Athletic Director Steve Bilsky and hoops coach Glen Miller had their annual season-in-review meeting the afternoon of March 18. The DP has since confirmed that Miller has not been fired. He is still Penn's head coach, and he will return for the 2009-2010 season.

That is, if he wants to.

The possibility of Miller leaving Penn in the next few weeks isn't as far-out as it might seem. He has a five-year contract, according to my colleague Andrew Todres; if he stays on board, next year will be his fourth with the Quakers. After that season, the Athletic Department will either have to grant him a contract extension or fire him, since I doubt it would want a lame-duck coach running its flagship program.

If the decision was made today, Miller would be out the door, no question. His teams have stunk. Fans are incensed. Players are deserting. So If Miller does return to Penn, he is banking on pulling off a dramatic turnaround to satisfy his bosses.

That is a big gamble, because if the team struggles and Miller gets the axe, his stock as a head coach takes a serious hit.

Obviously, he can avoid that risk by bolting for another job during the offseason. As a career move, it makes a lot of sense. His decision would depend in part on the following questions:

(more...)

From a political perspective, I don't see why President Obama's advisers thought it was smart for him to fill out an NCAA bracket. If he does poorly, he looks like a sports dunce. If he does well, he looks like a man who should be spending less time filling out brackets and more time saving Citigroup or crucifying A.I.G. And no matter how well Obama does, someone who wasn't happy with a Presidential snub was bound to mouth off at some point.

For Penn president Amy Gutmann, on the other hand, making picks in public is a good move. She has nothing to lose in the court of public opinion. If her bracket gets busted, who will notice?

Wouldn't you know it, Obama's picks are falterning already, while Gutmann's are doing quite well. Penn's fearless leader gue- I mean, picked the correct team in 23 of 32 first-round games. Obama's bracket — the one issue he's been conservative on — was right on just 19 of 32 games, and he lost two of his Sweet Sixteen teams (Florida State and Wake Forest), while Gutmann lost one (also Wake Forest).

Not much worth talking about here. The box score of a basketball game doesn't always tell the whole story, but this one comes darn close. Here are recaps from The Cornell Daily Sun, The New York Times, The Kansas City Star , The St. Louis Post-Dispatch , The Sporting Network and The Missourian.

And here's some insult to go along with that injury.

Here we are, two hours away from Cornell's chance to do something truly great.

Coach Steve Donahue has seemed awfully optimistic about the 14-seeded Big Red's matchup with third-seeded Missouri. On a conference call with reporters earlier this week, Donahue emphasized several times that a second postseason is far different from -- and easier than -- the first, and that this Cornell team is far more experienced than the Tigers. (And on paper, that's true.) He added that his players have been more composed and focused than they were during last year's Tournament preparations. Take those claims for whatever you think they're worth, but Donahue is not normally one to throw around stuff like that for the heck of it. He better be right, because Vegas has pegged the Tigers as a 12-1/2 point favorite.

If you have time to kill before the game starts, here are previews from The Cornell Daily Sun, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Sporting News, The Ithaca Journal, The Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune, The Kirksville (Mo.) Daily Express, The Elmira (N.Y.) Star-Gazette, The Kansas City Star, The Missourian, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Orlando Sentinel, USA Today, MSNBC and Jon Jacques, a forward for the Big Red. And here are profiles of forward Ryan Wittman, guard Louis Dale, center Jeff Foote and Donahue of Cornell, as well as forward DeMare Carroll, former coach Norm Stewart and current coach Mike Anderson of Missouri. The Journal also has an interesting story on how Donahue is trying to exploit Cornell's moment in the spotlight to recruit prospective Big Red ballers.

Enjoy the game.

Before shifting into 24-7 March Madness mode, take a moment to consider the Penn women's basketball team, which got a big shake-up last week when the Penn brass announced that it will not renew head coach Pat Knapp's contract.

About time. Don't get me wrong -- I covered this team my freshman year and developed a lot of respect for Knapp. He is very passionate and candid to a fault, and he struck me as committed to the welfare of his players. I owe him a personal debt for always taking the time to help me understand the team's dynamics. But given how poorly Penn has performed in his five years at the helm, this was the right move for the program.

If you ask me, though, the bigger lesson is that Knapp never should have been hired in the first place.

(more...)

Most basketball fans know Chuck Daly as the coach of the late-1980s Detroit Pistons and the 1992 Dream Team. But anyone who rooted for Penn from 1971-77 remembers him as the steward of some of Penn's last golden years. The news that he has pancreatic cancer, which generally has a five-year survival rate under five percent, is tough to swallow.

