Dave Zeitlin is the RTC correspondent for the Ivy League.
Well, a good portion of the non-conference slate is over, and the Ivy League still doesn’t have a big signature win. But Cornell came pretty darn close to pulling off a huge early-season upset Wednesday when it led Syracuse at halftime and took the Orange right down to the wire at the Carrier Dome. Naturally, Syracuse players said it was a lazy effort on their parts while Cornell coach Steve Donahuepraised his team’s effort. Fine, we get it. The only way an Ivy League team can even stay with a Big East team is by playing smart and outhustling the other team (backdoor cuts don’t hurt either). But the truth is, the defending Ivy champs have a very good team that may have a chance to make some national noise down the road. (Keep in mind, the Big Red played against ‘Cuse without their two best guards, Louis Dale and Adam Gore.
News & Notes. We’d like to take a moment at the beginning of tonight’s ATB to honor former Cal head coach and legendary big man guru Pete Newell, who died today at the age of 93. He led Cal to its only national championship in 1959, won a gold medal as the US Olympic team coach in 1960, and was elected to the basketball Hall of Fame in 1979. Although he was before our time, we’ve heard the stories of his legend and he is considered one of the most influential figures in basketball history. May he rest in peace.
Photo Credit: LA Times
Game of the Night. UAB 64, Santa Clara 61. We’re throwing some love to the mid-majors tonight with this one, but we expected this game to be a dandy, and it was. Santa Clara led most of the game, but UAB made a valiant comeback in the second half to tie the game with three minutes remaining and held on to win Robert Vaden had 23/9 and Paul Delaney III had 20/5 for UAB, who didn’t get much production from anyone else. SC’s John Bryant had a huge 17/15 performance, but it wasn’t enough. In an interesting sidenote, the game tipped off with 100 people in the stands at the McKale Center in Tucson. People are really excited about basketball in Arizona right now.
Upset of the Night. Oakland 82, Oregon 79 (OT). We really feel like you could throw Ernie Kent, Mark Gottfried, John Brady, Dave Odom, and a few others into a jar, shake them up and let them float to any school in America, and you’d end up with the same mediocre programs wherever they land. Not much was expected from the Ducks this year (heck, ATQ doesn’t even have commentary on the game yet), but they could usually count on their home court for the push to win most of their OOC games. No longer. Oakland’s Johnathan Jones dropped 32/7 on the Ducks, (10 in OT, including the decisive bucket with seven seconds left) who were outshot from the floor by their visitors (43% to 39%). Joevon Catron (13/11) and Michael Dunigan (15/10) both contributed double-doubles in the losing effort. So far, the Pac-10 is not looking too impressive.
Preseason NIT Action.
Davidson 99, James Madison 64. Stephen Curry is just ridiculous. 33/9 assts/4 stls on 14-19 shooting. The Wildcats got off to an 11-0 start and never looked back. They’ll face Oklahoma tomorrow night.
Oklahoma 94, Miss. Valley St. 53. This OU team has looked scary in two games thus far. Blake Griffin dominated inside, with 20/19/6 stls. MVSU more than doubled its output from Saturday night against Wazzu, but they looked completely overmatched in this game.
BC 90, Loyola (MD) 57. Vermont transfer Joe Trapani led the Eagles with 20/4 as Tyrese Rice came back from suspension to contribute 16/6 assts. BC might be better than people were thinking, folks – they will play Cornell in round two.
St. John’s 86, Cornell 75. The Johnnies, led by Anthony Mason Jr.’s 24 pts, held off a late Cornell rally that had cut the lead to 80-75. Cornell was led by Ryan Wittman’s 25/4.
Purdue 87, E. Michigan 58. Purdue shook off a slow start to go on a 26-6 run to put this game away by the mid-first half. E’Twaun Moore and Robbie Hummell combined for 35/8/8 assts in the win. Purdue will play Loyola (IL) next.
Loyola (IL) 74, Georgia 53. Let’s just go ahead and fire Dennis Felton right now and avoid this lame duck nonsense for the next four months.
