Sure the Ivy League champion football season was great. And even if the basketball team is 3-15 at least there's a lot to talk about with the team.

Yet for those of you that know me, the one sport I really get excited for here at Penn is W. Lax. I've covered three runs to the final four, including last year's 13-12 double overtime loss in the national semifinals to archrival Northwestern. I even went to Evanston, Ill., last May for a game in which the Quakers fell 11-9 to the Wildcats. So excuse me if it seems premature to have a post about a team that doesn't start playing for over two and a half weeks.

But as you can see in our special online edition (Snow Day= no paper), the preseason coaches poll was released Tuesday and Penn came in third. But the Quakers will get a chance to prove they're No. 1 when they face No. 2 Maryland and No. 1 Northwestern in back-to-back weeks in early April. Both games will be at Franklin Field, and the two visitors each lost in their last appearance at 33rd and South. In the 2007 NCAA Tournament Penn beat the Terrapins 9-7 to advance to the final four and in 2008 the Wildcats lost 11-7 for the first time in 37 games.

As the article mentions, those aren't the only ranked teams Penn will play. Ivy League rivals Princeton (9), Dartmouth (15) and Cornell (19) were all ranked. And the Quakers will also face No. 4 North Carolina on the road. At the same time, this isn't new. Penn basically plays the same teams every year, though this year Maryland replaces Penn State. So coach Karin Brower Corbett -- she got married in the offseason-- doesn't have an extra hard task compared to past years.

Back in September I predicted the Quakers would win the national championship. I do realize Northwestern's the favorite to six-peat, but they are a young, albeit still very talented, team. (Then again, the last time Northwestern was this young they beat Penn in the NCAA championship game). So just because Penn's third doesn't mean I'll change my prediction. It's been three straight years of Widlcats dispatching Quakers on the final weekend of the season. Is fourth time a charm? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

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.

With the NCAA basketball season just weeks away, everyone's been releasing their preseason polls. The conference polls have been trickling in over the last week, and the national polls came out today.

The Ivy League released its preseason rankings yesterday, with Penn coming in at third behind Cornell and Princeton. Cornell is, as expected, the unanimous favorite, returning all five starters from last year's Ivy championship. You'd be hard-pressed to argue against the conference being Cornell's to lose.

Princeton, Penn, and Harvard are essentially in a dead heat for second place, with only 10 points separating the three schools. Yale, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth round out the bottom half of the League in that order.

Keep reading after the jump for a rundown of Penn's opponents in the national polls and to see how the other Big 5 schools are projected to finish in their own conferences.

(more...)

The Ivy League Preseason Women's Basketball Media/SID poll was officially released today. I've covered Penn for the past two years, so this year I was given the honor of having Penn's media vote (over women's basketball guru Mel Greenberg).

Apparently, I did a pretty good job -- or I was engaging in groupthink -- because my rankings matched the final results. Below are the results of the 16 votes (one media and one SID vote per school), with first-place votes in parentheses.

Pts.

1. Dartmouth (11) 123

2. Harvard (5) 115

3. Princeton 86

4. Columbia 83

5-t. Cornell 57

5-t. Yale 57

7. Penn 36

8. Brown 19

I thought it would be a useful exercise for discussion purposes to release my votes, and the reasoning behind them. So follow along after the jump for my breakdown.

(more...)

We normally don't make a big deal out of Penn football players who win Ivy League Player of the Week awards, since there are so many of them you can get on the list for just 73 total yards.

But the following nod certainly deserves recognition.  After earning two interceptions, recovering a fumble, deflecting two passes and notching six tackles -- including one for a loss -- senior defensive back Britton Ertman received FCS National Defensive Player of the Week honors, as announced by The Sports Network.

(Since I hate having a short, two-paragraph Buzz post, I thought I'd throw in this nugget:  The women's basketball team was picked sixth in the Ivy League media preseason poll.)

Just like basically every single preview magazine, the preseason men’s basketball media poll picked Penn to finish second in the Ivy League, behind Cornell.

Interestingly, the Big Red received all 16 first place votes.

The complete poll:

2008-09 Ivy Men's Baketball Preseason Media Poll
1. Cornell — 128 points (16 first-place votes)
2. Penn — 110
3. Yale — 80
4. Harvard — 77
5. Brown — 75
6. Columbia — 45
7. Dartmouth — 33
8. Princeton — 28

(Also, did anyone read page E4 of yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer? If so you would've seen an ad for a Penn football game. One problem: It featured Penn's game versus Columbia, which already took place.  D'oh!)

In the Ivy League football preseason poll, Penn is ranked fourth, though it managed to capture one first place vote. Defending champion Harvard, which shocked what had been an undefeated Yale team in the final game of the season, shares the top ranking with its rival New Haven rival. Brown took the third spot.

Obviously, there are no real surprises in the rankings (Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Columbia, respectively, follow Penn). But for what it's worth, I would say that of the top four teams in the rankings, the fate of the Quakers might be the most difficult to predict. After all, a healthy Mike McLeod will be back to break more records as a senior at Yale, Harvard returns 22 starters, including quarterback Chris Pizzotti, and both Yale and Harvard have their key defensive players returning.

The Quakers, though, are full of question marks. For starters, who knows how Robert Irvin will bounce back from practically a full season on the shelf? And how will Penn's 5-2 defense respond without Naheem Harris, who anchored the unit at nose tackle for the last four years? What about the backfield without Joe Sandberg?

Penn returns only 10 starters, but some of the younger players from last season showed great promise down the stretch. Mike DiMaggio, the powerful bruiser, and Bradford Blackmon, the shifty speedster, complement each other very nicely out of the backfield. They certainly made life easier for the Quakers' offense when Sandberg was nursing his slew of injuries last season, and now that he's gone, both DiMaggio and Blackmon will help to fill the void. Penn should also have one of the stronger, if not the strongest, secondaries in the league, with all-Ivy players Chris Wynn and Tyson Maugle both returning.

There is no question that there is a lot of talent on this team, but it is really impossible to know what to expect. Penn got off to an atrocious start last season, but its valiant effort in an epic overtime loss to Yale and its dominating 45-9 win over Cornell in the season finale cannot be overlooked. The Quakers got a lot better as the younger players grew more comfortable over the course of last season. The first few games of this season will be absolutely pivotal -- Penn needs to get off to a good start and play with confidence from the outset. The Quakers first three games are the same as last year's, just in a different order. Either way, they cannot afford to lose to Lafayette and Dartmouth again.

Which team will show up for the Quakers in week one? And will that team be the same team that shows up in week seven? The fourth-place ranking means absolutely nothing; there are simply too many unknowns to make any accurate predictions. I wouldn't be shocked if the Quakers put themselves in position to win the league, but I wouldn't be shocked if they got taken down by Columbia, either (ok, maybe a little shocked). We'll just have to wait and see.

***

A quick side note: Penn Athletics made great and much-needed improvements to its website, www.pennathletics.com. The site is now much easier to navigate and has a more user-friendly interface. I know nothing about web design, but this is definitely a major improvement. Apparently, in addition to enhanced audio and video and podcasts, the site will include blogs updated by coaches and student-athletes. Perhaps Penn Athletics read Andrew Scurria's column for the Summer Pennsylvanian back in June. In the "links" section of the website, the DP -- the only newspaper whose sports section is devoted entirely to Penn sports -- is the last link listed in the local media section, behind the likes of Phillyburbs.com and AllAroundPhilly.com. I guarantee you can't read about Penn Fencing on Phillyburbs.com. All kidding aside, the new site does look much better, and if the blogs are done right, they could make for a very interesting feature... certainly something to check up on as the fall season gets going.