You may remember my all-night blogging extravaganza at The Line. Well I wasn't just there with the DP, but also becoming a member of the Red and Blue Crew. As such I've been getting the RBC e-mails, and just received this gem that they passed along from Penn soccer coach Rudy Fuller, urging Penn students to come out to their NCAA tournament first-round game at Rhodes Field:
HEY RED & BLUE CREW....PENN SOCCER NEEDS YOU!!
Yesterday, our men's soccer team was awarded an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. It is only the 9th NCAA appearance in the 106-year history of the Penn Soccer program (but second in the past three years!!) and the first time since 1977 that the program has earned an at-large bid to the "Big Dance."
More importantly, we were given the opportunity to HOST the First Round game against Bucknell University THIS THURSDAY NIGHT.
I would like to personally request your help in ROCKING RHODES FIELD on Thursday night. Sing, chant, yell, heckle, scream, and cheer the team to victory!
With the basketball season just getting underway, I realize that you guys are just getting your vocal chords warmed up for what I am sure will be a season filled with success in the Palestra.
However, I am asking that you show up in post-season, NCAA Tournament form this Thursday night!! We need the full force of the Red & Blue crew to come out and show the country the incredible school spirit that resides at Penn.
The NCAA First Round game against Bucknell University is scheduled for THIS THURSDAY at 7:00pm on Rhodes Field...just a short walk past Franklin Field on the newly opened South Street Bridge. Look for the "Field of Dreams" on your right as Rhodes Field lights up the southern sky!
Thanks in advance for your help! Our guys greatly appreciate the effort!
I hope to see you all after a well-earned, hard-fought first round victory for Penn on Thursday night!!!
Come help us make that a reality!
Yours in the Red & Blue,
Rudy Fuller James C. Gentle Head Coach of Men’s Soccer
University of Pennsylvania
The New York Times yesterday had a nice front page spread on its sports section about the unexpected rise of Cornell's wrestling program over the last several years.
The Big Red are atop the national preseason poll for the first time ever in a sport that is so heavily dominated by midwestern schools. As the Times points out, only four of the last 8 NCAA championships have come from schools outside of the states Iowa, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. Not only is it surprising for an eastern school to be at the top of the nation — it's an Ivy League school.
And the article turns, as many on Ivy-League-schools-in a-national-context often do, to how the program builds such success without athletic scholarships.
“I’ve been saying for years, ‘Why not us?’ ” Cornell Coach Rob Koll said. “I’ve always believed a national championship was possible.”
When Koll took over the Cornell program 17 years ago, he frequently said the same thing to his coaching peers.
“They would laugh at me,” Koll said after a practice last week. “Everyone told me that it can’t be done at Cornell. They said: ‘It’s too expensive, you have no scholarships, you won’t get recruits in, and if you do, the academics there will wear them out.’
“I heard it everywhere. I just didn’t listen.”
Packaged with the story on Cornell's ranking was another, about the schools incredible Friedman Wrestling Arena, which was the only facility in the NCAA solely dedicated to wrestling when it was built in 2002 . And it seems clear that that kind of commitment from the school (the facility cost $4.5 million) helps breed success through improved recruiting and training.
When I sat down with Athletic Director Steve Bilsky at the beginning of the semester, we talked briefly about how Penn distributes its resources athletically.
"We’re trying to be broad based," he said. "We don’t select half a dozen or 10 sports and say ‘we’re going to put all our marbles there’, like some schools in the league do. And they probably are right in doing that, but we don’t. We try to be as good as we can to everybody."
And while Cornell's wrestling renaissance may have been bolstered in 2002 by the arena, Penn's may be beginning right now. With the newly completed Weiss Pavilion, athletes can train on a whole new level, and recruits are surely wowed by the facilities. Penn Park is slated for completion next year, bringing even more to the table.
But if Penn proves one thing, it's that sometimes the flashiness of a brand new facility is nothing compared to the magic of the Palestra, which opened its doors in 1927.
