Hey everyone, Neil Fanaroff here at Lavietes Pavillion in Boston, MA for tonight’s matchup between the Penn Quakers and Harvard Crimson. Penn’s looking to continue its winning ways after consecutive down-to-the-wire victories over Brown and Dartmouth. Harvard, however, looks to bounce back from its disappointing start to Ivy League play, after losing consecutive games to Harvard and Princeton.

I’ll be bringing live updates to those of you stuck inside thanks to the snow, or anyone else who wants to follow along. Follow along with me here:

Penn @ Harvard Live Updates

Calling all soccer aficionados out there: Brian “Rudy” Fuller needs some help.

The Penn men’s soccer team is looking for an assistant coach — and advertising for the opening on Pennlink, the Career Service website. Good to know that a background check is required, at least.

Here’s the posting (Pennkey req.). You can apply here (through Feb. 10). And after the jump, a screenshot.

HT: Brandon Moyse

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello everyone, Neil Fanaroff here at Leede Arena in chilly (but not snowy) Hanover, NH where the Penn Quakers will tonight take on the Dartmouth Big Green. The Quakers look to keep the momentum up from Saturday’s last-second victory over Brown, while Dartmouth looks to pick up its first Ivy League win of the season. You can follow all the action with me here:

Penn @ Dartmouth Live Updates

So it appears to me that we’re all about the gambling here at the DP these days, but I thought I’d throw this in anyways.

For those unaware, ESPN.com has had an ongoing game for a while called Streak for the Cash. The rules change every so often, but the premise is fairly simple: they place a number of games/props for you to choose from, you pick one at a time and try and string together as long a streak of correct picks as you can. Under the current rules, the winner at the end of each month wins $100,000. It’s completely free, so is a nice way for risk-averse people like myself to get a bit of a sports gambling fix and it’s also very difficult.

As you can see on today’s Streak page, one of the games to pick today is Penn-Dartmouth, I suppose it makes some sense, as the game is expected to be a close one, and thus a tough one to pick. Dartmouth, favored by 2 over the Quakers, has been picked by 87.2% of people as of this post, so the masses clearly are going with the 4-14 Big Green over the 2-14 Quakers. What do you think, loyal Buzz readers, should I wager by 5-pick Streak on this game? Let me know in the comments below.

On another note, tonight’s matchup features two interim head coaches facing off against each other; I wonder when the last time that happened was?

See you in a few hours, when I’ll be liveblogging the game from frigid Hanover, NH.

The Ivy League conducted an official review of Penn’s last-second victory over Brown on Saturday, and ruled that they will not take any action. There is no indication of whether they ruled the basket was released before the buzzer, but rather a focus on the NCAA rules stating that “The final determination of the outcome of the game rests with the game officials and their approval of the final score,” and that game scores cannot be changed once the referees leave the court.

Based on a bit of ambiguous language, I’m not sure if the League actually found that the bucket was good, or is just saying that they won’t change anything regardless. If the former, great. If the latter, I think the discussion of replay being instituted will become an even hotter topic. What do you all think? Should the Ivy League institute instant replay at all men’s basketball games, regardless of whether they’re televised?

I don’t want to cut off the good discussion we’re having about Cornell’s Top 25 spot.  However, I’ve seen in a few places, including Soft Pretzel Logic, Yahoo and this ESPN video, that it appears discussions are moving forward to expand the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament to 68 or even 96 teams.

The expansion won’t occur until the NCAA manages to opt out of its current TV deal with CBS — who has had the broadcasting rights since 1982 — and renegotiate a new one. But one source claims expansion is “a done deal” and could happen as soon as 2010-11. If the tournament were to expand to 96 teams, then a cable network would broadcast the first round(s) in addition to a network broadcaster covering the latter rounds.

Expanding to 68 teams would create a play-in game for all four regions, instead of just the one play-in game that currently exists. Personally, I wouldn’t have any strong objections to this format. I’ve always thought that the one seed that played the play-in winner had an inherent advantage since the 16 seed has just three days to prepare. Then again, No. 1 seeds have never lost in the first round, so it’s not exactly a huge advantage. In the end, the net effect would probably just be three more at large bids to power conference teams.

