La Salle 94, Youngstown 41 (at SJU)
Penn 76, Harvard 59
Temple 62, Manhattan 57 (at SJU)
St. Joe's 79 at Muhlenberg 61
Villanova 62, Le Moyne 57 (Palestra)
2/4/53
La Salle 73 at Loyola (Md.) 61
Penn 63, Columbia 56
Temple 82, Delaware 45
St. Joe's 111, Rhode Island 92
Villanova 93, Canisius 80 (Palestra)
12/8/48
La Salle 76, BYU 54
Penn 61, at Swarthmore 44
Temple 82, Bucknell 40
St. Joe's 63, West Chester 41
Villanova 64, St. Francis (NY) 48
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- As those of you in Philadelphia know full well, the Northeast corridor is getting whacked by a big snowstorm this evening. While it hasn't hit Massachusetts yet, by tomorrow morning it'll be a different story. The forecast is for a foot or so of snow, which is why the Penn men's basketball team is already on its way back south.
So as the blizzard comes nearer, here are a few notes from this evening's 81-68 Quakers victory over Harvard:
Unlike last Saturday's game against Yale, the start of tonight's game was about as good as possible for Penn. The Quakers jumped to an 11-0 lead and kept Harvard off the scoreboard until a layup by freshman point guard Drew Housman at the 13:28 mark. Housman has a lot of potential and is probably the best rookie in the Ivy League this season, but he had to guard Ibrahim Jaaber tonight and it was no contest. The Penn junior guard lit up Housman and the box score for 23 points, three assists and six steals. Housman scored a respectable ten points, of which five came from the free throw line, but committed nine turnovers.
Penn's leading scorer was junior forward Mark Zoller, who finished with 26 points -- including five three-pointers from seven attempts -- and nine rebounds. Zoller was left open from the top of the arc time and again by Harvard coach Frank Sullivan's defense, and made the Crimson pay for it in a big way. Some day, an opposing coach will figure out that he shouldn't be left open, but I'm sure Quakers fans hope that day doesn't come until April of next year.
The game's leading scorer, though, was Harvard forward Matt Stehle. His career high 28 points, of which 22 came in the second half, and the 15 rebounds he pulled down were just enough to make the score respectable and keep Penn coach Fran Dunphy from emptying the bench.
There were two other things worth noting from tonight. First, both teams' coaches wore sneakers in honor of the annual Coaches vs. Cancer Awareness Day. Dunphy is among the most involved people in the country in Coaches vs. Cancer, and the cause always deserves praise.
Second, Harvard's band didn't show up to the game. Penn's was there, but didn't get to play all that much, which meant there was far more canned music than there ought to be at a college basketball game.
Granted, the Harvard band was at the Beanpot ice hockey tournament at the TD Banknorth Garden (known to the rest of us as the Fleet Center, where Penn played Oklahoma State in the 2003 NCAA Tournament), which is pretty much the biggest collegiate winter sports event in Boston. But between that and the fact that the crowd of 2,030 at Lavietes Pavillion was dominated by Penn fans, about the only way you could tell it was a Harvard home game was by the paint on the court.
Some day, the Crimson will win its first Ivy League title in men's basketball. On this night, though, Harvard was once again given a lesson by the Ancient Eight's standard bearer. Enjoy the snow, and the countdown to Tuesday night's showdown with Princeton.
HANOVER, N.H.
Quakers take the floor in front of a modest -- to say the least -- crowd of mostly home fans. There are no students here - after all, there is a hockey game a few blocks away. Also it's Winter Carnival weekend here -- think Spring Fling with a wind chill.
Starting lineups:
Penn: Jaaber, Osmundson, Danley, Whitehurst and Zoller
Dartmouth: Giovacchini, Flynn, Ball, Arnold and Lang
Opening few minutes are a pain to watch. Dartmouth's Johnathan Ball is wearing one of those stylish facemasks after suffering a fracure against Yale in January. Terry Dunn calls timeout at 15:52 - Penn 7 Dart 5.
