Ivy League Basketball News

The Daily Pennsylvanian’s Buzz Blog posted an entry containing more quotes from interviews with Bucknell-bound rising sophomore Brian Fitzpatrick, Penn captain Zack Rosen, and Fitzpatrick’s high school coach.  Some excerpts:

Fitzpatrick

On why he chose  Bucknell:

“There’s gonna be 14 kids on the basketball team; you don’t have to deal with 24 kids. I think at one point, Penn had nine kids coming in next year. If me and Carson [Sullivan] were still here, there would be 25 kids on the basketball team with one senior. I just don’t understand that. What are you gonna do if the coaches threaten us that they’re gonna cut half the team? If I was a junior or sophomore, I’d probably stay, but I’m a freshman. I had other places to go, schools that would take me.”

“I feel like at Bucknell, they recruit more. They find guys that are the right fit, whereas at Penn, they’re like, ‘Let’s bring them all in. Let’s see what happens. We don’t really need him, but bring him in, and see if he works hard, he might pass the other guy that we thought was better at one point.’ I just don’t agree with that … It’s just good that I found a better fit for me, and Jerome [Allen] can go get somebody else or whatever. I don’t know.”

Zack Rosen

On next year’s large roster:

“When I was at St. Benedict’s [high school], we had two teams every day — we had a prep team and a high school team so basically it was a game every day. And that competition is what really brought us to the next level and got the most out of everybody because you knew that every day you walked into the gym it was gonna be a fight for playing time and every day you had to prove yourself.”

“I think a lot of it is about being part of the team and accepting your role on the team and when that role identification happens, on any team, that’s when all the success will come.”

In response to Fitzpatrick’s statement that “we just did a lot of pick and rolls and stuff like every play … Zack would either score for himself or dish it off to others so we didn’t really have a system, per se, at Penn”:

“It’s a process anytime there’s a coaching switch. By the end of the season, I thought we were clicking on a lot of cylinders. … We’ve got a lot of plays, we do. That’s [Allen's] style. And we try to manipulate and work to our strengths. Obviously, with the switch, we had one week to change and then we were going down to North Carolina to play Davidson and Duke. Over time, I think we really developed how we wanted to play and our style.”

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Rush the Court checks in on the Ivy League.  Their pick for Ivy POY is Penn’s Zack Rosen.

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The Ithaca Journal discusses Cornell’s six freshmen, who have seen limited minutes on a loaded roster.  The article compares Cornell’s Errick Peck with Harvard’s Kyle Casey, recently named ROY:

The two players were simply in different roles on programs at different stages of development, and Peck gave way to one of the eight seniors on Cornell’s roster. Casey played 37 minutes in a 79-70 loss.  Peck, however, walked off the Lavietes Pavilion floor knowing he’s not far away, if at all, from Casey’s level. “Internally, I know that I can play at that particular level,” Peck said.

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Cornell’s Wittman, Dale, and Foote talk to a local Fox affiliate about the kind of seeding they expect in the tournament.

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The Bleacher Report discusses Cornell’s seeding.

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The WVBR Sports Blog hopes Cornell gets matched up with a team like Xavier.

Although the Musketeers are one of the top mid major teams in the nation, Cornell is better suited to take on a mid major powerhouse than a hyper athletic BCS Conference team. Last Sunday on Sports Roundup, Cornell Captain Jon Jaques told me that Cornell would prefer to play a team that is relatively young, because that would maximize the Big Red’s experience advantage. Two of Xavier’s top three players, Guards Jordan Crawford and Terrell Holloway, are sophomores. Good news for the Red. Their primary big man is 6′9” senior Jason Love. Though Love is bulky, Jeff Foote will have several inches on him and should be able to successfully anchor the Big Red interior. I like this matchup for the Big Red. At this point, it’s all just idle speculation, but the overall message is that the Big Red are in the right part of the bracket to make a real impact of the tournament.

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Cornell head coach Steve Donahue tells WBUR that he doesn’t like the idea of tournament expansion:

“To dilute it more, for a lot of reasons, I think is wrong. I don’t think the public is going to be more interested in it,” Donahue said. “I think right now we have a great hold on the public and it captivates the whole country. I don’t know why we would want to change that.”

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The Ithaca Journal discusses Cornell’s Andre Wilkins Senior Night start.

The only senior who had never started at Cornell, the 6-foot-3 Wilkins was inserted into the opening lineup by coach Steve Donahue on Senior Night. The subsequent 4 minutes, 26 seconds were a virtual highlight reel of plays by the Toronto native.

It’s probably a tape the coaching staff should get to him before he graduates.

