Welcome, Quakers fans, to the Palestra for tonight's matchup between the Penn Quakers and the Harvard Crimson. Harvard aims to sweep the Quakers for the first time in over 60 years, and they're still looking out for a postseason bid. Penn looking to end its season on a positive note and pick up some momentum heading into next year. I'm here at the Palestra to keep you updated if you've already ducked out for Spring Break. So park it on a beach chair, get a mojito in one hand, and stay tuned while I keep you updated on all the action:

Penn vs. Harvard

Neil Fanaroff and Eli Cohen here at the sold out Newman Arena in Ithaca, NY for tonight's contest between the Cornell Big Red and Penn Quakers. Penn will look to spoil Cornell's Senior Night, as this is the final home game for Cornell's Big Three of Louis Dale, Jeff Foote and Ryan Wittman. Cornell looks to avenge its only Ivy loss of the season and end its career at Newman on a high note. Follow along with me here:

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Hey everyone. Neil Fanaroff here in snowy Manhattan to cover tonight's contest between Penn and Columbia. Stay inside, stay warm, and follow along with me as I'll be keeping you updated as to the goings on up here.

Penn @ Columbia

In today's DP, I looked at dwindling student attendance and considered some causes and solutions for the problem. But of course, today was just about the busiest news day ever at Penn, so I don't blame you if you missed the column. Either way, I thought it would be good to continue the discussion here at The Buzz.

So I encourage you to read it anyways, but if you don't want to take the time, my basic points are this:
1. The Palestra will be packed again when the Quakers are again a winning team
2. The student ticketing policy needs to be changed if the Quakers want to enjoy a true home court advantage.

Read below the jump for some further analysis.
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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

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.

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.

Jerome Allen has now coached as many games this season (7) as Glen Miller did before he was fired. So I figure now is as good a time as any to compare the performance of each coach this season.

Seeing as I am a statistics minor, I figure I'll try and take care of this statistically. I looked at the team's performance in a number of statistical areas, and performed a t-test to determine if there was any significance between the means. If there were (and Allen's team was higher in that metric), then that may indicate better play by the team since Allen has taken over.

DISCLAIMER: This is by no means statistically accurate for two major reasons. First of all, there are not enough data points to reasonably assume normality in the data, a key assumption in performing this test. Furthermore, a number of factors make the two parts of the season incomparable, including injuries, strength of schedule, and factors such as momentum in certain areas.

That being said, I still think this is a fun exercise, and one I decided to undertake anyways. Again, if any of my stat professors happen to be reading this, please don't fail me.

The numbers for each category are the team's averages/percentages over the games played under each head coach. Significance tested at the 5% level (If yes, then there is a statistically significant difference between the two numbers).

Winning Percentage
Miller: 0% (0/7)
Allen: 14.28% (1/7)
Significant? Not at All

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Midway through his first season with the Quakers, freshman guard Carson Sullivan has left the men's basketball team, as you can read about in today's DP.

I gave Carson a call, and he was kind enough to talk to me about the reason for his decision to transfer.

It's pretty apparent to me that the decision was definitely motivated by personal reasons. It was clear to me that he wants to be closer to his Charlotte home.

"I think it’s a personal decision, I wanted to be closer to home, I just wanted to find a better situation for me," he said. "It had nothing to do with the coaching staff or anything like that. I wanted to be closer to home was the main thing."

That was also clear from the schools he listed as possible destinations. While he's still gauging interest, he listed Elon, UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Asheville, and Furman as potential destinations. All four are located in the Carolinas.

But the decision was basketball-related as well.

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