Book Review: The Divine Nature of Basketball by Ed Breslin

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Breslin”s book, released this week, chronicles Yale”s 2011-12 season under coach James Jones.

Guest Post by Wesley Cheng

Friend of the site, Wesley Cheng, from over yonder at SUJuiceOnline.com, was nice enough to review Ed Breslin”s new book about the 2011-12 Yale basketball season. Neither Wesley nor IHO received any compensation for this review.

Let me be clear before the outset of this review: I did not attend an Ivy League school, nor did I previously have an appreciation for it. Save for a few friends who worshiped Penn hoops, my loyalties remain in the old Big East and the current ACC. So it is with that lens that I review Ed Breslin”s The Divine Nature of Basketball: My Season Inside the Ivy League, his look at the 2011-12 Yale Bulldogs basketball team, led by head coach James Jones. Breslin petitioned Jones to be a special assistant coach, essentially shadowing the team throughout the entire season. What follows is an insider”s look at one of the more entertaining Yale basketball seasons in recent memory.

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The Ship Be Sinkin’

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An embarrassing sweep up north has left the Penn faithful up in arms about how to fix the mess in Philly.
An embarrassing sweep up north has left the Penn faithful up in arms about how to fix the mess in Philly.

 

“The ship be sinkin’.”

Former New York Knick guard Michael Ray Richardson uttered these words just a few years prior to the drafting of Patrick Ewing, the eventual “savior“ of a then horribly dysfunctional franchise. The question now for Quaker fans is who will rescue Penn’s once proud “crown jewel” athletic team, a similarly dysfunctional organization that is now in desperate need of salvation.

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Princeton’s Lost Weekend

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After a blistering 11-2 start, Princeton has opened the Ivy season 0-3 for the first time since 2007 under Joe Scott.
After a blistering 11-2 start, Princeton has opened the Ivy season 0-3 for the first time since 2007 under Joe Scott.

Princeton’s title aspirations for the 2013-14 campaign were dashed once again by the University’s antiquated tradition of January “Reading Period” and its three week mid-season forced hiatus. A 700 mile bus trip to Cambridge and Hanover is hardly the way to shake off the cobwebs. Princeton’s 0-3 start is much more than a thorn in its paw. This Tiger is hurting.

Sadly, this weekend, Princeton squandered career scoring nights from its senior warriors, T. J. Bray (26 against Harvard) and Will Barrett (28 at Dartmouth). The Tigers embarked on the trip as the stingiest team with the ball in D1. A Penn-like plethora of turnovers, 33 in the two games, rendered a staggering blow to the reeling fortunes of the men from Old Nassau. Seventeen games in and Mitch Henderson is searching for answers to questions he never expected to be asked.

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Weekend’s Best

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Spring cleaning came early in New England as Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale got out the brooms and swept away the rest of the league.
Spring cleaning came early in New England as Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale got out the brooms and swept away the rest of the league.

 

Please put your hand up if you had Dartmouth sweeping the weekend without Gabas Maldunas and Columbia dropping two at Yale and Brown. You in the back? No, you’re just scratching your head? Yeah, me too. It was that kind of weekend in the Ivy League. On to the weekend’s big winners…

Home Court Advantage: We know it’s hard to win on the road in the Ivy League, but wow. Home teams went 8-0 this weekend as all four New England teams swept their back-to-backs. Through 15 Ivy contests, only two away teams have come away victorious (Columbia at Cornell and Harvard at Dartmouth).

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IHO Power Poll: January 30, 2014

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The true Ivy season finally begins in earnest tomorrow with all teams entering back-to-backs. Can IHO's unanimous #1 Harvard hold serve at home against the Old Guard?
The Ivy season finally begins in earnest tomorrow with all cialis online pharmacy teams entering back-to-backs. Can IHO’s unanimous #1 Harvard hold serve at home this weekend against the Old Guard?

After the Crimson’s surprising loss to FAU, some have suggested that the Ivy title race may not be as cut and dry as everyone expected. And in some sense, that’s fair. Harvard certainly doesn’t look like a team that’s going to run the table and finish the season in the Top 25. But 12-2 seems about right at this point for a team getting back one of the nation’s best shot blockers and otherwise loaded with talent at every position. And yet the best thing going for Harvard is the strength of the middle of the league. It seems increasingly unlikely that another team will be able to navigate the minefield of teams 2 through 6 and win even 10 league contests. But that’s why they play the games. Things could look a lot different on Sunday if Penn or Princeton can tag Harvard with a home loss, or if Columbia can sweep the second leg of its three-weekend road trip.

Let’s get to it…

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Brown Rolls Yale 73-56

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The Bears looked sharp on Saturday at the Pizzitola, hammering Yale 73-56 and moving to 1-1.
The Bears looked sharp on Saturday at the Pizzitola, hammering Yale 73-56 and moving to 1-1.

Last weekend’s Pizzitola Center reversal closed the book on yet another Yale-Brown split, the sixth in nine straight years of Bulldog-Bear back-to-back conference openers. The main man responsible for turning the previous week’s result around for the Bears: the unstoppable Sean McGonagill whose hot hand (29 points on 8-11 FG, 7-9 3PT) singlehandedly stopped a late Yale run and iced the game for Bruno. In what might have been their most complete effort of the year, the home team looked organized, prepared, and sharp– assisting on 19 of 27 field goals, including five impressive dimes from big man Rafael Maia.

The offense functioned exactly the way Brown fans had hoped it would entering this season with freshman Tavon Blackmon doing a solid job handling duties at the point (7 assists), while McGonagill was allowed to focus on pouring in shots from every corner of the floor. Dockery Walker provided an energetic spark off the bench with 10 points on 5-6 shooting, and Steve Spieth was all over the court with 9 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and 2 steals.

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Columbia 71, Cornell 61

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The Lions did what they had to do, making the halftime adjustments to run away from overmatched Cornell last night at Levien.
It wasn’t pretty down the stretch, but the Lions did what they had to do, making the halftime adjustments to run away from overmatched Cornell last night at Levien.

Rarely does a 10-point win leave the Lion Loyalists as unsatisfied as it did on Saturday night in Upper Manhattan – the aura around the post-game press conference was indicative of that.

Despite Cornell’s late-game run sparked by a full-court press and a small lineup, Coach Smith was proud of the way his team fought through the adversity saying, “We went through some tough ones like that last year and didn’t get it done, so hopefully [this win gives us] a little confidence moving forward.”

The Lions began the night hitting 3-4 from three, taking advantage of a Cornell defense that was overplaying the backdoor cuts and providing open looks off of handoffs and down-screens. But after a David Onuorah (6 pts, 4 rbs) rim-rattling dunk, another Onuorah put-back layup, and a Devin Cherry (16 pts) old fashioned three-point play, the game was tied at 21 with 2:59 left in the first half. A pair of “and-1s” from Alex Rosenberg, followed by a Maodo Lo layup got us to halftime, just 29-26 Columbia.

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Searching for Solutions in Ithaca

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Cornell’s failure to play anything resembling defense has resulted in a swift fall to the bottom rungs of college basketball. Can the Big Red even stay competitive in an up year for the Ivy?

It really wasn’t that long ago that Cornell Basketball could be uttered with sincerity in the same sentence as the likes of Duke, Kentucky, Syracuse, and Michigan State. