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

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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.

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Villanova announced its men’s basketball schedule earlier today, with the Wildcats hosting Penn on Monday, Nov. 16.

As Zach Klitzman previously reported, it’s the first time since the 2000-01 season that this matchup will take place outside of December.

The rest of Penn’s City Six schedule was already known. All games are at the Palestra:

• Drexel, Nov.24
• Temple, Jan. 13
• La Salle, Jan. 20
• Saint Joseph’s, Jan. 25

1) Cornell officially released it’s M. Hoops schedule, and the Big Red certainly do have their work cut out for them. They play at least four “BCS” schools: at Alabama  in the season opener, versus Seton Hall in the home opener, then at two of the most well-known stadiums in the country in Syracuse’s Carrier Dome and Kansas’ Allen Field House (the potential fifth team is St. John’s in the Holiday Festival). They also play three City Six teams beside Penn: at Drexel, versus Saint Joseph’s and at La Salle. However, their schedule isn’t all tough games, as they play Division III schools Clarkson University and Penn State Erie, Behrend College (yes that’s one school) as well as Bryant University and University of South Dakota, both of which joined D-I last year.

Over at Cornell Basketball Blog, some Big Red fans are scared the team will start 0-4 (@ Bama, @ UMass, vs Seton Hall @ ‘Cuse) while others believe “we are good enough to win all four of those games.”

This now makes Penn one of just three Ivy schools not to have released their schedule yet ( Harvard, Yale, Brown and Princeton previously released theirs). I guess Glen Miller’s still trying to find the one more team.

2) Over on SB Nation they’ve listed the top five metropolitan areas that care more about their college hoops teams than their NBA franchise. And unsurprisingly Philadelphia is ranked, coming in second to Tobacco Road/Research Triangle/North Carolina Piedmont area. Yet I don’t know how fair it is to rank them since the “local” NBA team, the Charlotte Bobcats, play over two hours away. Actually of the top five (NC, Philly, Cincinnati, Louisville and Washington-Baltimore) only two areas have local NBA teams.

Regardless, the site calls the Big 5 “the most unique tradition in college basketball” (the editor in me cringes at “most unique”). And sorry St. Joe’s fans, but the Holy War “is sort of an inferior vs. superior match-up. St. Joseph’s is a smaller school who would love to shake the mid-major label, while ‘Nova is in the Big East…and frankly a notch higher on the academic hierarchy.” (Via VU Hoops, which I’m sure loves that last part.)

3) Lastly, turns out the Quaker mascot is one of the creepiest in Division I. Though to be fair, he was tortured.

After my football recap, here’s my roundup of Penn Hoops news:

1) Over the last few weeks, it looks like Penn’s schedule is finally firming up. In fact, it appears that all but one game has been set. Unfortunately for the Quakers, getting that last game might be a little troublesome. According to the team’s twitter account, they can’t find anyone to play at the Palestra on December first. So if any ADs from Mid-Atlantic Mid-Majors read this blog, I’m sure Glen Miller would be happy to hear from you about that date. (On an aside, here’s an article about some of the challenges of creating a Division I basketball schedule.)

2) Mid Major Madness is ranking every team in Division I, and Penn came in at 262 out of 344. The description of the team talks about the high hopes of last year, but says the Quakers went 10-18 since they weren’t “able to handle the pressure” and “due to their poor performance at home in conference play” (can’t argue with that). As for this upcoming year, they make the bold prediction that Harrison Gaines’ transfer will affect the team’s chances to rebound.

Previously, Dartmouth at No. 329, Brown at No. 307, and Columbia at No. 291 were ranked. That means Penn is behind Cornell, Princeton, Harvard and Yale (my guess for who they’ll rank as the top four Ivy teams).

3) Sports Illustrated notes that several elite basketball recruits are considering Harvard due to its expanded financial aid package and Tommy Amaker’s recruiting techniques. But that might come back to haunt Amaker. The former Michigan coach, according to the Cornell Basketball Blog, has recruited many players by promising playing time. As you can imagine, this is quite an attractive pitch. Yet it might just be false promises since the Crimson now have a surplus of players (possibly as high as 14–all juniors or younger–in 2010).

So far Amaker’s stay in the Ivy League hasn’t been great, as Harvard came in tied for sixth in the league last year (with Penn) and in a three-way tie for last in 2008. We’ll see going forward whether or not Amaker finally breaches the top half of the league (I guess Mid Major Madness thinks that’ll happen this year).