Many considered him a candidate for Ivy Rookie of the Year — and Penn freshman Miles Cartwright started to make his bid in game one with an impressive 18-point game, all in the first half, leading Penn to the win over Davidson.
And Monday Cartwright was rewarded with the League's Rookie of the Week award.
While it's obviously too early to be talking about season honors, it's worth pointing out that Harvard's Laurent Rivard, also a preseason candidate for the award, scored two points (on two free throws) for the Crimson in 26 minutes during their loss to George Mason. Rivard was a whopping 0-for-11 from the floor, 0-for-7 from behind the arc.
On the women's side, Penn's Alyssa Baron also took home the frosh honors. Baron dropped 20 points (but who's counting, Miles...) in the women's victory over Bryant. She also recorded three boards and a block in her freshman debut. It was the first rookie of the week honor for the Penn women's team since Kim Adams earned the award in Feb. 2008.
Finalizing our coverage of this epic weekend in Penn sports, here are video highlights and photo slideshows from the big wins by football and men's basketball (after the jump).
While watching the game from the student section, I made sure to keep an eye out for a possible Toni Kukoc sighting at the Palestra. Kukoc, a three-time NBA champion whose son Marin did not suit up for Saturday's game, has taken over the role of 'Most Famous Dad' on the team, now that Malcolm Washington no longer plays. Unfortunately, the two-hour search was not fruitful.
As I made the walk up Walnut Street on my way home, however, I glanced to my left and spotted the 6-foot-11 Croatian (a whole foot taller than I am) walking beside me. From our brief conversation, I can tell you that Toni has been spending his retirement playing golf, he's still a Chicago Bulls fan and he's waiting until his son earns playing time before becoming a regular at the Palestra. No word on how Zack Rosen, Rob Belcore and Conor Turley compare to Jordan, Pippen and Rodman, though.
Marin possesses similar gifts to his father, mainly craftiness and great skill play (ball handling, passing, shooting) for his size. It remains to be seen, however, whether Marin will make enough of an impact to be dubbed the League's "Croatian Sensation," as Toni was back in the day.
The men's basketball season could not be off to a more different start than 2009. The Quakers played a near-perfect game against Davidson, overcoing two early fouls to Zack Rosen and pulling out a 69-64 win. Compared to last year's 79-50 loss in the midst of a program-worst 0-10 start to the season, this game meant everything to coach Jerome Allen and his players. Here's what Allen, freshman Miles Cartwright and senior Jack Eggleston had to say in the post-game press conference:
And here's what Davidson coach Bob McKillop had to say, after the jump:
The Jerome Allen era starts tonight at the Palestra at 7:00 PM. Follow the live blog below to see if Penn can avenge last year's 29 point loss to Davidson!
The Quakers clinched at least a share of their second consecutive Ivy League championship with a 34-14 domination of Harvard at Franklin Field. I caught up with Billy Ragone on the field right after the game ended. Here's his quick reaction (and celebratory cigar puff). Be back soon with press conference footage.
Penn's post-game press conference: Al Bagnoli (left), Brandon Colavita (middle) and Erik Rask (right):
I missed the beginning of the Harvard post-game press conference while I was filming the celebration on the field, but here's the last few minutes:
Zack Rosen celebrates an upset of then-No. 22 Cornell, sending the Big Red out of the top 25. The win marked the high-point of a season that was the program's worst.
In anticipation of the huge weekend in Penn sports that starts today, we put together the first edition of what we're hoping to make a weekly video segment for DP Sports: This week on 33rd street. Please take a look if you've got a few minutes.
(If you're having trouble seeing the whole video, try zooming in on your browser)
Special thanks to video producer Shumita Basu, online managing editor Noah Rosenstein, sports designer Liz Jacobs, and of course my co-editor Lauren Plotnick.
Tony Price celebrates with fans after defeating St. John's in the 1979 NCAA tournament. The win sent Penn to the final four, where they lost to Michigan State.
