Last year, for the first time, we were successful in getting Penn president Amy Gutmann's NCAA bracket. And this year, we've managed to repeat the feat.

I've had this since Thursday afternoon but wanted to wait until the first round was over to evaluate Dr. Gutmann's picks. The Penn prez clearly has some Philly pride (with Villanova heading to the Final Four), but after yesterday's Cornell upset, perhaps some Ivy League camaraderie would have been a better choice. Then again, it's entirely possible she put faith in a statistic that a certain former DP writer has been touting for a week.

Since I know that many of our readers will be asking, yes, there are similarities between Dr. Gutmann's bracket and the picks made by a certain other President earlier this week. But I don't think either of them had anything truly revolutionary, and I think that the Penn President took a few more risks, particularly her choices of ODU in the first round and Purdue in the Elite Eight (full disclosure: I attended Indiana University for a year prior to transferring to Penn, so my bias in this selection is pretty clear).

I know that it wouldn't be fair to subject Amy Gutmann's bracket to such scrutiny without letting you look at mine, so here it is.

I don't want to cut off the good discussion we're having about Cornell's Top 25 spot.  However, I've seen in a few places, including Soft Pretzel Logic, Yahoo and this ESPN video, that it appears discussions are moving forward to expand the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament to 68 or even 96 teams.

The expansion won't occur until the NCAA manages to opt out of its current TV deal with CBS -- who has had the broadcasting rights since 1982 -- and renegotiate a new one. But one source claims expansion is "a done deal" and could happen as soon as 2010-11. If the tournament were to expand to 96 teams, then a cable network would broadcast the first round(s) in addition to a network broadcaster covering the latter rounds.

Expanding to 68 teams would create a play-in game for all four regions, instead of just the one play-in game that currently exists. Personally, I wouldn't have any strong objections to this format. I've always thought that the one seed that played the play-in winner had an inherent advantage since the 16 seed has just three days to prepare. Then again, No. 1 seeds have never lost in the first round, so it's not exactly a huge advantage. In the end, the net effect would probably just be three more at large bids to power conference teams.

On the other hand, expanding to 96 teams seems a bit excessive. Frankly, it would cheapen the value of making the NCAA Tournament. Sure, 96 out of 347 Division I teams is still a small percentage. But let's be honest: those 32 extra at large bids are more than likely going to go to power conference teams that had middling overall records but a strong SOS, than decent mid-majors who have better overall records but subpar strength of schedules and RPI.

However, I could see some positives with 96 teams. They could create a rule that any small conference team that clinches the regular season title would be guaranteed a berth to the big dance. Right now these teams are already guaranteed an NIT bid, but I suspect the NIT will be basically worthless if the NCAAs are expanded to 96.  In addition, theoretically another round of single-elimination basketball sounds exciting. I just fear it would make subsequent upsets rarer.

So in the end, what exactly would the effect of expansion be on the Ivy League and Penn? If expansion just ups the field by three, the only impact would be that Ivy teams would get worse seeds, especially in years when there isn't a dominant team like this year's Cornell squad. However, if 32 teams are added, I could see a potential year like this one-- or at least before Cornell throttled Harvard -- in which two Ivy teams are in legitimate contention to make the tournament. And if somehow the NIT does survive, then I definitely could see an Ivy team make that with more frequency than they do now.

What do you guys think about NCAA expansion and its effect on the Ancient Eight.

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Here's the stat of the week for you: According to one Basketball-U poster, since 1990-91 Princeton has won the Ivy League every time it swept the Brown/Yale roadtrip, while every other year it's lost at least one of those games. Extending it back to 1980-81, the pattern holds for 11 out of 12 titles.

This past weekend Princeton swept those two.

Of course, that doesn't indicate they'll somehow beat Cornell once, let alone twice, and win the League. But as a history major, I'm certainly intrigued by interesting trends.

(HT Noah Becker)

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.

On Sunday Northwestern destroyed North Carolina, 21-7, to clinch its fifth-straight NCAA title. They're still two titles away from tying Maryland's streak from 1995-2001. The game saw a record for margin of victory in a championship game, as well as a tie for most total goals. Katrina Dowd finished with four goals for Northwestern, pushing her record for most goals in a tournament to 22.

Here's a very interesting write up of the game by Michael Wilbon. For those that don't know, the Washington Post writer and ESPN personality is a Northwestern alum and has a cousin/goddaughter on the Wildcats lacrosse team. For him, seeing NU win the national championship Sunday was the first time he'd ever seen his alma mater win a championship in any sport.

