Yale forward Matt Townsend named Rhodes Scholar

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(courtesy of IvyLeagueSports.com)
(Photo credit: IvyLeagueSports.com)

Congratulations to Yale senior forward Matt Townsend for being named Rhodes Scholar this weekend. Townsend interviewed for the prestigious award in New York on Saturday and then notched 12 points on perfect 5-for-5 shooting in a win over Kent State on Sunday. Now that’s a productive weekend.

“It makes me understand that I’m at the right place,” Yale coach James Jones said of Townsend’s honor to Yale’s basketball program in a statement. “Basketball is important and academics are important. Yale is the best of everything.”

Townsend becomes the fourth Yale men’s basketball player to be named a Rhodes Scholar, joining Robert McCallum (1968), Mike Oristaglio (1974) and James McGuire (1976).

Incarnate who? – Princeton disappoints as Penn impresses

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Coach Mitch Henderson's Tigers need to cohere defensively as the season progresses.
Coach Mitch Henderson’s Tigers need to cohere defensively as the season progresses.

November 23 may be remembered as a watershed date in the basketball seasons of the Princeton Tigers and the Penn Quakers.

After witnessing Lafayette’s smackdown of the Tigers just four days earlier on a night Princeton turned in its best half of offense so far this year, one felt safe predicting the Leopards would continue Penn’s dizzying slide into oblivion last evening. To the contrary, Penn’s tenacious performance in almost overcoming a 17-point deficit may have taught the Quakers they can play. Princeton’s underwhelming effort against the University of the Incarnate Word (you can’t make this up) may be a staggering blow to the Tigers’ already fragile psyche.

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Mike Auger flashes as Penn basketball falls to Lafayette

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Penn started out the first half a step slow in its search for its first win of the season while hosting Lafayette, trailing 45-30 at halftime – a hole the Quakers wouldn’t be able to climb out of even after cutting the Leopards’ lead to 62-60 halfway through the second half.

“We didn’t trust the system,” coach Jerome Allen said. “We didn’t know the objective of what we were trying to run and all our actions weren’t credible threats. Give Lafayette some credit but there was a direct function of our focus and attention to detail.”

The Quakers allowed Lafayette let loose from beyond the arc as the Leopards canned six of 10 attempts from deep in the first half.

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Talent isn’t everything for Penn basketball

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Several years ago, Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun was asked what the single-most important ingredient is to build a winning college basketball program. His response was immediate and succinct: “Talent. You cannot win without it no matter how good a coach you are.”

Does Penn have talent? It appears so, but it is far too early judge the freshman class based on only two games. I will say that overall they look eager, athletic and, as a group, promising. As for the veterans, Tony Hicks’s ability is undeniable. However, during his tenure at Penn he has become the Carmelo Anthony of the Quakers – shoot first and ask questions later. Darien Nelson-Henry is talented as well but still looks very much like a work in progress, flashes of brilliance interspersed with long stretches of underachievement. Unfortunately, he is more often the “Big Donkey” than the mighty “Big Hyphen” who can single-handedly dominate games. The rest of the veterans – Louis, Jones, Howard and Lewis – can also play but frequently look lost in “the system.”

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Matt Townsend to interview for Rhodes Scholarship

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Yale starting senior forward Matt Townsend will miss the next two games for a pretty good reason.

Townsend will interview for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship as one of eight Yale students selected as finalists for the award. Townsend, the first Yale basketball player since 1999 to earn Academic All-America honors, has maintained a 4.0 GPA average through six semesters at Yale as a molecular, cellular and developmental biology major.

He’ll interview in New York this weekend and won’t play Friday against Illinois-Chicago or Saturday against Southern Illinois. According to the Associated Press, Townsend plans to rejoin the team for a Sunday game against Kent State.

Townsend averaged 4.9 points and 3.2 rebounds per game last season. He would be the fourth Yale basketball player to earn a Rhodes Scholarship.

In this era of academic cheating scandals throughout the NCAA, Townsend’s academic exploits are certainly refreshing.

Princeton basketball fell to Lafayette, but hey, Lafayette’s pretty good

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Princeton’s visit to the beautifully renovated Kirby Sports Center on the tree-studded campus of Lafayette University last night was marred by the frosty reception awaiting the Tigers. The players stepped off the bus into a cold, blustery night far more typical of a Pennsylvania January than mid-November. The arena was warmer, but no more hospitable for the young and still struggling Tigers.

For the first time this season, Mitch Henderson’s offense ran smoothly and efficiently from the outset through the initial 20-minute period. Princeton’s 44 points was easily its highest output for any half so far, more than doubling its 19-point total in the first stanza at George Mason two days earlier. The Tigers posted a fantastic 60 percent shooting mark (14-for-23) including a deadly 70 percent (9-for-13) from behind the arc.