I can actually hear myself talk. This certainly isn't the Palestra. First media timeout 13:52 - Penn 9 Dart 8. There are two bands here. Why are they playing the Black Eyed Peas over the loudspeaker?
Jaaber clearly came to play. He already has a steal (which led to a slam) and a blocked shot. No one else seems to be able to rebound.
12:20 - First sighting of Leon Pattman tonight. He was questionable because of a knee injury. His first touch ended up in Jaaber's hands as he made a bad pass and failed to realize he had been intercepted. Before he figured it out, Jaaber was slamming it home at the other end. 10:29 - Penn 17 Dart 8.
This game is getting boring quick. The Dartmouth cheerleaders perform some sort of odd "Riverdance" routine. If you're scoring at home: 12 Penn cheerleaders plus the Quaker to 7 Dartmouth cheerleaders. Dartmouth players are having a better time passing to Jaaber than to their own teammates. So far I've got him for two interceptions and two more legit steals. 7:16 - Penn 22 Dart 15.
Passing looks awful. Ebede put up a three from about 20 feet, it missed the rim by about a foot, but Jaaber was there for the putback. 25-19 Penn. Clock operator can't seem to figure out the shot clock - refs finally get that straightened out. At least Penn is 9 of 11 on foul shots.
Jaaber fouled Pattman on a three as time expired. Penn 31, Dart 23. HALFTIME
Leading scorers in the first half: Penn: Jaaber 11 (5-5 FG), Whitehurst 7; Dartmouth: Lang 7. Turnovers: Penn 11, Dartmouth 11. Jaaber has four steals. Dartmouth is shooting 29 percent (9-31). Penn 52.6 percent (10-19).
Dartmouth center Arnold picked up his fourth foul at 18:39. He's logged 9 minutes so far. Now we can see why he only averages 20 minutes a game. Dunn calls timeout to try to calm things down. 15:53 - Penn 40, Dart 27.
Mostly a ho-hum second half. Passing is anything but pretty. Whitehurst has knocked down a few threes and Dartmouth continues to turn the ball over. Stat watch: Fouls - Dart 6, Penn 1 -- 7:46 - Penn 55 Dart 40.
Dartmouth continues to hang around. With 4 1/2 minutes to play, Dunphy has gone no deeper than Ebede and Grandieri into his bench. 4:31 - Penn 57, Dart 44
3:01 - Tommy McMahon is the first real sub off the bench. Grandieri, Whitehurst and Ebede sit. Penn is 12 of 16 from the line.
Here's your Penn lineup: Cam Lewis, Greg Kuchinski, McMahon, Jaaber and Brennan Votel. Penn 70, Dart 49 with a minute to go.
FINAL: Penn 70, Dartmouth 51 -- The Quakers are now 4-1 against the spread in the Ivy League. (tonight's was 15)
Here's a hodgepodge of information on the basketball team that I have been meaning to post for a while:
A couple weeks ago I posted about how Penn would be in amazing shape for the NCAA Tournament if it had hung on to beat Temple, St. Joe's and Colorado. The Quakers led in all three of these games at home before eventually losing.
I e-mailed the heads of two of my favorite college basketball Web sites -- Jerry Palm of collegerpi.com and Warren Nolan of warrennolan.com -- to find out where Penn would be ranked had it won all three games.
Palm said Penn would be ranked 34th in the RPI, while Nolan said that the Quakers would be 38th. This would rank them ahead of the likes of Kansas and Maryland.
You'd think that Ibrahim Jaaber's scoring numbers would have gone way up once he got to play against Ivy League defenses. But that's actually not the case.
In fact, his scoring has dropped off a bit -- from 17.6 points per game in non-Ivy play to 16.8 points per game in Ancient Eight games.
I asked Fran Dunphy about this earlier this week and he says he's actually not surprised about this. He told me that Ivy teams have been watching Jaaber and planning a way to shut him down all year.
But Jaaber has become a much more efficient offensive player in Penn's four Ivy games. His field goal percentage is up from 51.4 to 60.5. His three-point shooting is also way up, from 33.8 to 55.6 percent. And he has almost doubled his assists per game, from 1.8 to 3.5.
