Video from Senior Night at the Palestra as Penn players Zack Rosen, Tyler Bernardini, Mike Howlett and Rob Belcore were honored before the Penn-Yale game on Saturday night.
Zack Rosen:
Rob Belcore
Tyler Bernardini:
Mike Howlett:
What a way to finish up their careers at the Palestra. Tonight will mark the final game at home for three Penn seniors: Zack Rosen, Tyler Bernardini and Rob Belcore. After an unconvincing 54-43 win over Brown last night, Penn (18-11, 10-2 Ivy) takes on Greg Mangano and Yale (19-8, 9-4) with a Ivy title hopes riding on the line. The Elis had been in the running for an Ivy title until last night when they couldn't come back from an 15-point first-half deficit and lost to Princeton, 64-57.
There's a commonly held belief that players have a little extra motivation on senior night — everyone wants to win their final game on the Palestra hardwood. But is it true? With Penn's senior night — honoring Zack Rosen, Rob Belcore, Tyler Bernardini and Mike Howlett — tonight, let's take a look at some senior night performances of recent years and see whether some of the graduates do in fact get a little bump, after the jump:
2011 - Jack Eggleston: Against a Princeton team playing for a championship, he performed a few shades below his season average across the board.
2010 - Justin Reiley: Against Dartmouth, Reiley played about 50% more minutes than his season average (9.4) and was able to make marginal improvements.
2009 - Kevin Egee: Against Princeton, Egee was up and down, doing better on the glass than usual, but not shooting or scoring at his normal pace.
And finally, the 2007 team makes an interesting comparison, as it was the last to be in an Ivy title race, although they had already clinched the title by the time senior night rolled around. But it's also the last time there was a senior class as strong as this year's:
Ibby Jaaber:
Mark Zoller:
Steven Danley:
From these samples, and others I graphed, it's clear that there's no real statistical bump for seniors in their final home game. 2007 Ivy player of the year Ibby Jaaber is the only one to have a consistently higher better senior night performance.
It's nice to honor the seniors, especially this group which has been through so much, but the real motivating factor tonight has nothing to do with it being the final game at the Palestra. These guys are playing for a last chance to be enshrined in the arena's rafters.
Friday night I had the pleasure of sitting on the baseline photographing Penn's game versus Brown. I had been itching to get behind the camera, and it was a fun change of pace. And no one stepped on me, so that was nice too.
The slideshow below is a compilation of some of my favorite photos from the night. Not all are mine — Sports Photo Editor Jing Ran and former News Photo Editor Alex Fleischman were on the scene as well.
[gallery orderby="post_date"]
A quick update of what happened around the Ivy League Friday night as Ivy title race came a little more into focus:
Penn 54, Brown 43: The Quakers remain on pace with Harvard, surviving a close game against the Bears to improve to 10-2 Ivy. Read more about the game here.
Harvard 77, Columbia 70 (OT): Columbia's Brian Barbour posted 23 points and five assists to bring the 3-10 Lions into OT against first-place Harvard (11-2). The Crimson controlled overtime, to remain in the hunt, and we heard Jeremy Lin and Spike Lee were both in the house (basement) at a sold out Levien Gym. Harvard's newspaper The Crimson has more. Harvard travels to Cornell tomorrow to close out its season.
Princeton 64, Yale 57: It's officially a two-dog race after Yale (9-4) fell to Princeton (8-4) at Jadwin Gym. The Bulldogs are now two losses behind Penn and Harvard and mathematically out of it and can only play spoiler in their season finale against Penn Saturday night at the Palestra. Princeton opened on a 23-8 run, and was led by 18 points and five rebounds from junior Ian Hummer. Yale's Greg Mangano had 20 points and 14 boards.
