Friday marked the beginning of college basketball season as teams were allowed to start officially practicing. Many schools celebrate the start of the year with Midnight Madness. Thought up by former Maryland coach Lefty Driessell in the early 1970s, the tradition has developed into a major event at many Division I schools.

Midnight Madness is basically a glorified pep rally to kick off the season in which the team is introduced and sometimes scrimmages or practices, fans compete in contests and the coaches make spectacular entrances. Well maybe that last one only applies to Maryland coach Gary Williams, who has exploded out of a box (or something like that) and entered the Terrapins' stadium on a motorcycle. In addition many schools use the event as a recruiting tool, with an estimated 160 blue chip recruits attending a Midnight Madness event in 2007.

But one team that doesn't do a Midnight Madness event is Penn. (Interestingly, no City Six team had events yesterday, though La Salle and Saint Joseph's have similar events planned for next week.)

Former coach Fran Dunphy liked the event, and the last one took place in 2004 (in 2005, Dunphy's final season, the night coincided with Fall Break, like it does this year, so the event didn't happen.) However, since Glen Miller has been here the Athletic Department hasn't organized an official Midnight Madness.

Of course, instead Penn has the Line. This year's Line certainly was closer to a Midnight Madness format than say 2007, as Miller and several players stayed quite late into the night. Yet the Line is restricted to current students who are interested in spending an entire night in the Palestra in order to get season tickets. But what about alumni? What about students who don't want to spend an entire night in the Palestra? What about Penn fans who don't want to buy a full set of season tickets? Furthermore, since the Line was before the official Midnight Madness start date, no practicing could legally happen.

Meanwhile, while Penn Athletics did acknowledge the start of practice today, the opening session was closed to the public, as well as the media. (In fact Miller doesn't open practices to the media until a couple of weeks into the season.)

So do you think Penn would be better suited to have a Midnight Madness event, complete with players practicing? Perhaps the Athletics Department can create an event in conjunction with the Line. Under this system, a practice open to the general public could happen at midnight, followed by students spending the rest of the night in the Palestra to get the tickets.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

According to North Star basketball blog's Twitter feed, 6-foot-3 guard Miles Cartwright from Loyola High School in Los Angeles has committed to Penn.This is astoundingly Penn's seventh reported verbal commitment to the class of 2014 and its fifth guard (with nobody who appears to be a true point guard to eventually back up Zack Rosen). North Star called it "a fantastic get for the Quakers."

The twitter posts call Cartwright a big-time scorer, and the stats I've found definitely support that. He led Loyola in scoring last year when they went to the state regional finals. I couldn't find his scoring average but I did read that he scored 40 points and dished 10 assists on Dec. 12, 2008 against Centennial High School (Corona). He also had a 37-point game. As a So Cal kid, he faced fellow recruit Austin Kelly and Harvard-Westlake twice and split the series.

Continue after the jump for more information on Cartwright from ESPN and some blogs, and my own analysis of the news. (more...)

According to NJhoops.rivals.com, Glen Miller and the Penn basketball program have nabbed another nice name for the Class of 2014. The player is 6-foot-8 forward/center Cameron Gunter from Ridley High School where Kevin and Steven Egee attended.

I have not yet confirmed the information myself with anyone in the Penn basketball program, though NJhoops tends to be a reliable source. And the PennBasketball twitter definitely lends support to the report. A post from this morning reads: "It was a very good night last night in the Penn Basketball Recruiting world...we were thrilled with the phone call we received..."

Here's what I've gathered so far about Gunter. First, there is this story from Aug. 25 on recruitrecon.com (another pretty good recruiting site) which says that Gunter had a very strong summer in AAU playing for the Jersey Shore Warriors. It also mentions Penn as a team with interest in him. Other schools with interest included Holy Cross and Northeastern, though NJhoops says he cancelled trips to those schools after committing to Penn. He is apparently a more defensive player at this point with good size and athleticism, but the reports on his strong summer seem to indicate his offense is improving rapidly. Overall he may be a bit of a project, but he is more developed than Garvin Hunt was as a freshman.

In other recruiting news, CBB reported that 6-foot-9 big man Daniel Edwards committed to Princeton. Penn was apparently interested in him as well.

Gunter is the fifth name we've heard surface as a verbally committed Penn recruit. The others are California players Austin Kelly, Casey James and Kevin Panzer, along with another local product in St. Joseph's prep point guard Steve Rennard. And there's no telling if the Quakers are done reloading. Stay tuned.

1) The New York Times ran a profile of new Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris. I'm sorry it's a little late, as I know a few readers have sent this in as a tip. Among some highlights: she talks about possibly redesigning ivyleaguesports.com (which definitely could use a change); she plans on going on a "listening tour" of every Ivy campus (similar to the Glen Miller town hall?); referring to extending the football schedule to include the NCAA postseason, she says "I want to be very clear that it’s not on the table ” (guess she didn't get my letter from a few weeks ago).

2) Remember Fire Glen Miller? Well after a three-month layoff, they've returned. Loyal Buzz readers already know everything the post mentions except for one item: Glen Miller was active on all 20 of the offiicial recruiting days during July. He was one of just 24 coaches in Division I to do so.