4) Looking at the Big 5 wire, Villanova senior Reggie Redding will be suspended for the fall semester after police found marijuana in his car. While that might not affect the Wildcats’ chance of returning to the Final Four, it does mean he won’t be able to suit up against Penn in December. Then again, he only scored two points on 1-for-6 shooting in last year’s Big 5 game.

5) In other City news, the three enshrinees in this year’s Big 5 Hall of Fame class are some of the biggest coaching names in the history of the unofficial conference: Chaney, Massimino, and “Speedy.” Or for full disclosure: Temple’s John Chaney, Villanova’s Rollie Massimino, and La Salle’s William “Speedy” Morris. The three have a combined 58 years coaching in the Big 5, as well as over a combined 15 Big 5 titles.

Happy Fourth everyone. Here are some links to take a look at before heading out to the cookout/fireworks/parade/traditional July 4th event you’re attending later.

1) After giving his thoughts on two lottery picks, Ibby Jaaber now will play some basketball against NBA players, as he’ll be on the Piston’s summer league team again this year. (He previously was on the team in 2007.)

2) According to Penn Athletics, the Weiss Pavilion — the extension to the north side of Franklin Field that’ll have weight rooms, retail space etc … — is on track to open in March of 2010.

3) Here are a couple of Villanova hoops links. First, Fox Sports has a profile on Jay Wright who has now declined jobs from both Kentucky and the 76ers in the past year. Also, the Big East announced the conference matchups, and the Wildcats play Georgetown, Marquette and West Virginia twice.

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.

Sorry this is a little late, but I wasn’t by my computer last night. And just a disclaimer: as you can see from my Day 1 and Day 2 entries, these thoughts are my opinions. As such they’re inherently biased, which I realize isn’t exactly in line with journalism objectivity. So if any Duke fans are reading this, sorry.

Continue after the jump.

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As I wrote earlier, three teams with direct connections to Penn made the tournament this year. So how did their seeds turn out?

(Click here for the bracket)

Cornell received a 14 seed and will face No. 3 Missouri Friday in Boise, Idaho.  It was somewhat of a surprise that the Big Red received that high of a seed considering how bad the Ivy League was this year. But at least Cornell fans should be used to the weather in Boise — I imagine Boise as a bigger, yet equally bleak, version of Ithaca.

Temple, meanwhile, got a decent draw at No. 11, facing No. 6 Arizona State in Miami also on Friday. I was happy if for no other reason than I called them getting the 11.  If they were to upset the Sun Devils, they’d face either No. 3 Syracuse or No. 14 Stephen F. Austin in the second round.

Finally, Villanova gets American.  But as a No. 3 seed they get “protected” geographically. So it wasn’t really that surprising that they got the Philadelphia game on Thursday. Villanova actually has a decent shot at the elite eight, if not the Final Four. No. 6 UCLA, No. 7 Texas and No. 2 Duke are the top teams in the bottom half of the East bracket with the Wildcats, but I could see Villanova matching up fairly well with all of those. And considering Pitt — the same team that the Wildcats beat by 10 in January — is the top seed in the region, who knows, maybe we’ll have 1985 all over again.  Well ok, they’re not winning the national championship.  But still.

In sports, there are several “sporting” events that involve actually no physical action.  The NFL Draft comes to mind, as does smaller events like the selection of future Olympic host cities or the post position draw for the Kentucky Derby.  But without a doubt, the No. 1 of these events is Selection Sunday.

And that glorious day is finally here. True, Penn fans have nothing to look forward to today.  But at the same time, Atlantic 10 champion Temple, as well as fellow Big 5 member Villanova, will be waiting to see their seed (my prediction: Villanova a four, Temple a 11). And of course, Ivy champ Cornell also will be watching closely (though they’re almost certainly getting a 15).

Speaking of Cornell, they’re already being crowned as Ivy League champs next year. It’s not that surprising that the Cornell Basketball Blog is already crowning the Big Red as Ivy League champs, seeing how that blog is a lesson in homerism. But the post does provoke an interesting question.

But keeping in mind Cornell fans’ arrogance at this point (read the comments of that link), this leads to another question: Do you Penn fans root for the Ivy League team to do well in the tournament?  Before the last two years, if Penn didn’t make it, then it likely was Princeton in the tournament. So do you still root for a rival to do well in the interest of league pride? And how about the Big 5 schools? Let me know in the comments below.