Highlights from Penn's 54-43 win over Brown Friday night, courtesy of video editor Dan Nessenson:
And here are Jerome Allen and Zack Rosen in the post-gam press conference:
Recap: Penn beats Brown 54-43 for sixth straight win
The Good: Tyler Bernardini with game-changing effort. Although it's no secret that Bernardini has been hurt, he played one of his best games in weeks. From diving all over the floor to two dagger threes, Bernardini played with the heart of a fifth-year senior who is doing everything in his power to finish his season in the NCAA Tournament.
The Bad: Trailing at halftime. The Quakers have tended to play to their level of competition throughout the season and tonight was no exception. Penn trailed in the first half, 22-24, as the team only shot 10-for-27 in the first period. Trailing for much of the game may take a toll on their bodies as they will have to play another two games in four days.
The Ugly: Bernardini has a rebound stolen away from him. After Dockery Walker missed a ten-footer with 10:07 remaining in the second half, Bernardini grabbed the board only to have it taken right out of his hands by Walker. The Brown forward put in a layup to cut the Bears' deficit to one. After the game, coach Jerome Allen would say that he forgave Bernardini after he dove out of bounds to save a ball underneath the Bears' basket on the following series.
After a thrilling 55-54 victory in Boston last weekend, the Quakers (17-11, 9-2 Ivy) return home to the Palestra where they take on Brown (8-21, 2-10). The last time these two teams met, senior forward Rob Belcore brought is A-game scoring a career-high 17 points and grabbing 10 boards in a 65-48. Tonight will mark the first of three games in five days for the Red and Blue. If they win out, they will capture at least a share of the Ivy Championship.
Around the DP offices there's been a lot of conditional talk this week (much like the planning going on in the Ivy League office). We're well aware that Penn men's basketball has its work cut out if it wants to reclaim the Ivy title — let alone make it to the NCAA tournament. Nonetheless there's a lot of "what ifs" as we look forward to the upcoming week.
ESPN's Dana O'Neil doesn't quite see it that way. In her eyes, she doesn't see senior Zack Rosen going down easy. From her "In the Know" column:
Harvard is headed for a playoffBold prediction? Tell us what you think.Again.
Why? Because Zack Rosen won't go down without a fight. The Penn senior has been absolutely sensational all season, averaging 18.5 points, 5.6 assists, 1.5 steals and 3.3 rebounds for the Quakers.
And in his four years at Penn, Rosen has never tasted the NCAA tournament, a rare drought for anyone wearing a Quakers uniform.
So I would be stunned if Penn didn't win its final three games -- at home against Brown and Yale and at rival Princeton, to force yet another one-game playoff for the Crimson.
We were told that after the first Jeremy Maas/Penn baseball collab video (see below), that there would be more to come on the Quakers' YouTube channel. Well, even though we missed the athlete talent show, thanks to PennQuakersBaseball, we get to see freshman pitcher Dan Guatieri do the Evolution of Dance.
The smell of fresh cut grass, the crack of the bat, the whir of cars rushing down I-76. Yes Penn baseball season is almost upon us and the boys from Meiklejohn have put together this slick video to get you ready:
The short was directed by program alum Jeremy Maas, who graduated last spring. Maas and the Quakers finished 19-21 overall, going 10-10 in Ivy play, second in the Gehrig division. They begin their season Friday against Stetson as part of the Bright House Invitational in DeLand, Fla.
We just want someone to please explain what (+1) means.