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MyCentralJersey.com profiles Penn’s Zack Rosen.

Playing high school basketball at places like Colonia and St. Benedict’s prepared Zack Rosen for the rigors of the next level, with one glaring exception.

He wasn’t ready for the losing.

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The Daily Pennsylvnian’s Ivy Hoops Notebook discusses the Princeton @ Cornell game and Academic-All Americans Patrick Foley (Columbia) and Matt Mullery (Brown).

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The Philadelphia Inquirer thinks Penn has lost some momentum and surveys Penn’s week ahead, including Senior Night.

…This year’s Quakers gained some momentum from splitting each of their first four Ivy weekends this season. That streak came to an end Saturday as the Quakers were routed at Cornell after losing in the final seconds Friday at Columbia.

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The Columbia Spectator profiles Penn sophomore guard Zack Rosen.

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The Columbia Spectator previews Columbia’s senior weekend and games against Penn and Princeton.

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The Harvard Crimson provides picks for this weekend’s Ivy League games, and reminds readers that the Crimson are still making history.

Sitting at 96th in the RPI, the 18-6 Crimson is on the verge of breaking the program record of 19 wins and could crack 10 conference victories for the first time since 1996-97. More importantly, Harvard has an excellent chance at making a post-season tournament such as the College Basketball Invitational or the CollegeInsider.com Tournament, and a decent shot at the National Invitational Tournament if it manages to win out.

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WPRB Sports (Voice of Princeton Sports) previews the Princeton @ Cornell game.

With 5 games left in the season, Princeton has a chance to win 20 games for the first time since the 2003-2004 season, which happens to be the last time the Tigers won the Ivy League title and went to the NCAA tournament.

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The Daily Princetonian previews tonight’s Princeton @ Cornell game.

“We just have to go into it like we can’t lose any more games, and I think we’ll be fine,” sophomore guard Doug Davis said. “We’re trying to get to the postseason.”

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The Daily Pennsylvanian previews Saturday’s Penn @ Cornell showdown.

One would think a team that’s already gone toe-to-toe with No. 1 Kansas and compiled a 14-3 non-conference record would have already cleared its biggest hurdle.

But Cornell has a lot on its plate this weekend — the result of an unexpected bump in the road two weeks ago at the Palestra…

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The Washington Examiner lists Cornell’s Ryan Wittman as a “Player to Watch” this weekend:

Ryan Wittman

The Cornell senior forward leads the Ivy League in scoring (17.6 ppg) and 3-pointers (209). Friday against visiting Princeton (16-7, 7-2), Cornell (23-4, 9-1) can take a giant step toward clinching the Ivy. Cornell won the first meeting, 48-45, despite a season-low output.

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The Cornell Daily Sun previews Cornell’s weekend games against Princeton and Penn.

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The Yale Daily News previews Yale’s weekend games against Dartmouth and Harvard.

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Princeton and Penn face off at the Palestra at 7 pm tonight.

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Cornell drops one spot in CollegeInsider.com’s Mid Major Top 25 poll, from #4 to #5.

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The Ithaca Journal thinks Cornell basketball is losing its touch from the arc.

By its own lofty standards, Cornell is in a rut from the three-point arc right now.

The Big Red, which has essentially been a top-10 team in the three-point shooting percentage category over the last three seasons, and which shot better than 42 percent from the arc in its first five Ivy League games, has missed 43 of its last 62 attempts (30.6 percent).

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Fox Sports wraps up the past week’s mid-major meltdowns, including Cornell’s loss:

It was a bad week for potential mid-major at-large teams.

Cornell lost at Penn.

Northern Iowa dropped a game to Bradley.

Siena went down at Niagara.

That’s three teams that can ill-afford a loss in league play if they want to secure an at-large berth in the NCAA tournament.

The Big Red didn’t just lose its first Ivy League contest; it went down to a Penn team that had won just three games all season. Now the chances of Cornell getting into the Big Dance are slim if it doesn’t win the Ivy League crown.

WORST LOSS: Cornell’s road loss at Penn. The Big Red had a shot for an at-large berth, but now a loss at Harvard this weekend would make it difficult to imagine Steve Donahue’s club getting into the Big Dance if it doesn’t win the Ivy League title.

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The St. Louis Dispatch writes,

CORNELL REBOUNDS

Cornell might have been looking ahead to its showdown with Princeton in the Ivy League when the Big Red traveled to Penn. The games were played on consecutive days and Cornell flopped against Penn, losing 79-64 to a team that previously had only three wins.

The Big Red, who had earned a No. 22 ranking in the coaches’ poll last week, rebounded the next day to win at Princeton 48-45 and still have control in the Ivy League race. The regular-season champion earns the conference’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament.

