The Harvard Crimson is reporting that seven-foot center Ugo Okam from Montverde Academy in Florida committed to Tommy Amaker and the Harvard hoops program tonight. According to multiple reports, including my own investigations, Okam narrowed down his choice to either Harvard or Penn weeks ago. He was Penn’s best remaining prospect as a true post presence.

I spoke with Okam’s coach, Kevin Sutton, a week ago and he indicated that Ugo would be waiting until early November to announce his decision, when he can sign a commitment during the early signing period for the Ivy League. Sutton said that Okam is a tremendous shot blocker with excellent timing, but “his defense is way ahead of his offense at this point.” While you have to take any coach’s praises with a grain of salt, he added that Okam is an extremely hard worker who has showed vast and rapid improvement since picking up the game four years ago after moving from Nigeria. He mentioned that Penn’s coaches were blown away by his improvements every time they saw him. On the offensive side, he said he still has a lot to improve, but noted a good ability to finish when he catches the ball in the post and added that he shoots around 63% from the line.

I have no information on why Okam chose Harvard, and neither does The Crimson. While Glen Miller has already put together what seems like an already stellar class of recruits, you never want to lose out on a legitimate seven-footer who can probably contribute immediately on defense and rebounding. Harvard really needed him, as they had just one other recruit despite an ambitious recruiting season. From what I know of Amaker’s recruiting tactics, I’m sure he made that abundantly clear. That’s not to say Miller and Co. weren’t just as aggressive, but it’s the only analysis I can offer at this point.  I’ll try to get some more information in the next couple of days.

Among the many great things the Quakers can take away from Saturday’s 14-7 overtime victory over Brown, the performance of senior wide receiver Kyle Derham may be among the most crucial.

It’s no secret that the Penn passing game had been nearly non-existent this season, ranking in at 107th out of the 118 teams in the Football Championship Subdivision going into Saturday’s contest. Of course, a lot of that had to do with injuries to nearly every quarterback on the roster and the focus on the impressive running game, but it hasn’t been helped by the inability of any wide receiver to step up. That changed Saturday, as Derham caught 8 passes for 95 yards (both season highs for the Quakers). Two of those came in overtime, including the game-winning score, his first since last year’s opener against Villanova.

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Another Quakers win, another week of What the Other Side is Saying. This time let’s look at the Brown Daily Herald’s coverage, as well as that of the Providence Journal.

The Daily Herald just had a simple recap of the game, leading with a quick recap of Penn’s overtime woes since 2006. Two interesting stats from the article:

1) If the Quakers had shut out Brown — and they were a pick six away from doing so — it would’ve been the first time Brown failed to score since 1996.

2) Brown running back running back Zach Tronti didn’t touch the ball in the second quarter and got only six handoffs in the final two quarters, yet somehow had 63 yards on 11 carries, making him only the second running back to gain over 60 yards against Penn this season.

That second stat about Brown’s limited success running the ball led to two comments on the Pro Jo recap. The two comments astutely called out Bears coach Phil Estes for relying heavily on the pass. Meanwhile, Penn’s vaunted rush D did give up 5.7 yards per carry to Tronti, yet he didn’t even get a dozen carries. Considering Penn — usually a run-first team — focused on its passing game, perhaps if Brown had gone to its rushing game more often it would’ve compensated for the below-average performance of its Ivy-leading passing attack. Then again, it’s easy being a Monday (afternoon) quarterback.

Good afternoon Quakers fans! This is Joe Sanfilippo with you live from Brown Stadium in beautiful Providence, R.I. The sun is out, the sky is clear and the winds are calm, so it looks like Penn will finally get to play in some good weather. Click the link below to follow along with all the action.

Penn Football at Brown

With the NCAA basketball season just weeks away, everyone’s been releasing their preseason polls. The conference polls have been trickling in over the last week, and the national polls came out today.

The Ivy League released its preseason rankings yesterday, with Penn coming in at third behind Cornell and Princeton. Cornell is, as expected, the unanimous favorite, returning all five starters from last year’s Ivy championship. You’d be hard-pressed to argue against the conference being Cornell’s to lose.

Princeton, Penn, and Harvard are essentially in a dead heat for second place, with only 10 points separating the three schools. Yale, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth round out the bottom half of the League in that order.

Keep reading after the jump for a rundown of Penn’s opponents in the national polls and to see how the other Big 5 schools are projected to finish in their own conferences.

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Hopefully not as desperate as this woman.

