I realize I'm entering Noah's territory a little, but he's traveling back from Florida to Philadelphia today.

Anyway, today the NCAA announced the Volleyball Tournament bracket, and Penn will face Army Friday at University Park, Pa. Although it is a 64-team tournament (kind of) like the Men's Basketball Tournament, only 16 teams are ranked. Penn didn't get one of those seeds. In fact, they're in No. 1 Penn State's sub regional, hence they're playing at the Nittany Lions' home gym. If the Quakers were to beat the 26-5 Black Knights, they would then take on Penn State (32-0) who  just won its 96th consecutive match (it has also won 72 matches in a row at home).

But first up are the Black Knights, who are in their first ever Volleyball Tournament as Patriot League champions. Freshman Ariana Mankus swept the Patriot League Player and Rookie of the Year awards.

Penn has made the NCAA Tournament three previous times, always losing in the first round. The most recent loss was a 3-1 decision to Pittsburgh in 2003, coincidentally held in University Park as well.

From the department of not surprising news, Penn football had 18 All-Ivy selections, including senior linebacker Jake Lewko, who shared the Asa S. Bushnell Cup with Brown receiver/returner Buddy Farnham as the Ivy League's top player.

Six of the 18 received first team honors, including both of Penn's starting cornerbacks, seniors Jonathan Moore and Chris Wynn. This was Wynn's third straight All-Ivy year; the last Penn player to do so was receiver Miles Macik (1993-95). The other four first teamers were Lewko, junior offensive lineman Joseph D'Orazio, senior defensive lineman Joe Goniprow and junior kicker Andrew Samson.

In addition, coach Al Bagnoli was named a candidate for the Eddie Robinson award, which goes to the top coach in the Football Championship Subdivision. Other candidates of note include Villanova's Andy Talley and Dale Lennon of No. 1 Southern Illinois. This is Bagnoli's third appearance on the Robinson Award list; he finished ninth in 2002 and eighth in 2003.

There were two huge stories this weekend in Ivy football outside of Penn's title-clinching game. I briefly mentioned both of them in my Ivy football recaps story but here's some more analysis and links to other schools' newspapers.

The biggest story was that Princeton fired coach Roger Hughes. The Daily Princetonian has an article detailing the firing, which took place less than 24 hours after the team had won its season finale. (Be sure to take a look at the comments.)

Choicest quote from the article: “It was surprising how early [the announcement] was, but it’s nice because if you’re going to do it, do it early,” [sophomore quarterback Tommy] Wornham said.

Last year the only Ivy coaching change was Jack Siedlecki, who announced his retirement as Yale coach the day before Thanksgiving. Yale would eventually replace him with Tom Williams in early January.

Ironically, Williams was responsible for the second big story of the weekend. Coaching in The Game for the first time, Williams took a play out of Bill Belichick's playbook. But just like the New England Patriots coach two Sundays ago against the Colts, a big fourth-down gamble failed miserably.

Leading 10-7, Williams elected to use a fake punt on fourth and 22. It was stopped seven yards short and Harvard would score the go-ahead touchdown on the next possession, eventually winning, 14-10.

Here are the recaps from The Crimson and The Yale Daily News. The comments to the YDN article were pretty vicious, including my favorite: "In the same vein as the '68 Crimson headline, 'Harvard Wins 29-29', how about the Daily running, 'Williams loses to Harvard 10-14'?"

However, I tried to find a column from either newspaper attacking/lauding/lamenting/questioning Williams' decision, but couldn't find anything. The Crimson did have this notebook, but no real opinionated column. Considering the YDN had an entire page dedicated to The Game, you'd think they'd have more than one story on the actual contest. It appears not. (Forgive me if I missed one somehow.)

