Game Preview

Game Preview: Penn at Brown

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Zack Rosen is licking his chops at the opportunity to take on the porous Brown defense tonight. (Photo Credit: penngazettesports.com)

Let”s get right to it here. Penn isn”t losing this game. The Quakers are coming off of a frustrating loss at Yale last night, their first of the conference season, and they are going to be angry and determined. Meanwhile, Brown got throttled by a mediocre Princeton team, and despite what the Cornell Basketball Blogger claims, the Bears are far and away the Ivy team most devastated by injury and other absences. Yes, last year”s leading scorer and All-Ivy player Tucker Halpern and Rookie of the Year frontrunner Rafael Maia are out for the season, but now the already-razor thin Bears bench is taking a hit. According to Scott Cordeschi at GoLocalProv, Freshman Longji Yiljep is out for the season with a toe injury, junior Patrick Donnelly is out for the season with a hip injury, freshman Jon Schmidt has an eye injury, Jean Harris can”t play due to the flu, and Steven Albrecht is experiencing those pesky back problems. It”s honestly a war zone down in Providence, and given the lack of depth the Bears had to begin with, it”s a wonder that Brown is competing as well as they are in the league this year.

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Game Preview: Cornell at Dartmouth

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Drew Ferry should be able to get some open looks tonight, as Dartmouth has struggled to lock down opposing guards. (Photo Credit: cornellsun.com)

If there’s one thing Cornell knows all too well, it’s that it can’t sleep on the Dartmouth basketball team. A year ago, the two teams met in Hanover, a game that most thought Cornell would surely win. Despite the common prediction, the Big Red came out lacking focus and energy, resulting in its first loss at Dartmouth in the last six seasons. Out of all the tough stretches the Big Red endured last season, losing at Dartmouth was rock bottom. If we can use last year’s matchup to infer one thing about Saturday night’s game, it’s that the Big Red won’t be caught sleeping.

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Game Preview: Penn at Yale

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Zack Rosen has been unstoppable this year. The way Yale's backcourt has struggled, the Bulldogs have their work cut out for them Friday night at home. (Photo Credit: pennathletics.com)

This game contains the weekend's biggest title implications. Of course, a loss would be less dire for undefeated Penn, as the Quakers would still technically control their own destiny with a loss, but I think even the most optimistic of Penn fans are seeing a Harvard season sweep as a significant long shot.

Given the heightened significance of this game, this one should be really fun to watch. Yale’s guard play this last weekend was highly inconsistent, and the turnover bug bit the Bulldogs about as badly as I’ve ever seen (ignoring Jake Delhomme’s 6 turnover playoff performance 4 years ago) in both games, resulting in 41 giveaways on the weekend. The Bulldogs have to feel fortunate to have come away with even the one win. I’m really interested to see if the Yale backcourt can rise to the occasion, particularly given the fatigue factor of the dozens of suicides they were likely required to run in practice this week.

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Game Preview: Harvard at Brown

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Andrew McCarthy set a school-record for blocks Friday in a win against Dartmouth (7). Will he be able to lead the Bears to an upset against #23 Harvard? (Photo Credit: www.brownbears.com)

After Friday night's Bulldog bloodbath, first-place Harvard made the short trip up I-95 to Providence where a Brown team on its first winning streak of the season awaits. While the two teams enter this game coming off a win the night before, the similarities between the squads end right there. Harvard, as we all know, is the #23-ranked team in the nation with a top-ten defense (.874 points allowed per possession), an early season tournament title (Battle4Atlantis), and three victories against Top 100 teams (FSU, UCF, St. Joe's). Brown has the country's 290th best defense (1.082 points allowed per possession), hasn't even played a Top 100 team, and has zero Top 200 wins. But the Bears have a little momentum from victories over Bryant and Dartmouth, and in the last couple match-ups, they've had the Crimson's number for at least a half. Plus, it's the back end of an Ivy weekend, so anything's possible.

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Game Preview: Dartmouth at Yale

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Last year, Dartmouth took the Bulldogs to overtime in New Haven before falling 79-75. Will this season yield another tight game? (Photo Credit: yaledailynews.com)

The Bulldogs are coming off of an embarrassing 65-35 beatdown to archrival Harvard in one of the most anticipated games to take place in the John J. Lee Amphitheater in quite a while. (Or at least one of the most anticipated games that Yale has played in.) Yale now has less than 24 hours to recover from the devastating loss to face another New England opponent eager to knock the Bulldogs off.