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The Daily Princetonian previews the Penn-Princeton game.

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Zach Kwartler, an Executive Editor for Sports for The Daily Princetonian, thinks the Quakers are jaded by the win over Cornell.

Now back to the one reason Penn fans still have hope: that perplexing win against Cornell. All I can really say there is “Thank you.” Without that win, Princeton would be facing much more of an uphill climb to the Ivy League title.

Instead, Princeton and Cornell are still equal in the league loss column, and Penn fans mistakenly believe they have a good basketball team. It will make a Tiger victory that much sweeter.

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The Daily Pennsylvanian profiles Penn’s Dan Monckton.

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Penn sophomore co-captain Zack Rosen implores students to pack the house for the Princeton game.

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The Daily Pennsylvanian’s Ivy Hoops Notebook survey the Ivy League, including Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn.

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The Harvard Crimson discusses Jeremy Lin’s supporting role this weekend and the budding young stars on the Harvard team.

It is not very often that a team’s leading scorer can have his lowest scoring output of the season and still be praised by the opposing coach for his offensive effectiveness.

But such was the case Saturday night when co-captain Jeremy Lin finished with five points on six shots in the Harvard men’s basketball team’s win over Brown.

“It looks like his point production has dropped, but his effectiveness hasn’t changed any,” Brown coach Jesse Agel said. “As his teammates have developed, he’s had to do less, and he’s done more facilitating, all to the greater good of their team.”

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The Harvard Crimson reports that a fiery speech sparked the second-half rally that led to victory in the Harvard-Yale game.

Harvard’s season was hanging in the balance. Yale forward Jordan Gibson’s layup at the end of the first half made the score 34-25 in the Bulldogs favor. The Crimson labored for much of the opening period, scoring just five points over the final 10 minutes of the frame.

“I can’t repeat it,” joked Harvard coach Tommy Amaker of his halftime speech. “I wasn’t pleased with the latter part of the first half and how we played.”

Whatever Amaker told his players apparently made an impression as the Crimson opened the second half on fire.

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Today’s Games:

Princeton @ Brown, 7 pm.  Game notes/preview: Princeton, Brown
Dartmouth @ Cornell, 7 pm. Game notes/previews: Dartmouth, Cornell
Harvard @ Columbia, 7 pm. Game notes/previews: Harvard, Columbia
Penn @ Yale, 7 pm. Game notes/previews: Penn, Yale

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The Brown Daily Herald previews Brown’s weekend games against Princeton and Penn.

The Brown Daily Herald interviews Brown freshman Tucker Halpern.

The Omaha World Herald profiles Cornell senior and Nebraska native Pete Reynolds.

Bloomberg.com speculates about Cornell’s Ryan Wittman and Harvard’s Jeremy Lin as NBA draft prospects. Some quotes:

“Everybody needs shooters,”  Ryan Blake, the NBA’s assistant director of scouting said [of Ryan Wittman] in an interview.

“Lin’s been on our radar for a while,” Blake said. “Jeremy believes in himself, and he’s proven himself against some of the top guards. He’ll have an opportunity. It’s too early to tell where a guy will get drafted because you don’t know who is coming out.”

(Read the full story.)

The Cornell Daily Sun warns Cornellians not to underestimate Dartmouth.

The Cornell Daily Sun previews this weekend’s Cornell-Harvard match-up.

The Ithaca Journal’s Brian Delaney writes about the development of Cornell’s defense from “inconsistent” to “deadly”. He also discusses Dartmouth’s improved performance under Graupe and previews the showdown against Harvard.

The Columbia Spectator profiles Harvard’s Jeremy Lin.

The Columbia Spectator previews the Harvard and Dartmouth games this weekend.

Columbia Spectator columnist Kunal Gupta talks about how the fan base at Columbia is energized about basketball, and how much fun it is.

The Harvard Crimson describes the significance of Harvard’s weekend games.

The Harvard Crimson also writes about the recent publicity surrounding Ivy League basketball, and state their picks for all the Ivy match-ups this weekend.

The Harvard Crimson FlyByBlog writes about the technical troubles faced by students seeking basketball tickets.

Bleacher Report realizes that one of this weekend’s “must-watch” games, Cornell-Harvard, isn’t televised.  It also discusses the Thamel-Torre Twitter tussle.

SBNation also writes about the Thamel-Torre Twitter tussle, and the bias problems associated with writing about your own alma mater.

The Philadelphia Daily News profiles Penn sophomore co-captain Zack Rosen.

The Daily Pennsylvanian discusses about Penn’s clean slate as it begins Ivy play.