With West Virginia's loss last night to Pittsburgh, Penn is one of just six teams left in the nation that are undefeated in conference play.
The other five are Duke, Memphis, Gonzaga, George Washington and Bucknell.
It's the first road weekend of the year for the Quakers, and it also is the first time that a home team will get to wear white twice in a weekend -- Harvard will because Penn has two uniforms.
The Big Green will come into play tonight with a very plain getup.
There is not much else to say other than the fact that this is the most plain and high-school looking uniform Penn will see this year. One color and no piping except the little rings around the shorts, collar and arm holes, as well as the waistband.
As for Harvard, the Crimson has changed its look from the Chicago Bulls style of years past to a sleeker outfit this year.
The 2005-06 look is the same as Oklahoma's uniforms, which also happen to be the same color.
So I have to take off points for the lack of originality and the weird number font -- a little too curvy for my taste.
As for the Quakers, expect blue tonight and red tomorrow. Why? Because that is what Penn has worn on this trip for at least three straight years -- every year since "Pennsylvania" became "Penn" on the jerseys.
I can't find any photos from before that, so I apologize for ending the history lesson there.
Here's Penn in 2002-03 at Harvard, and here's last year at Harvard and Dartmouth (sorry for the black and white).
It also happened in 2003-04, but I can't find pictures right now. The Harvard Crimson had a picture of it yesterday, but the link disappeared.
Penn is 6-0 over that span wearing blue in Boston and red in Hanover, N.H.
So that's what to expect again as Penn tries for 6-0 in the Ivy League.
Tonight, the Buzz will keep you up to date on all the happenings on the Quakers' trip to Dartmouth.
Game time is 7 p.m.
Random Dartmouth/Harvard Trivia
- Penn's last loss to Dartmouth came on Feb. 9, 1997 -- 54-53.
- The Quakers have been swept on this road trip just once since 1959 -- losing to Harvard then Dartmouth in 1986.
- Princeton, who faces Harvard tonight in Boston, was swept on this road trip last year.
- Oddly enough, both Penn and Princeton have identical records at Dartmouth and Harvard since the Ivy League adopted traveling partners in 1957: 37-12 at Dartmouth and 39-10 at Harvard.
I might be the only one left out there, but I'm still not sold on Princeton. Sure they're in second place in the league after pummeling Brown and Yale over the weekend, but Joe Scott's Tigers still have not proved they can win a tough game.
Let's be honest. Brown? St. Joe's Prep could probably beat that team even if they do shoot better than 25.7 percent (the Bears' mark against Princeton). And the Columbia game came down to an idiotic play by the Lions' Dalen Cuff calling a timeout when his team was out of timeouts in overtime. Joe Jones' squad lost it more than Princeton won it, especially considering the home team didn't score a field goal in the last 10 minutes.
This weekend we will all get a realistic look at what the Tigers are made of on the road, where they have yet to play an Ivy League game and have just one win all season -- over Lehigh on Nov. 20.
Yes, Princeton looks to have righted the ship once Ivy play began, but there are still too many things that stand between them and being competitive.
- Their offense is up to 58.8 points per Ivy game, but that is against four of the worst defenses in the league, and one game was overtime.
- Of their 235 points, 63 (27 percent) have come from the foul line. Officials will not be that kind away from Jadwin Gym.
- Still well over half of their shots are coming from three-point range. That will not be effective against the better guards in this league -- think Ibrahim Jaaber.
- Starting a former JV player at center isn't going to draw any defensive attention away from Scott Greenman and Noah Savage. We all know how that offense doesn't work without a center.
- They have yet to score more than 19 field goals in a league game. Even 1-5 Dartmouth averages more than 23.
- Yale is the only team not to out-rebound Princeton (although they held a 9-7 edge in offensive boards) who has a -5 rebounding margin.
If the Tigers are for real, they will win Friday night in Boston AND Saturday in New Hampshire -- both places they lost last season. I don't think they will be in second place come Sunday morning.