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Game Preview: Dartmouth at Brown

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Freshman Gabas Maldunas will try to take advantage of a thin Brown frontcourt and lead the Big Green to their first conference victory of the season. (Photo Credit: dartmouthsports.com)

Friday night, most people will be focusing their attention on the highly anticipated battle at the top of the standings a few hours down Route 95 in New Haven, but the true Ivy populist will keep his eye on the match-up in Providence too. It should be a tight one as the undersized Brown Bears host the youthful Dartmouth Big Green in a game that will go a long way in deciding who stays out of the Ivy cellar this season.

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Game Preview: Penn at Cornell, Saturday 7PM

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Zack Rosen has been doing it all so far this year, leading a sharpshooting Penn team through a treacherous non-conference schedule. The Quakers take on Cornell on Saturday in Ithaca. (Photo Credit: rushthecourt.net)

Cornell vs. Penn is far from the biggest rivalry in the Ivy League. Some may even argue whether the word rivalry could even be used to discuss the competition between the two teams. However, it seems that every time these two schools meet, something worth watching happens.

  • 03/07/08 – Cornell 94 – Penn 92 (Palestra): A back-and-forth high scoring affair, which included two Adam Gore 4-point plays in one half. The contest didn’t end without its share of controversy as Freshman Tyler Bernardini’s missed heave at the buzzer left Quaker fans looking for a foul call that would have given Penn a chance to win it.

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Game Preview: Penn at Columbia, Friday 7PM

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Columbia's Mark Cisco needs to have a big game if Columbia wants to hold court against a dangerous Penn squad. (Photo Credit: gocolumbialions.com)

Penn visits Columbia on Friday night in the conference opener for both squads. Columbia enters the game having won 11 of their last 12, most recently traveling to Elon and knocking off the Phoenix 65-60. Penn comes in off of Tuesday’s 68-57 Big Five loss to La Salle. The Quakers are 4-5 in their last nine games.

Where they Stand

These two teams have just completed very different non-conference slates. Penn, at 7-9, has played a whopping eight teams in Pomeroy’s Top 100. The Quakers are 0-8 in those games, but five of the contests were decided by single-digits and Penn has largely taken care of business against opponents outside of the Top 100.

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Game Preview: Brown at Yale, Saturday 2PM

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Yale's Greg Mangano has been on a tear lately with four consecutive double-doubles and two straight Player of the Week awards. (Photo Credit: yalebulldogs.com)

As we move into January, there are so many things to be excited about– the NFL playoffs, bowl season, Burmese Independence Day, and for those who are strict adherents to the teachings of the National Association of Fruits and Vegetables, Dried Fruit and Tubers month.

And while for many Americans, football and dried prunes may be the main focus of the first month of the calendar year, the Brown/Yale series typically produces at least one great battle between the squads every January. We have seen splits in 3 of the last 5 years, and two of those have involved both road teams claiming victory. In the Ivy League season, a single loss can be damaging to a team’s title chase, and two losses can be fatal. When any Ivy school comes into the season with dreams of a title run, a good start is so pivotal. Two losses to your travel partner can kill a season mighty quickly. For Yale in this year’s deep league, even a split would be extremely damaging.

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Game Preview: Lehigh at Cornell

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Cornell will need Chemerinski to stay out of foul trouble if it hopes to hang with the red hot Mountain Hawks, led by CJ McCollum. (Photo credit: cornellbigred.com)

Cornell will try to shake off its first home loss of the season and enter the exam break on a positive note as the Big Red welcomes its second straight Patriot League opponent to Newman Arena on Saturday. The task doesn’t get any easier: Lehigh comes to town as hot as any team in the country. The Mountain Hawks are riding their best start in 31 seasons. Since dropping its first two contests against BCS competition, Lehigh has been perfect, winning six consecutive games by ten or more. Cornell will have its hands full with junior guard CJ McCollum who has been the elite player in the Patriot League since he arrived in Bethlehem a little over two years ago.

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