With the crazy Ivy hoops weekend that was, we struggled to come up with a consensus, but after much debate, here is how the DP Sports Editors managed to rank the Ivies:
We're still two days out from the biggest Ivy League game of the season for Penn (every game is the biggest one, right, coach Allen?) but it's high time to take a look at who the Quakers will face Friday night when the Brown Bears (8-21, 2-10 Ivy) come to town:
Previously in Providence. Penn split it's weekend trip to Connecticut and Rhode Island, beating Brown 65-48 — the biggest win of the season for Penn — on Saturday, Feb. 4, after falling to Yale the previous night. Rob Belcore gets the player of the game award, scoring a team-high 17 points with 10 rebounds in 29 minutes. Zack Rosen had 11 points and five assists on the night. Brown's Andrew McCarthy, who averages 10 points per game this season, dropped 20 on the Quakes, cleaning up with 12 rebounds, as well. Reigning Ivy Rookie of the Year, Brown sophomore Sean McGonagill was held to three points in all 40 minutes, and coughed up seven turnovers. From the DP's recap:
“Talk about bouncing back — that’s the magic of the Ivy League,” Belcore said. “That’s what you have to do. That’s what good teams are supposed to do. We’re a senior-led team, [myself], Zack [Rosen], Tyler [Bernardini] and Mike [Howlett]. We’ve been through the ringer for a long time and we’re not going to let this team fold.”Right? Right.
Since then: While the Quakers have rattled off a five game winning-streak, Bruno has picked up five losses — totaling eight-straight Ls. But Brown's fate changed this weekend when it avenged a loss to Columbia in a 94-78 shellacking of the Lions that looked more like the NBA All-Star game than Ivy League basketball. Brown's star McGonagill scored 28 points with eight assists.
A question: Do they get free Clam Chowder when the Bears score 100 points at Pizzitola? Almost, guys. Almost.
Transfiguration: Watch out for McGonagill, who averages 14 points per game. He was banged up in the Quakers win earlier this season, but continued to play with limited effectiveness due to Brown's injury-depleted roster. He hit 5-of-7 threes in the big win over Columbia. In conference play, however, junior guard Matt Sullivan has emerged as Brown's leading scorer. He's shooting 51 percent from three in Ivy games.
Bear necessities: Here's how the two teams stack up, which in several categories is much closer than the records indicate:
In ESPN's 18 under 18 series, highlighting some of the best high school athletes across the nation, Penn football recruit Cameron Countryman got some pub.
Check it out. The 6-foot, 170-pound receiver had offers from Pac-12 schools like Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado but he'll suit up for the Quakers in the fall.
Countryman, who is Rivals two-star recruit and ESPNU's No. 50 receiver, is a 6-foot, 170-pound playmaker, runs a 4.49 40 and has a 31-inch vertical leap according Rivals.com.
I spoke with Ivy League Director Robin Harris Monday afternoon about the possibility of an Ivy playoff game. Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, plans must be in place for such an event. Lucky for Harris and her staff, they've done this before. And while they could not secure TV network slots (the game was streamed on ESPN3 but they bumped the end to the TV), Harris hasn't discounted that possibility this year. Of course, the turnaround time is pretty quick.
However, she maintained that last year's playoff game "had tremendous numbers for an online streaming event," and said she would be "thrilled … if we could have a scenario like that again." (Harris also said she did not have numbers of this Saturday's ESPN3 viewership to make a comparison.)
At this point in the game, here's what Harris had to say:
On where the Ivy League is in the planning process:
We started discussions internally, in a real sense, about probably a week or two ago. Last week, started getting more specific with our options, and then obviously given the events of the past weekend and the fact that we now have a tie for first place with Harvard and Penn, and Yale’s still in the picture, we’ve engaged in more serious conversations about different scenarios and options of where the game would be played, when it would be played, we started reaching out to different television entities to see what television windows are available.
On balancing between setting up plans and knowing they may never come to fruition:
It’s like putting a puzzle together, we’re laying out different options and just knowing, ‘Ok, if we have this scenario, these are our options,’ and we’ll be ready to make a quick decision once we know. If we have scenario B, these are our options, and again we’ll make a quick decision once we know what we’re doing. So it’s all about putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but we don’t know which puzzle we’re going to have yet, right. So by the end of the day on March 6 at the latest, we’re going to know whether we have a playoff, and if so how many teams are involved. And at that point we’re going to be ready to go to implement the plan. We’ll know which puzzle it is, and we’ll be ready to go.On venue size possibilities, given that the Penn-Harvard games drew such large crowds and so much attention:
We need to know what options are available, we need to reach out to different venues to see, is the venue even available? And same thing with television entities, we want to look into that. We’re not going to be able to commit to anyone until possibly as late as the after the Penn-Princeton game on March 6. So television windows are going to understandably be limited, because most networks are going to have committed their time slots.