But I could be wrong. Princeton might win the league and be the first Ivy team even in the play-in game come March.
Back in the 1960s, there was a popular genre of Soul music called the Philly Sound. These days, though, the Philly Sound is the roar that can only be found at a Big 5 game like the one that took place this evening between Villanova and Saint Joseph's. Both student sections were full an hour before tipoff, and ESPN2 said that the Hawks fans got in as early as 4 p.m. Throughout the night, the two sides of the arena had at each other with as much ferocity as the game that was taking place in front of them. For every St. Joe's cheer that "The Hawk will never die," there was a reply from Villanova of "N-I-T," and on some occasions I swear the "Let's go 'Nova" and "Let's go St. Joe's" chants were exactly in sync.
The best chant of the night, though, came when the St. Joe's students started chanting "This is our house," given the frequency with which they play at the Palestra, and the Villanova fans replied by chanting "This is Penn's house!"
That's some Philadelphia brotherhood for you -- especially considering that Penn has only beaten the Hawks three times in the last ten seasons.
In today's DP, I wrote about how Cornell has a Web page where you can post messages to injured player Khaliq Gant.
To send him a message, click here or to view what other people have written, click here.
Obviously, all of us at the Buzz wish Gant a full and speedy recovery.
In tomorrow's DP, I have a column about Penn, Princeton and the Ivy League title race. I tried to find a statistical indicator of why the Tigers have turned it around in the Ivy season, and I think I found it. I won't give my column away, but it has to do with the team's combination of scoring from three, two and the free-throw line.
So I decided to look at Penn's balance of ones, twos and threes. Here's what I found:
In Penn's 12 wins, they score 19 percent of their points from the free-throw line, 51 percent off two-pointers and 30 percent from three.
In the team's six losses, however, they get 13 percent of their scoring from one-pointers, 61 percent from two-pointers and 26 from three-pointers.
I guess this means that Penn may live and die by the three more than we previously thought.
It was obvious that something was wrong with the Quakers coming out of the gate against Yale last night.
I wonder if this will be a problem in the future.
Obviously, Ivy League players -- and Penn is full of veterans -- are used to the back-to-back games. But playing a seven-man rotation will eventually take its toll.
Penn also has three road weekends left and only one at home.
I asked coach Fran Dunphy about this on Thursday, and he said that he has to play the players who he feels give him the best chance to win. Ideally, he said, he would play 10 players for 20 minutes each.
He also said he hoped that in this past weekend everyone would get a chance to play. The twin blowouts allowed that to happen, as the players outside the usual seven-man rotation got 28 minutes against Brown and nine against Yale, for a total of nine and a quarter percent of the total minutes. Not great, but better than 0 percent like the close games against La Salle and Saint Joseph's.
Blowouts help, but if there is a close Friday game Penn may be in trouble on Saturday.
Also, I need to offer an apology for saying that Brown's uniforms were made by Nike in my post on Friday. They are made by Adidas. The difference is that Brown has piping around the openings at the bottom of the shorts as well as down the side. Sorry for the error.
To go from down 16-1 to a 74-52 win over Yale, Penn certainly had to make more than one adjustment.
But the biggest difference between the first half and the second half was in who controlled the game underneath.
In the first half it was Yale, and specifically Dominick Martin, who scored 12 points on six field goals. He had his way with Steve Danley in the post, catching the ball and making solid post moves.
Danley, meanwhile, looked uncoordinated at the offensive end. His moves were slow and ended in turnovers or wild shots. Danley was held without a field goal in the first half.
But in the second, he turned it around on the offensive end, scoring nine points on more confident post moves, while Martin was held without a field goal.
Odds and ends:
Tonight's game ball, despite Danley's turnaround and Eric Osmundson's 17 points, goes to Friedrich Ebede for keeping Penn in the game in the first half. When nothing was going right, it was Ebede who hit two huge threes early on and scored all of his 11 points in the first half.
Isn't it funny to think that the Quakers won by more points tonight against Yale than last night in the laugher against Brown.