Susan Finkelstein, who ESPN describes as a “43-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate student,” was so motivated to get World Series tickets that she posted to Craigslist the following message:

“DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia)
“Diehard Phillies fan—gorgeous tall buxom blonde— in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable— I’m the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!”

An undercover police officer soon answered the request, and when she allegedly told him she’d perform sex acts for tickets, she was arrested for prostitution charges.

However, it appears she’ll get her tickets! Wired 96.5’s Chio in the Morning will apparently give her two tickets in conjunction with a car dealer.

So perhaps those of you who really want to go, can think of other creative ways to score free tickets. (As always, an ideas in the comments are welcome).

(Thanks to Ari for the tip, who also found her facebook profile.)

The Ivy League Preseason Women’s Basketball Media/SID poll was officially released today. I’ve covered Penn for the past two years, so this year I was given the honor of having Penn’s media vote (over women’s basketball guru Mel Greenberg).

Apparently, I did a pretty good job — or I was engaging in groupthink — because my rankings matched the final results. Below are the results of the 16 votes (one media and one SID vote per school), with first-place votes in parentheses.

Pts.

1. Dartmouth (11) 123

2. Harvard (5) 115

3. Princeton 86

4. Columbia 83

5-t. Cornell 57

5-t. Yale 57

7. Penn 36

8. Brown 19

I thought it would be a useful exercise for discussion purposes to release my votes, and the reasoning behind them. So follow along after the jump for my breakdown.

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The men’s lacrosse team released its schedule today for the Quakers’ first season under new head coach Mike Murphy. And he doesn’t look to be taking any time to ease into the new role, as this year’s schedule looks to be tough as ever.

The Quakers open on Feb. 27, traveling to Durham, N.C., to take on Duke. The Blue Devils fell in the NCAA Semifinals last year, losing to eventual champion Syracuse, and look to again be in the mix for the national championship. They end the regular season with another ACC title contender in Maryland, traveling to College Park, MD on May 4. From what I’ve read, those two are the widespread favorites for the crown this year.

This season will also feature the inaugural Ivy League Tournament. As I wrote in an article last year, the top 4 teams in the Ivy League will play in a two-round tournament and the victor will receive the League’s automatic bid to the NCAAs

All in all, the Quakers will take on 6 of the 16 teams that played in last year’s NCAA Tournament (including 3 Ivies), and 7 that ranked in the top-20. Read below the jump for the full schedule and my comments.

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Last week I started this new feature of linking to the opposing school’s football stories. Week 1 illustrated the Columbia Spectator’s reaction to Penn’s 27-13 win. This week, let’s see what the Yale Daily News — considered one of the better Ivy newspapers – had to say about Penn’s 9-0 shutout.

The YDN only had one article, a standard recap with a sweet quote from Bulldogs coach Tom Williams, who said “we played with great violence.” (Notice the photo credit). Interesting facts from the recap: though Penn hadn’t shut out an opponent since November 2007, Yale was shut out as recently as the last game of 2008, and in fact didn’t score an offensive touchdown for the second straight week.

There were several comments on the article. Some were vehemently against Williams, who hasn’t thrilled Yalies in his rookie year as coach. But the one defense of him that I especially liked went for the French Revolution metaphor: “Roll the guillotine back into storeage for a bit. … Show Mr. Williams a year of mercy, since the unfortunate truth is that his current minions are all holdovers from the ancien régime.

I know it’s been a while, but here’s a Random Ivy notes:

1) Sure it’s been beaten to death many times before, but here’s another column decrying the Ivy League’s ban on football postseason play. I’ve already stated I’m pro-football playoffs, and won’t rehash the arguments. But this column, written by someone from Delaware of all places, emphatically believes it’s “the dumbest, most unfair rule in sports” that the Ivy champion can’t play in the FCS playoffs. (Some background: when he’s talking about Delaware playing Delaware State, he’s referring to the Blue Hen’s refusal to play their in-state rivals.)

2) As a hard-hitting linebacker (and center) for Penn and the Eagles, Chuck Bednarik probably would’ve liked the Penn-Yale game Saturday that ended 9-0. He actually was present at Franklin Field, signing copies of an oral history about him. Although we were told not to talk to him, Soft Pretzel Logic got a short video interview with the Philadelphia legend.

3) The Cornell Basketball Blog has an index of season previews, and not surprisingly the Big Red are the consensus preseason No. 1 Ivy team. Penn’s preseason ranking is extremely more volatile, ranging from second to seventh.