We’re considering a lot of different options, and we want to provide the best opportunity for our student-athletes and our fans, and we also want to feature Ivy League venues if we can. So we’re just balancing everything- looking at larger venues to smaller venues, Ivy League venues, venues we’d need to consider geographic proximity. We want to make sure and pick something in the middle.On whether she is leaning toward NYC/New Haven:
Sure … though I think we’re exploring all of the options. We’re looking in the- but we also don’t know if Yale is in the mix, that shifts it a little bit too. So we have to again, look at a lot of different options. It’s a lot of preparation time and the good thing is, we did it last year. And we have the same staff members involved, and we did the same exercise last year. When we knew we might have a playoff, we went through the options beforehand so when we knew in fact we did have a playoff, we were ready to go and made a very quick decision the very next day as to when we were going to have the game and when it was going to be.
Penn men's basketball statistician Stu Suss is one of the most interesting people you could ever meet on Penn's campus. I had the privilege of profiling Suss earlier in the year for the DP's annual hoops supplement. He had sent me this video earlier in the year and I finally managed to convert it into an uploadable format.
Every now and again you'll hear a stat this Penn basketball season with the words "for the first time since 2006-07." That was the last time Penn won an Ivy title, and it had just been some fun fodder until this weekend, when the Quakers thrust themselves firmly into contention with Harvard.
Your newest "for the first time since 06-07" stat? Penn has won five-consecutive games — and five-straight Ivy games — for the first time since 2007, when the Red and Blue won their final 10 Ivy games on the way to the NCAA tournament.
A couple more statistical nuggets for you to mull over in this long week between action:
*Kinda
After an exciting weekend of Ivy basketball, Penn climbed to No. 94 in RPI — a system that ranks teams based on wins, losses and strength of schedule. With Yale and Princeton filling in at 96 and 99, and Harvard way up at 37, that puts half the Ancient Eight in the top 100.
As former DP Sports editor Jeff Shafer points out on his blog "Par for the Course," that's as good percentage-wise as the ACC and better than the 'Conference of Champions' the Pac-12:
Eight of America’s 15 finest universities are in the Ivy League. This is well established.Note that these numbers are all based on RPI rankings from yesterday. Today's updated numbers can be found here. And here are the conferences in chart form, from Shafer's analysis:As of today, four of the nation’s top 100 basketball teams are in the Ivy League. That’s a new one.
Long regarded as below average most seasons, the Ancient Eight is having one of its finest seasons in aggregate in some time, putting conference solidly in mediocre territory. Overall, the Ivy League ranks 15th out of 32 conferences. That’s due in large part to Brown and Dartmouth being absolutely awful. But the league does have Harvard (37), Yale (96), Penn (97) and Yale (99) in the top 100. That’s more top teams than the Pac-10, CAA, WCC and Missouri Valley — all conferences that will receive multiple NCAA bids.
For the second straight week, Penn guard Zack Rosen has earned Ivy POTW honors.
The recognition should come as no surprise, as Rosen scored Penn's last 16 points against Dartmouth and last 9 points against Harvard. In the final stretch of the season, Rosen is seriously contending for Ivy Player of the Year. He's putting the team on his back and coming up big when it matters most. This weekend he had 47 points and went 10-for-11 from the charity stripe. This guy seriously wants to win an Ivy title.
The Mid-Monday Mix is back. Except this time, I have a little help from Cal with the title, Split P Soup. Punny, huh?
As usual with DP Mondays, we have way more content than space in the paper. And given the crazy basketball weekend and the beginning of spring sports, a lot didn't make it in.
Quick Hits:
Phew! I promise I'll spruce up Split-P Soup for next week (From Clearwater, Florida!).
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