Unfortunately, by rule, possession of the ball goes to the opponent after Tiger scores. Showing disdain for the Tigers’ defensive history, the Leopards veteran team outshot the Tigers (68 percent, 71 percent from three), canning a stunning 47 first-half points. Quite easy to understand why Fran O’Hanlon is so bullish on his chances for a postseason run this year.

Tiger fans, grateful to be within reach at the intermission, took some solace in the unlikelihood that the Leopards could keep it up for the whole game. The Tiger fans were right: Lafayette “cooled off” with only 36 in the second period. Not to worry, Fran. Princeton could manage only 22. The only issue in the last 10 minutes was the eventual margin. It was 17 as the Leopards came away with an impressive 83-66 win. Of Lafayette’s total of 83 points, the starting five accounted for 82, as all of them reached double figures. This is a solid team, indeed.

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Too early for Ivy rankings?

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  1. Harvard – Despite the narrow loss to Holy Cross, they are still the cream of the crop and merit the number one spot.
  2. Yale – The Bulldogs lost to Quinnipiac without Nick Victor and with him, probably would have beaten the Bobcats on the road.
  1. Princeton – The Tigers had a nice win over Rider led by Spencer Weisz, with 18 points.
  1. Brown – The Bears stand at 1-1 and despite a blow-out loss to Northwestern, they are a talented team with Cedric Kuakumensah at the forward spot.
  1. Columbia – Obviously the early season injury to star Alex Rosenberg did not help and the Lions fell to not that strong Stony Brook by one point on the road.
  1. Penn – Tony Hicks lit it up for 31 points in a narrow loss to Delaware State. Rider handled the Quakers easily last night.
  1. Cornell – The Big Red had a strong win on the road against George Mason in what can definitely be considered an upset, not to mention their comeback win over Colgate.
  1. Dartmouth – The Big Green were blown out by St. Bonaventure but showed some life on the boards, outrebounding their foes, 41-39.Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter (@IvyHoopsOnline).

More than just growing pains are holding back Penn basketball

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There will be a lot written and said about Penn’s growing pains throughout this season.

People will lament coach Jerome Allen’s ability to develop young talent, watch as freshmen like Mike Auger and Antonio Woods develop good and bad habits and yell when Sam Jones heats up from three one night and can’t knock one down the next.

But all of that won’t matter one bit if the elder statesmen of the team don’t clean up their own bad habits.

Allen admitted following Penn’s loss to Rider on Tuesday night that he wanted to get these freshmen, so vital to the development to the Quakers’ program and Allen’s job security, some winning experience as soon as possible.

The only problem is, his veterans, the players who should be carrying the team, are inhibiting the growth that the freshmen have been able to experience over the course of two games.

Had junior Darien Nelson-Henry been able to close out Delaware State in the waning minutes on Saturday night, Woods, Auger, Jones and Darnell Foreman would have experienced what it feels like to win in their first collegiate game.

But what happened on Tuesday didn’t just rob the freshmen of a winning experience. It put them in a position where it was hard for them to develop.

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A Cornell comeback within a Cornell comeback

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After Colgate’s Damon Sherman-Newsome scored the first eight points of the game against Cornell, the Big Red looked a lot like the 2-26 Big Red of 2013-14: sluggish and ineffective. Later, a 23-6 Big Red deficit had them looking like a carbon copy of that 2013-14 squad.

Then Devin Cherry kicked his game into high gear, turning in a career performance and almost single-handedly turning the game around for Cornell. Cherry finished with 21 points, five assists, four boards and three steals while shooting an efficient 8-for-15 from the floor. He scored 20 of Cornell’s first 49 points and made sure the Big Red didn’t fade completely in the first half. He played with passion and he was consistently rewarded for it.

To put Cornell’s win into proper perspective, the Big Red lost to Colgate by 23 last year. Cornell is making sure we all know this is not last year.

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The Quakers, the Hoosiers and the Dolphins are all safe

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Hey, 1979 Penn Final Four Team? Don’t worry, you’re safe! And for that matter so too are the 1976 undefeated Indiana Hoosiers. Might as well throw in the 1972 undefeated Miami Dolphins. The 2014-15 Harvard Crimson men’s basketball team is not going undefeated. And it’s probably not going to the Final Four.

But let’s put Sunday’s one-point loss on a neutral court to a good Holy Cross team that had given the Crimson challenging games in each of the past two years in proper perspective … a perspective that all the Crimson-haters throughout the league often forget.

This is a very good Harvard team, incredibly athletic, with a mix of seasoned veterans and young learners. They were probably worthy of a No. 25 preseason AP ranking and will probably end up near that recognition as well.

But what they have to learn, and what other nationally ranked Ivy League teams of recent memory (Cornell, Princeton – although that wasn’t so recent) had to learn, is that a national ranking brings with it expectations and pressure to perform like a nationally ranked team every night. And frankly, that’s not easy for an Ivy League team, nor should it be.

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