Daly, now 78, replaced Dick Harter after the Quakers' phenomenal 1970-71 campaign, still widely considered Penn's best team ever. Daly lived up to his predecessor, guiding Penn to the Elite Eight and a No. 3 national ranking (!) in his first year, the first of what would be four straight Ivy championship seasons.

We at The Buzz wish Daly and his family the best as he confronts his illness.

So lightning can't strike twice? Tell that to Temple, which I just witnessed upset the top seed in the Atlantic 10 Tournament, No. 19 Xavier, to move one victory away from becoming the conference's first-back-to-back champs since 2001. It was the Owls that did it that year, too, and if they beat the winner of the Duquesne-Dayton game (which started moments ago), Fran Dunphy and Co. will notch their second conference auto-bid to the NCAA Tournament in as many years.

That would be great news for the A-10's postseason representation, too, since Xavier has the profile for an at-large bid.

More on this after the postgame press conferences.

Hello from the Palestra. The wireless here is not being friendly tonight, but I was able to use the media room's ethernet to give you some halftime stats. I'll have a final report once the game ends. The score at the break is Princeton 27 Penn 25.

Penn's three seniors started the game, and its leading scorers are Kevin Egee (6) and Justin Reilly (5). Princeton has gotten 7 each from guard Dan Mavraides and center Pawel Buczak.

Field goals: Penn 10-24 (41.7%), Princeton 11-26 (42.3%)

Three-pointers: Penn 4-9 (44.4%), Princeton 2-9 (22.2%)

Turnovers: Penn 8, Princeton 5

Free throws: Penn 3-3, Princeton 1-2

Assists: Penn 8, Princeton 8

Rebounds: Penn 20, Princeton 9

Overall, a very even game apart from the rebounding battle. Penn has done a great job of avoiding the Tigers' box-outs and keeping plays alive, getting three-point attempts after several of its nine(!) offensive rebounds. That was the key to the Quakers' victory at Princeton earlier this year, and their best chance tonight is to convert more of those second chances into points.

There was no drama, no doubt, no nothing. Cornell entered last night's game with its ticket to the postseason in jeopardy, but an 83-59 laugher over Penn turned it into a coronation.

The Big Red clinched the Ivy League championship outright, getting the help they needed from Columbia, which beat Princeton, 58-44. They became the first team other than Penn and Princeton to win back-to-back Ivy titles. The season's five remaining games are now just formalities, save for any RPI effects of Cornell's home contest with Princeton.

Without getting bogged down in Xs and Os, I gathered from the radio broadcast that Penn opened with a decent 15 minutes, faltered just before halftime and took a six-point deficit into the locker room, then somehow hit the 'off' switch and watched Cornell sink 19 of 25 second-half shots. I'm at a loss to explain how that happens, and trying to is a depressing excersise.

Coming into the game, three Ivy teams — Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth — all had a legit shot to finish tied for first place with Cornell. The Tigers had the best odds, with several plausible scenarios that would give them a share of the title. They had won three of their last four games and seemed like a real threat. The brass announced that Columbia's Levien Gymnasium would host any playoff. It appeared that the Ivy League might treat us to some last-minute excitement after a season of very poor-quality basketball.

No dice. The situation resolved itself as quickly as it could have and sucked any potential excitement out of the final games tonight and, for Penn and Princeton, Tuesday. The Quakers, for example, played a game with tangible NCAA implications for the first time in a while, even if only as a spoiler. But they won't even get another chance at that. Tuesday night's visit from Princeton will be about pride alone.

The Ivy League championship is often decided much earlier than this. Those who support the idea of a conference tournament (I don't) are right to point out that under the current system, clinching early can make late-season games of the seven non-title-winners seem irrelevant.

Yes, they can.

It's a longshot, but Princeton still has a path to the Ivy League title and the NCAA Tournament. And, believe it or not, so do both Yale and Dartmouth(!), although they face even longer odds.

As you can see here, Princeton — the same Princeton I witnessed the Bad News Quakers beat, fair and square, on its home floor in February — is 7-4 in conference play and sits 1.5 games back of Cornell (9-3), which hasn't punched a ticket to a darn thing yet.

The Big Red host Penn on Friday and Princeton on Saturday, while Columbia hosts Princeton first and then Penn. The Tigers then wrap up the regular season with one more game next Tuesday, a contest against the Quakers at the Palestra that could wind up being crucial. If there is a tie for first place when the dust settles, a playoff at a site to be determined will decide who gets the NCAA auto bid.

With some help from Cornell's sports info office, the title scenarios are laid out after the jump.

(more...)