The decision to go for it even got national attention. Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King wrote about it, though he disagrees with my Belichik comparison. From section 10, bullet point h of his Monday Morning Quarterback column (he apparently doesn't know how to use bullet points correctly):

h. Don't even compare the Yale coach's call -- running a fake punt while up 10-7, under three minutes to go against Harvard, fourth-and-22 at his own 25, best punter in the Ivy League back to punt, no timeouts left for Harvard, Yale defense having controlled the day, runner stopped short of the first down at the Yale 40 -- to Bill Belichick's. Not applicable. Belichick had a fourth-and-2 with Tom Brady on his side, not wanting to punt the ball so Manning could have two minutes to make him regret it. The call by Tom Williams made Belichick look like a Bill Walsh/Albert Einstein combo platter. I don't want to make this a scar-kids-for-life moment, because it shouldn't. But imagine those kids at Yale, walking off a football field for the last time in their lives, thinking, "This is my last memory in football? My coach going for it idiotically on fourth-and-22, causing us to lose to our arch-rivals?''

In response to King's comments, the football humor site (that has NSFW language and occassionally photos) Kissing Suzy Kolber said "Jesus, [Williams] really did that? What a moron."

Andreas Schreiber missed all but two games last year as he suffered from a separated shoulder injury.

It appears he'll miss even more time.

Multiple sources have confirmed that the Swedish forward/center has re-injured his shoulder and will be out indefinitely. He's started both games so far this year yet only averages 5.0 points and one rebound per game. He technically is a senior, but has junior eligibility due to the injuries.

Two games down for M. Hoops, and two losses to BCS teams. But as my colleagues Neil Fanaroff and Ari Seifter asked, how much can we learn from these two defeats about the 2009-10 men's basketball team? Neil believes, not much, since this is way to soon to make snap judgments about the team. Ari believes we can make broader statements about the team's ability to compete with top-flight teams.

Not to cop out, but they're both right.

Clearly this Penn team, especially this early in the season, isn't suited to compete with a top 5 team like Villanova. And there's a good chance the Quakers' trip to Cameron Indoor Stadium will result in an equally lopsided loss to Duke.  But that doesn't mean that Penn will be irrelevant against better competition forever.  Ivy teams in general aren't irrelevant nationally. Cornell beat Alabama this weekend. Harvard beat Holy Cross and Williams and Mary, two better mid-majors. Even Brown -- which was last in the Ivies last year -- was semi-competitive agains Virginia Tech. Penn has awhile to go before they can be as successful as Cornell is right now, but that doesn't mean they'll go winless in the Big 5 from now until they quit out of desperation.

On the other hand, Neil's right that losing to Penn State and Villanova tells us very little about Penn's Ivy chances. The fact of the matter is this season will be a success or failure depending on Penn's Ivy play. If Penn goes 4-10 in non-conference play like it did last year, people will surely be up in arms, calling for Glen Miller's head. But then if the team were to somehow go 10-4 in League play, perhaps beat Cornell at the Palestra, go at least 1-1 versus Princeton and not lose to Dartmouth -- twice. I'm not saying they necessarily would do that. And Tyler Bernardini's injury could affect them significantly. But frankly it's too early to tell if they can compete with teams more equal to their caliber.

I realize some of you already posted your thoughts on Ari's initial column. But feel free to do so again here on The Buzz, especially your thoughts on this year's team.

Also, read after the jump for two more Hoops items

(more...)

Fresh off clinching at least a share of the Ivy League championship, the football team got some recognition yesterday after their 17-7 win
over Harvard.

For the first time since the 2005 season the Quakers entered the national rankings, as their 367 votes earned them 24th in the latest
Sports Network Football Championship Subdivision Media Poll. Penn's 7-2 record is 18th best of any ranked team, and its two
losses were to No. 2 Villanova (14-3) and No. 22 Lafayette (20-17 in overtime).

In addition, the Quakers got two Ivy Player of the Week awards. Senior linebacker Jake Lewko won Defensive POY after a career-high 15
tackles, while senior quarterback Kyle Olson won Offensive POY after scoring both of Penn's touchdowns.