On the other hand, expanding to 96 teams seems a bit excessive. Frankly, it would cheapen the value of making the NCAA Tournament. Sure, 96 out of 347 Division I teams is still a small percentage. But let’s be honest: those 32 extra at large bids are more than likely going to go to power conference teams that had middling overall records but a strong SOS, than decent mid-majors who have better overall records but subpar strength of schedules and RPI.

However, I could see some positives with 96 teams. They could create a rule that any small conference team that clinches the regular season title would be guaranteed a berth to the big dance. Right now these teams are already guaranteed an NIT bid, but I suspect the NIT will be basically worthless if the NCAAs are expanded to 96.  In addition, theoretically another round of single-elimination basketball sounds exciting. I just fear it would make subsequent upsets rarer.

So in the end, what exactly would the effect of expansion be on the Ivy League and Penn? If expansion just ups the field by three, the only impact would be that Ivy teams would get worse seeds, especially in years when there isn’t a dominant team like this year’s Cornell squad. However, if 32 teams are added, I could see a potential year like this one– or at least before Cornell throttled Harvard — in which two Ivy teams are in legitimate contention to make the tournament. And if somehow the NIT does survive, then I definitely could see an Ivy team make that with more frequency than they do now.

What do you guys think about NCAA expansion and its effect on the Ancient Eight.

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Here’s the stat of the week for you: According to one Basketball-U poster, since 1990-91 Princeton has won the Ivy League every time it swept the Brown/Yale roadtrip, while every other year it’s lost at least one of those games. Extending it back to 1980-81, the pattern holds for 11 out of 12 titles.

This past weekend Princeton swept those two.

Of course, that doesn’t indicate they’ll somehow beat Cornell once, let alone twice, and win the League. But as a history major, I’m certainly intrigued by interesting trends.

(HT Noah Becker)

They’ve been knocking on the door for a while, but the Cornell men’s basketball team finally cracked the Top 25, garnering just one more vote than Ole Miss in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll. It’s the first time in 59 years that the Big Red have been among the top 25 teams in the nation, dating back to Jan. 3, 1951.

That also makes them the first ranked Ivy team to crack the top 25 since Princeton did it at the end of the 1997-98 season. That squad finished No. 8 in the year-end AP poll and No. 16 in the final USA Today poll.

The Big Red are fresh off two dominating performances to open Ivy play. They trumped Dartmouth by 34 and then topped that by taking down Harvard (seemingly their closest rival in-conference) by a whopping 36 points.

In my opinion, this news all but seals the fact that Cornell as a contender is here to stay. They may be losing three superstars at the end of the year, but a Top 25 ranking (even in February) is a tough recruiting tool to combat. And that’s before we even factor what this national attention could do to their ranking in the NCAA Tournament. It looks like Penn’s resurgence in the Ivies won’t be as easy as waiting for Cornell’s “Big Three” to graduate.

Hey all,

I’m here at the Pizzitola center for Penn’s matchup with Brown in their second game of the young Ivy season. They’ll be looking to bounce back from a loss to Yale last night. Follow along with me for all the action.

M. Hoops at Brown, 1/30/10

So far this week, we’ve seen a book devoted to Ivy hoops and a Wall Street Journal piece saying that the Harvard-Cornell game (tonight, 7 p.m. ET, Ithaca, N.Y.) may be “[t]he game of the year in college basketball.”

Well, now Sports Illustrated jumps into the fray with a feature on Harvard basketball. The story focuses on coach Tommy Amaker and star guard Jeremy Lin, who may be headed for the NBA. SI also had an interesting table with the story, replicated below:

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Zach Klitzman gave his picks for yesterday’s games. All the favorites cruised, and Klitzman didn’t do too badly, going 2-1.  But his line-setting prognostication skills weren’t quite as good; here are the previously unavailable spreads for today’s action:

Harvard at Cornell -8

Princeton -2 at Yale

Dartmouth at Columbia -9

Penn at Brown -6

Hey everyone, it’s Lauren Plotnick and you will be following along live with me as I cover the Penn’s Ivy Opener at Yale.

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