As for Penn, they earned two All-Tournament selections, Katie Mazer and Ali DeLuca. It should be noted, that in each of the previous two years senior defense Hilary Renna was an All-Tournament selection. However, this year she was declared ineligible for the Final Four.

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In case you haven't heard, there's a big game today at 6 p.m. at Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson, Md.

So here is  a bevy of preview material before No. 4 Penn (15-2) faces No. 1 Northwestern (21-0) in the Division I Women's Lacrosse Final Four. First, here is my own preview article. The Daily Northwestern does not have a normal preview of the match, but it does have a good profile of Hilary Bowen, who injured her anterior cruciate ligament in early April, yet recovered to play against Princeton last Saturday and will get some playing time today.

Here is The Philadelphia Daily News' preview, focusing on Penn seniors Becca Edwards and Kaitlyn Lombardo. Meanwhile Philip Hersh, of the The Chicago Tribune, continues his adoration of NU's Hannah Nielsen, asking if the Australian is the greatest women's lacrosse player of all time.

Here are some basic breakdowns of both the Penn-NU matchup and the second semifinal between No. 2 Maryland and No. 3 North Carolina: Inside Lacrosse, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post.

Of course, both Athletic Departments have their own preview materials. Penn's standard preview is here, and there are a lot of other good items on the W. Lax homepage. Northwestern has a standard preview.

In terms of following the game, you have several options. First, I'll have a live blog here on The Buzz (note: that link won't be live until later today). For a look back at last year's two Final Four live blogs, here's the semifinal against Duke (gets pretty crazy towards the end of the game) as well as the more somber Northwestern National Championship game. Also,  the game will be televised on CBS College Sports for those that get it. Finally, Brian Seltzer and Mike Mahoney will have a live audio stream on Penn Athletics' website.

Seven weeks ago I wrote about (M. Hoops)  Selection Sunday and how awesome it is. Well today's another Selection Sunday, albeit one with significantly less hype: Both the men's and women's lacrosse NCAA Tournament brackets will be revealed this evening.

On the men's side, it looks like Ivy League will have three teams, as Inside Lacrosse predicts Princeton will get the four seed, Cornell the eight, and Brown will face No. 7 Notre Dame. The official bracket will be released at 9 p.m. on ESPNU.

(For those that don't know, the men's and women's tournament don't seed all 16 teams. Instead, the top eight are seeded and then the rest are normally paired up based on convenience of travel, as the NCAA tries to limit teams that must fly to games in the first two rounds.)

But of course the more important bracket for Penn is the women's one (in fact, for the last two years this Selection Sunday has been more relevant to the University than the March Madness version).  The bracket will be released on CBS College Sports at 10 p.m. For those of you that don't get CBS College Sports (which I assume is most of you), tonight around 9:45 or so I'll have a live blog detailing the Selection Show. But as for now, join me after the jump for some predictions on what seed Penn will get.

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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.

I'll admit I didn't watch too much of the games today, though I caught the finish of most games. So my thoughts will be short.

What I liked

• Sienna giving Louisville all it could handle. Fran McCaffery -- the former Penn point guard -- coached the Saints to 63-62 lead with 5:07 to go. But the Cardinals pushed on the gas, finishing the game on a 17-9 run.
• My bracket. After the first two rounds, I got 12/16 Sweet 16 teams correct (Arizona, Syracuse, Purdue and Duke being the exceptions) and more importantly all of my Elite Eight and Final Four teams are still alive.

What I didn't like

• How the Missouri Marquette game ended. It looked like Marquette would have a great chance to get the tournament's first true buzzer beater. But imbounding the ball with 5.5 seconds left, Lazar Hayward stepped over the out-of-bounds line, giving Missouri back the ball. In short, it cheapened the end to what otherwise was a thrilling game.

1) Dartmouth played in the opening round of the NCAA Women's Tournament, and it wasn't pretty. No. 1 Maryland destroyed them, winning 83-52. Not helping the Big Green, the game was played at Maryland's Comcast Center. Here's a more humorous look at the game.

2) The women's basketball team participated in the "Pink Zone" campaign to raise money/awareness for breast cancer research this season. Today Penn athletics announced that the team raised over $8,000 this year from "Pink Zone" t-shirts, individual contributions and ticket sales from the game against Yale which was designated the "Pink Zone" game of the year for Penn.

3) Alex Grendi, who was a key contributor to the men's soccer team's Ivy League Championship, was signed to a developmental contract by the Columbus Crew earlier this month after being drafted in January. Well last night the Crew tied the Houston Dyanmo, and Grendi got an assist -- according to Penn Athletics.  However, ESPN didn't give him the assist. I guess the world wide leader only counts the pass immediately preceding the goal.