Two months ago Steve Donahue, the Cornell basketball coach, launched a Twitter account. I joked that maybe a Glen Miller account would look something like our joke issue Buzz post. Well turns out I'm wrong.

Although technically Miller's name doesn't appear anywhere, a Penn Basketball twitter account has been launched. Again, it doesn't say it's from Miller, but I don't know how it could be from anyone else. There are 40 tweets from the last month, which isn't a bad amount. However, it remains to be seen if Miller will post that often during the actual season. But regardless, it will be quite interesting to see if this account has some degree of the transparency that I know the alums want from the athletic program's premier team.

(HT Kushol Gupta)

If you haven't yet, take a moment to read Andrew Todres's column from the most recent DP. His thesis is that hoops coach Glen Miller is a poor politician working a job that requires him to be one.

Miller's behavior has been undiplomatic at times, and he alone bears responsibility for that. What's especially baffling is that it represents a departure from how he once approached his off-court obligations.

(more...)

The following was dreamed up by Andrew Todres, but he would like this to be officially published by an editor for administrative purposes. Hence my byline and photo at the top. -Z.K.

Dear Readers,

It's your turn to write.

I've never really tried this directly before, but here it goes. I would like this post -- specifically the comments section of it -- to serve the sole purpose of providing you with an open discussion board to leave and respond to one another's thoughts, questions, and concerns over the state of the basketball program. Think of it as an extension of the town hall meeting, minus the athletic director and the basketball coach. I know many of you are very opinionated about Glen Miller and now Steve Bilsky in particular, as demonstrated by the comments left for my colleagues and me on the DP's main website. It would be more productive to get an actual discussion going on The Buzz comments section -- it's more interactive and allows me to share my thoughts and respond to you directly as well. Also keep in mind that while the people you want to talk about will likely not be contributing to this discussion board, there's a chance they will read it.

Please, try to keep your comments on point and constructive -- there is no need to smear anyone or bash people simply because you can hide behind the cloak of anonymity. I encourage you all to leave your actual names and emails instead of impersonating people. The goal here is for this to serve as a forum for meaningful and respectful discussion and debate. A civilized, thought-provoking discussion on this blog might be useful both to Penn fans and the basketball program that they support. If this works out well, we can also use this discussion format for other topics. I (and hopefully my colleagues, as well) will try to moderate and offer opinions or clear up confusion as I see fit, but the ball is really in your court.

Thanks,

Andrew Todres

The first annual "town hall" discussion of the men's basketball team came and went this weekend. The DP's recap can be found here, and some additional notes of interest are after the jump, most coming from answers given by coach Glen Miller.

Tuesday's paper will have more analysis of what was said (and not said) at the meeting. In the meantime, fire away in the comments section with any initial reactions, especially if you were in attendance.

(more...)

There's been no news about hoops coach Glen Miller lately, and no news is usually good news -- or bad news, if you're one of those who wants Miller gone.

Nonetheless, I think it's still possible that he could bolt from Penn in the near future if the right job somewhere else comes along. (Here's why he might, and here are some reasons he might not.)

So what positions are available? Based on this list, the following schools have recently lost an assistant coach who took the head job somewhere else: Villanova, Davidson, Georgia Tech, Hampton, South Carolina, Marquette, Nevada, North Carolina Central, Baylor, Portland State, Auburn, Florida, Xavier. As far as I know none of the vacancies have been filled, and there may be others, from assistant coaches who left a team for a different reason.

The only current head-coaching vacancies are at Appalachian State, Seattle and Texas-Pan American.

Could any of those openings entice Miller? I'm inclined to say no. The head-coaching jobs are unimpressive; plus Miller is an East Coast guy, and the only suitable East Coast option is Villanova, which lost Pat Chambers this month to Boston University.

Incidentally, before Chambers took over at BU, I heard whispers that he would get a hard look if Penn were to find itself needing a new head coach. He's a Philadelphia University alum and former Episcopal coach, well-regarded and on the rise.

Without a miraculous turnaround, it seems likely that next year the clock will run out on Miller. A ways off, yes, but it's never too early for empty speculation.

Your thoughts on any of this?

(Note: this appeared in conjunction with the DP's 2009 joke issue.)

This year Penn fans found a new source to view original reporting reposted DP stories on Fire Glen Miller, a student run blog.

But after seeing how low the standards were for starting a basketball blog, coach Glen Miller has decided to create his own blog for the 2009-10 season GlenMillerIsActuallyQuiteNiceOnceYouGetToKnowHim.com.

"It's important that the public gets my point of view of things, since not everyone can attend my press conferences in which I passive agressively blame Dunphy for this year's weak senior class," the third-year coach said.

Miller says some highlights of the blog will be the "Coachspeak Corner" where he'll define one phrase each day that Penn fans might not quite get (the first entry explains how "senior leaders" mean just him). In addition, he'll have a "One game at a time feature" which lists all of Penn's upcoming games -- starting and ending with the team's next game.

But without a doubt the feature Miller is most looking forward to is a form players can fill out announcing their attention to transfer from the program.

"This will be great," Miller said.  "The best part is that it automatically sends a reply saying ‘I wish you the best in future endeavors.' God that was awkward with Remy and Harrison."