As much fun as it may have been to taunt Eric Flato with the airball chant for the entire second half, the shot in question was blocked by Ibrahim Jaaber. It was Jaaber's 10th block of the season, which is good for second on the team, behind only Danley's 16.
Last night, Penn fans serenaded Ibrahim Jaaber on his 22nd birthday, and his teammates rewarded him with a win.
Tonight, freshman Tommy McMahon turns 19. And if recent history repeats itself, he should be celebrating with a win as well.
Current Penn players are 5-1 when celebrating a birthday. The only loss came two years ago to St. Joseph's on Dec. 6 -- Steve Danley's 20th birthday.
The wins:
Jaaber - Feb. 3 vs. Brown (yesterday)
Osmundson - Feb. 11 vs. Columbia (last season)
Zoller - March 5 vs. Harvard (last season) and at Dartmouth (2004)
Gill - Nov. 16 vs Quinnipiac (last season)
David Whitehurst, who turns 20 on Feb. 23, has not played on his birthday but probably will next season - it's a Friday.
In the tradition of the Supreme Court, which has been in the news so much lately, I'm going to concur in part and dissent in part with Jeff's post below.
I concur that the attendance (3,817) was lousy, and that tonight's will be higher. I'd like to think that this will be based on more than just the Yale band being in the house, but then again I usually eat my dinner at the Palestra on game nights.
I dissent, though, from Jeff's disappointment with the final score. Yes, Brown is awful, but tonight's game matters a lot more. So I thought it was a very good thing to see Penn only have to push down the gas pedal for about five minutes of play, because it allows the Quakers to conserve energy for tonight's game. Honestly, I would have liked to see Fran Dunphy pull some of the starters a little earlier. Brown hit a couple threes in the final minutes of the second half, but that game was over really early and everyone knew it. I think it would have not hurt Dunphy to bring in Kevin Egee, Brennan Votel and Cameron Lewis a little earlier. I was actually impressed with Lewis' two minutes on the floor, and the intensity with which he got his lone rebound.
Still, the energy saved from allowing the starters to rest for a significant portion of the game -- Eric Osmundson was the minutes leader with 31 -- will help a lot this evening. I'm sure Yale will be more than a little annoyed at having lost to Princeton last night, and that saved up gas in the Quakers' tank could make a big difference.
The Good: Princeton pounded Yale in the closing 11 minutes to win 66-49. That's a barn burner at Jadwin if I've ever seen one. Yep, that's 4-12 Princeton beating one of the handful of teams who could potentially win a game against Penn this year.
The Bad: Attendance tonight at the Palestra. Late arrivals? No surprise here. Tomorrow's crowd could only be better.
The Ugly: Tonight's game.
First, I'm a little disappointed the Quakers didn't cover the spread (19 1/2 at game time) tonight against what can only be described as an awful Brown team.
Glen Miller's Bears are still in freefall from what they were two seasons ago, or even last year for that matter. But I don't see that as an excuse to really mail in the last 10 minutes. Obviously Fran Dunphy wants to get some minutes for his bench (they saw all of about three against St. Joseph's and La Salle). The minutes he got tonight were uninspired and sloppy.
If these guys really want to earn their way into games, they are going to have to put in a better effort.
It's back to Ivy League play, which means it's back to the interesting debate of what color uniforms teams will wear on Saturday night because of the new Ivy League uniform rule.
If that's the case, then we can expect Brown wearing the road brown (what else) tonight and Yale in the home whites tomorrow.
Brown's uniforms look a lot like Cornell's in style -- it's a standard Nike look -- except for the large white waistband stripe on the shorts. I like the idea, but maybe the band could be similarly striped to the piping, so it wouldn't be so gaudy.
The Elis have another standard Nike get-up, the same as Texas, for example. It's a fine look, I don't mind. However, if the Elis do go with the whites, Penn will have the choice between red and blue.
The last two years, Penn has lost in New Haven wearing red in both games (notice Yale's previous uniform design here). The Quakers are also 3-0 at home in the last three years when wearing blue, as I have said before.
All superstitions dictate Penn should wear blue. So let it be blue, and two more wins.
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