With the M. Hoops season nigh, DP Sports decided to jump on the bandwagon and put out our own preseason picks for the Ivy League. I polled our crack team of editors and men's basketball beat writers and they came up with this prospectus:
Princeton
Harvard
Penn
Cornell
Yale
Brown
Columbia
Dartmouth
Penn junior Zack Rosen was a unanimous conference Player of the Year, while Penn's Miles Cartwright tied with Harvard freshman Laurent Rivard for Rookie of the Year. Interestingly both Rivard and Cartwright will be donning the #0 jersey this season.
The all-Ivy team panned out as follows:
Zack Rosen (Penn, G)
Douglas Davis (Princeton, G)
Noruwa Agho (Columbia, G)
Kyle Casey (Harvard, F)
Jack Eggleston (Penn, G)
Cornell's Chris Wroblewski received a couple votes, along with Princeton's Dan Mavraides and Brown's Peter Sullivan.
According to a tweet from his school, Sacramento native Will Davis has committed to the Quakers. Davis, who took a post-grad year at New Hampton school in New Hampshire is the second member of Penn's next recruiting class.
Though he measured in at 6-foot-7, 200 pounds, in his ESPN profile from a year ago, the recruit scoop lists him at 6-foot-9, which would put him at the top of Penn's roster heightwise with senior Andreas Schreiber (who won't be around next year) and the oft-injured Mike Howlett, who is also an alum of New Hampton.
Davis joins Greg Louis, also a power forward, as the second recruit in coach Jerome Allen's class of 2015. He reportedly chose Penn over Drexel and Delaware.
Adams also went on to add that the Crimson's backcourt will bring the team its first Ivy title.
These three [Brandyn Curry, Christian Webster and Oliver McNally] aren't flashy, but their diverse talents complement one another. That pretty much describes Amaker and his inside/perimeter talents. That is why the Crimson will win their first Ivy League title since, well, ever.
But most significant to Quakers fans, the teams also listed in the hunt for the Ivy championship: Princeton and Penn.
While interviewing Zack Rosen about the upcoming season-opener against Davidson, he appeared to let slip that center Mike Howlett won't be in action.
When talking about how the team would be improved by the return of injured players, Rosen said, "It's like putting that last bullet into your gun, so now we're dealing with a full deck. Obviously Mike going down hurts, but we're going to do what we can with what we've got."
Coach Jerome Allen, however, was a little more cryptic when asked about Howlett.
"I'm not really going to comment on that, but I'll just say that our guys are working hard, and whoever steps on the floor should be ready."
Reading between the lines, Allen all but confirmed that something is wrong. Howlett was up and moving around in the shootaround before practice, but by the time I had finished these interviews, the team was heading to the film room to watch tape, so I couldn't talk to him myself. Hopefully for the Quakers, it will not be a long-term problem, as losing Howlett's presence on the interior is a huge loss.
Before women’s basketball coach Mike McLaughlin’s first recruiting class has even made it to the regular season, Penn’s rebuilding effort is off to an injury-riddled start.
Cassie Pappas, a recruit heralded for her scoring ability and on-court energy and competitiveness, is out indefinitely for undisclosed medical reasons.
“It’s a medical issue,” McLaughlin said. “That’s the best I can tell you right now for privacy reasons.”
The Quakers will also begin the season stretched thin on the interior, as freshman center Lauren Kraemer has an injury that will keep her out of practice for about a month.
Pappas’ name has been removed from the Penn Athletics official roster, though McLaughlin declined to comment on her removal. Even without Pappas, five of the team’s 12 remaining players are freshmen, so younger players will get ample opportunity for playing time. McLaughlin said that the team’s inexperience isn’t limited to only the freshmen, but he expects his players to be ready to play on both ends of the floor.
“Sometimes I think inexperience is an excuse,” McLaughlin said. “I have a lot of faith in them that they understand the game and that they should be able to compete right away.” He added that freshman Kristen Kody will now be able to “challenge for more minutes” and that fellow freshman Alyssa Baron is “someone we expect big things from pretty quickly.”
The return of senior guard/forward Erin Power, who left the team last year due to the burden of switching from Wharton to a pre-med curriculum, should also help to offset Pappas’ loss.
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