Another Quakers win, another week of What the Other Side is Saying. This time let's look at the Brown Daily Herald's coverage, as well as that of the Providence Journal.

The Daily Herald just had a simple recap of the game, leading with a quick recap of Penn's overtime woes since 2006. Two interesting stats from the article:

1) If the Quakers had shut out Brown -- and they were a pick six away from doing so -- it would've been the first time Brown failed to score since 1996.

2) Brown running back running back Zach Tronti didn’t touch the ball in the second quarter and got only six handoffs in the final two quarters, yet somehow had 63 yards on 11 carries, making him only the second running back to gain over 60 yards against Penn this season.

That second stat about Brown's limited success running the ball led to two comments on the Pro Jo recap. The two comments astutely called out Bears coach Phil Estes for relying heavily on the pass. Meanwhile, Penn's vaunted rush D did give up 5.7 yards per carry to Tronti, yet he didn't even get a dozen carries. Considering Penn -- usually a run-first team -- focused on its passing game, perhaps if Brown had gone to its rushing game more often it would've compensated for the below-average performance of its Ivy-leading passing attack. Then again, it's easy being a Monday (afternoon) quarterback.

Hopefully not as desperate as this woman.

Susan Finkelstein, who ESPN describes as a "43-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate student," was so motivated to get World Series tickets that she posted to Craigslist the following message:

"DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia)
"Diehard Phillies fan—gorgeous tall buxom blonde— in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable--- I'm the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!"

An undercover police officer soon answered the request, and when she allegedly told him she'd perform sex acts for tickets, she was arrested for prostitution charges.

However, it appears she'll get her tickets! Wired 96.5's Chio in the Morning will apparently give her two tickets in conjunction with a car dealer.

So perhaps those of you who really want to go, can think of other creative ways to score free tickets. (As always, an ideas in the comments are welcome).

(Thanks to Ari for the tip, who also found her facebook profile.)

Last week I started this new feature of linking to the opposing school's football stories. Week 1 illustrated the Columbia Spectator's reaction to Penn's 27-13 win. This week, let's see what the Yale Daily News -- considered one of the better Ivy newspapers -- had to say about Penn's 9-0 shutout.

The YDN only had one article, a standard recap with a sweet quote from Bulldogs coach Tom Williams, who said “we played with great violence.” (Notice the photo credit). Interesting facts from the recap: though Penn hadn’t shut out an opponent since November 2007, Yale was shut out as recently as the last game of 2008, and in fact didn’t score an offensive touchdown for the second straight week.

There were several comments on the article. Some were vehemently against Williams, who hasn’t thrilled Yalies in his rookie year as coach. But the one defense of him that I especially liked went for the French Revolution metaphor: "Roll the guillotine back into storeage for a bit. ... Show Mr. Williams a year of mercy, since the unfortunate truth is that his current minions are all holdovers from the ancien régime.

I know it's been a while, but here's a Random Ivy notes:

1) Sure it's been beaten to death many times before, but here's another column decrying the Ivy League's ban on football postseason play. I've already stated I'm pro-football playoffs, and won't rehash the arguments. But this column, written by someone from Delaware of all places, emphatically believes it's "the dumbest, most unfair rule in sports" that the Ivy champion can't play in the FCS playoffs. (Some background: when he's talking about Delaware playing Delaware State, he's referring to the Blue Hen's refusal to play their in-state rivals.)

2) As a hard-hitting linebacker (and center) for Penn and the Eagles, Chuck Bednarik probably would've liked the Penn-Yale game Saturday that ended 9-0. He actually was present at Franklin Field, signing copies of an oral history about him. Although we were told not to talk to him, Soft Pretzel Logic got a short video interview with the Philadelphia legend.

3) The Cornell Basketball Blog has an index of season previews, and not surprisingly the Big Red are the consensus preseason No. 1 Ivy team. Penn's preseason ranking is extremely more volatile, ranging from second to seventh.