Arizona 75, Florida Atlantic 62. Get used to this – Budinger, Wise and Hill scored 52 of Arizona’s 75 points tonight. The Wildcats never really pulled away from FAU – we remain unconvinced. UAB will beat this team tomorrow night.
Big East Tuneups.
Marquette 106, Chicago St. 87. Are teams hitting the century mark more often this year? Wesley Matthews led Marquette with 26/9/3 assts, but new coach Buzz Williams was largely disappointed with his defense for allowing 51 second-half points to Chicago St.
Villanova 107, Fordham 68. Wow, Dante Cunningham absolutely dominated the interior (31/11) as Villanova rolled up Fordham, shooting a blistering 58% with all five starters reaching double figures.
Georgetown 71, Jacksonville 62. Freshman center Greg Monroe’s debut at Georgetown went well (14/7), even though the Hoyas struggled to put away Jacksonville. Georgetown needs to shore up their three-point shooting (5-23), but their defense was typically solid, holding Jax to 35% for the game.
Pittsburgh 82, Miami (OH) 53. Miami head coach Charlie Coles gave the nod to Pitt as the better team between the Panthers and UCLA at this juncture in the season. Levance Fields is just so important to this team, getting 12/12 assts as every starter reached double figures.
Connecticut 99, Hartford 56. With 14:30 to go, this was a three-point game. UConn then went on a late 54-12 run to put this one away. AJ Price was on the bench for being a knucklehead with a sprained ankle, but Craig Austrie and Kemba Walker both had 21 to make up the slack. Hasheem Thabeet had a somewhat disappointing 9/8/2 blks.
Other Games of Interest.
Xavier 81, Toledo 65. Xavier enjoyed a comfortable margin throughout the second half, but the story of this game was returning MAC scoring leader Tyrone Kent’s 37 pts. He even went 10-10 from the line – true scorers understand that’s where the easy points are.
Austin Peay 86, Belmont 84. Drake Reed’s two FTs with 0.2 showing on the clock sealed a comeback win for Austin Peay over Belmont. He contributed 24/9 in the win, along with Wes Channels, who put up 25 pts. AP shot 58% in the second half to come back from 12 down at halftime.
Penn St. 74, NJIT 47. NJIT now holds the record for college basketball futility with 35 Ls in a row. Another 26% FG shooting night. Can we send them back to D2 now?
On Tap Tuesday (all times EST):
24 Hour Marathon of College Hoops – see separate post here for schedule and times.
Indiana v. IUPUI (BTN) – 6:30pm
Bucknell v. Boston U. – 7pm
Tennessee (-25) v. UT-Martin (ESPN FC & 360) – 7pm
WYN2K. For possibly the first time in two decades, the Ivy League basketball championship is wide open. The twin towers of power – Penn and Princeton – have held the Ivy title on one of their campuses each of the last twenty seasons. This year, however, Princeton will be recovering from the Joe Scott disaster (18-24 in three seasons culminating in an atrocious 2-12 debacle last year), while Penn will have to deal with the loss of the core group that won three straight Ivy championships. Penn has enough returning to make another run at the title, but don’t expect another 13-1 blitzkrieg through the league, as several other contenders will make their own push toward an NCAA bid.
Predicted Champion.Penn (#14 seed NCAA). Ok, ok, so we’re too chicken to pick anybody else here. We know that on paper there are other Ivy schools with more returning talent (ahem, Yale), but consider the weight of history that Penn has behind it – 5 of the last 6 titles… 7 of the last 9… 10 of the last 15. Every other champion during that time was Princeton. With the Tigers almost completely out of the picture, how can we not make our pick for Penn? Despite losing two-time Ivy POY Ibrahim Jabber and Mark Zoller, the Quakers still have the most depth of any team in the league to go along with the best home court advantage at the Palestra. This year’s squad will be led by Brian Grandieri and Justin Reilly, the latter of whom showed some decent post skills during the NCAA Tourney loss to Texas A&M last year. Sorry, Ivy faithful, but we just can’t pick against Penn until someone outside of Princeton knocks them off their perch.
