With finals week in full force, I've been too swamped to post often, so forgive me if some of these links are outdated.
1) As a special to ESPN the Magazine, Jonathan Tannenwald wrote a piece on the Big 5 in preparation for the St. Joe's Villanova game which took place Thursday.
2) Speaking of the Holy War, in case you didn't hear, it was quite the game. The Wildcats pulled out a squeaker, winning 59-56. Maybe Villanova won't dominate the Schuylkill 16 as imagined.
3) And if there's one team out there that might jump ahead of Villanova in the rankings, it's Temple, who pulled of a shocker by owning No. 8 Tennessee 88-72 today at the Liacouras Center. (And yes ESPN does have a Christmas headline.)
4) Lastly, I must admit that I've been reading Fire Glen Miller for the last week. After declaring itself a "hate blog" it has toned down its vitrolic postings to some degree, even if half the posts are pretty lame. But it just got a huge dose of legitimacy yesterday when Stephen Danley, yes that Steve Danley, wrote a guest piece.
He breaks the post into three sections: one on the Red and Blue Crew, one on "The Fellas" (aka the current players) and of course one on Glen Miller himself. As for the RBC, he says, "I know I don’t have to tell you - but you guys win games." The opposite definitely could apply to this year: with the low turnout, the team hasn't felt any energy from its fans that can "will you to a comeback."
As for the current players, he makes a great point: his sophomore year the team started 4-7. "And it was an ugly 4-7. Lost to Providence by 40. Wisconsin by 30. San Francisco. Illinois-Chicago. Rider." However, the team got its you know what together and won the Ivy League with a 13-1 record. This year, with only Harvard (4-3) above .500 in the Ivy League, as the Penn team four years ago said, "Why not us?" (To be fair, four out of Cornell's five losses came at the hands of either Big Ten or Big East schools.)
Finally, he says that Glen Miller is an offensive genius and has installed a great culture and work ethic. If Danley says that Glen Miller is an offensive genius, I'm willing to believe him. Hopefully that means that the team's current points per game of 66.6 will go up, and their scoring margin average of -7.3 will improve come Ivy season.
Tags: basketball, Big 5, random Ivy notes, stephen danley
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