Although Penn basketball has historically dominated Penn State and in fact holds a 31-13 all-time record against its larger in-state rival with a similar name, the Nittany Lions had a resurgent season in the Big Ten this year. That includes a dominating performance against the Quakers in the first half that led to a 85-73 victory at the Palestra earlier this season.

While Penn State didn't survive the NCAA tournament bubble, tonight the Nittany Lions defeated Baylor, 69-63, to win the NIT championship.

With 36 busloads of students as well as Joe Paterno -- claiming that basketball is his second favorite sport -- in the crowd, the Nittany Lions came back after being down four at halftime.

Meanwhile, Penn also played earlier this season against two of the four teams still alive in postseason play -- North Carolina and Villanova, which square off in the Final Four.  The Quakers lost by 15 to the Tarheels on the road in the season opener, while Big 5 rival Villanova drubbed the Red and Blue by 22 in early December.

So using margins of victory over Penn as a barometer -- and the fallacious transitive property of sports -- Villanova > UNC > Penn State.  Perhaps the Wildcats will win tomorrow then?

In fact, if Villanova were to beat UNC and then beat the winner of No. 1 Connecticut and No. 2 Michigan State in the championship game, it would be the first time since 2003 that the NIT and NCAA Champion were from the same state. That year St. John's and Syracuse won those titles, respecitvely. That's the only time this coincidence has happened since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

Tags: basketball, ncaa tournament, NIT, Penn State, villanova

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 am and is filed under Men's Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.