Others Considered. Should Penn crash and burn this year, Princeton assuredly will not be the beneficiary, which means that a team not used to winning this title will be doing so for the first time in a generation. We like Yale as next in line. The Bulldogs return four starters plus their top two reserves, including prohibitive POY favorite Eric Flato, a do-it-all guard who nailed 71 treys last season. The only reason to lend a skeptic’s glance toward Yale is their maddening tendency to lose “shoulda” games, such as when they dropped a home game vs. Columbia immediately prior to a big showdown at Penn last year, effectively ending their conference title hopes. Cornell is another team that appears ready to make the leap on paper, but simply hasn’t been able to get past the monolith in Philly. Coach Steve Donahue is a tidy 0-14 in his career vs. the Quakers, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in winning a conference race that depends solely on regular season performance. Still, the Big Red, who was the last non-P&P team to make the NCAA Tourney back in 1988, has a nice set of guards returning (Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale) along with the 2006 ROY Adam Gore (redshirted last year) and USC transfer Collin Robinson.
Games to Watch. Since the Ivy League decides its champion via round-robin and not a conference tournament, there are a few key home-and-homes to watch this season.
Penn @ Cornell (02.09.08) & Cornell @ Penn (03.07.08)
RPI Booster Games. Last year the Ivy League went 2-17 against BCS schools, but surprisingly, middle-of-the-packers Cornell (defeated Northwestern 64-61) and Brown (defeated Providence 51-41) were the two winners. Penn, on the other hand, was 0-5 – go figure. There are 23 games on the slate this year, and here are a few highlights.
Yale @ Stanford (11.20.07)
Virginia @ Penn (11.23.07)
Brown @ Northwestern (11.24.07)
Michigan @ Harvard (12.01.07)
Cornell @ Syracuse (12.20.07)
Penn @ Miami (FL) (01.02.08)
Odds of Multiple NCAA Bids. Zippo.
Neat-o Stat. With the hiring of Tommy Amaker at Harvard and Sydney Johnson at Princeton, six of the eight head coaches in the Ivy League are now black. Unthinkable a generation ago, this means that the Ivy has a higher percentage of black head honchos (75%) than all but the two historically black D1 conferences, the SWAC and MEAC. We’re not sure if that will necessarily translate to more wins at those two schools, but it can’t be a bad thing in terms of inspring qualified minority hiring practices at other schools (ed. note – we guess that assumes Amaker is qualified. Apologies).
64/65-Team Era. The Ivy League has gone 3-23 (.115) over the era, with all three wins concentrated in the mid- to late-90s. The Ivy tends to receive a favorable seed from the NCAA committee, averaging a #12.8 over this period, which equates to an expected value of around seven wins. This shows that the league has really underperformed compared with its seed over the years. Of the three wins, two belong to Princeton (1996 – #13 Princeton 43, #4 UCLA 41; 1998 – #5 Princeton 69, #12 UNLV 57) and one to Penn (1994 – #11 Penn 90, #6 Nebraska 80). With that said, the league’s NCAA representative (well, Penn, really) has in recent years consistently played its first round opponent tough before ultimately succumbing to superior talent.
2003 – #11 Penn down four to #6 Oklahoma St. with 2:25 remaining
2006 – #15 Penn down one to #2 Texas with 6 mins left
2007 – #14 Penn tied with #3 Texas A&M with 11 minutes to go
Nothing says thrilling like Gus Johnson, so we’ll leave you his call of 1996 Princeton-UCLA.
Final Thought. We actually look at this year’s Ivy a little bit like we look at the Big South. You have one program (Penn and Winthrop, respectively) that has clearly been the class of the league for the better part of a decade going through some serious changes, and you have a smattering of challengers ready to stake their claims on the league crown. The problem in both cases is more psychological than physical – can the likes of Yale and Cornell overcome the mental hurdles that Penn has constructed for them over the years by winning a key game in late February on the road when it really counts? It should make for an interesting winter in our nation’s smartest league, that’s for sure.