The Daily Pennsylvanian Buzz Blog discusses WashPo writer Kathy Orton’s book “Outside the Limelight: Basketball in the Ivy League“…

A Jan 26 Harvard Crimson article also reviews the book, and discusses how basketball at Harvard has changed significantly since the ‘05-’06 season covered in it.

Storming the Floor presents part 2 of “Covering the Ivy”.

The New Haven Register profiles Yale sophomore Greg Mangano.

The Yale Daily News previews this weekend’s Princeton and Penn games.

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Penn faced off against La Salle last night.

Today’s Games: There are no Ivy League games scheduled for today.

USA Today has new team reports.

Washington Jewish Week talks to Cornell’s Eitan Chemerinksi.

The Dartmouth recaps Dartmouth’s close win over St. Francis.

Philadelphia Daily News , Philadelphia Enquirer, the Daily Pennsylvanian, and the Daily Pennsylvanian’s Buzz Blog discuss Penn recruit Fran Dougherty’s choice to commit to Penn over Cornell, Princeton, and others.

Read reviews of last night’s Penn-La Salle game in the Daily Pennsylvanian, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Philadelphia Daily News.

The Daily Pennsylvanian, the DP Buzz Blog, and Phillyburbs.com discuss Zack Rosen’s crucial contributions to the Penn team.

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While some Philly media praised the first win, the Daily Pennsylvanian’s Buzz Blog response was merely lukewarm.  Read recaps below.

From Philly.com:

Finally, the Penn men’s basketball team can call its record-breaking losing streak history.

“We needed it for our confidence, we needed it to know that we actually are capable of winning, and we did a lot of good things,” Rosen said. “We finally executed our game plan and ended up with a win. I think it’s huge for everyone in that locker room for believing that when we go out there, we’re capable of winning every game.”

Allen used different defensive looks down the stretch, alternating between man-to-man and a 1-3-1 trap. That held UMBC guard Chauncey Gilliam to just two points in the second half after he posted 16 in the first.

Defense is “like dancing,” Allen said. “When you have the DJ playing the song and you’re dancing to one beat, you get in a rhythm. What we want to do is stop the needle. Teams play offense to a certain rhythm.”

Also impressive was the Quakers’ handling of 7-foot, 275-pound center Robbie Jackson. The 6-7 Turley and 6-8 Jack Eggleston kept him under wraps and in foul trouble for most of the game, and he collected only eight points and six rebounds in 22 minutes.

Pennathletics.com:

The Penn men’s basketball team put together a complete offensive effort Wednesday night at UMBC, and the result was an 82-71 win over the Retrievers that got the Quakers off the schneid and put them in the win column for the first time this season. It was also the first collegiate win for Penn’s interim head coach, Jerome Allen.

Was it dicey down the stretch? A little. The nerves of a team still looking for its first win showed at times, most prominently with a little over a minute left when the Quakers turned over an inbounds pass off a UMBC bucket, and the turnover led to a three by the Retrievers’ Brian Neller made the score 76-69 with 1:15 still to play, and you could almost see the Penn fans holding their breath.

However, Zack Rosen had the answer. Penn’s sophomore leader got possession of the ensuing inbounds and was fouled, then calmly knocked down both free throws in the bonus situation. He then stole the ball on defense and was fouled again, and again drained both in a 1-and-1 situation. That pushed the Quakers to an 11-point lead, and UMBC — with only one win of its own this season — could not recover.

Philadelphia Daily News:

The drought is over.

… The win was the first for Penn (1-10) since a 51-50 decision over Columbia on March 7.

Rosen shot 8-for-8 from the foul line and 8-for-12 from the field. Allen, a former point guard for the Quakers, praised Rosen’s performance.

“I believe everything starts with the point guard, and Zack has accepted that role,” Allen said. “He likes the challenge, and even though I may ride him harder than the rest, it’s only because his job has so much responsibility.”

The Daily Pennsylvanian’s Buzz blog :

… Let’s also make sure we’re clear about what this win wasn’t. It wasn’t really evidence of a turnaround, or a sign that brighter things are necessarily ahead for the rest of the season. Tonight’s opponent, UMBC, is now 1-13 on the year. By most available measurements, such as RPI and Sagarin ratings, this was a matchup between two of the worst 15 teams in Division I this season up to today. As Rosen also correctly stated, it was the first time the team really executed a gameplan and controlled the game, but that is more of an indictment of the team’s play up to this point. There’s no question that this win was orders of magnitude less impressive than Cornell’s 71-66 loss to national No. 1 Kansas, a game the Big Red led most of the way and was decided in the final two possessions.

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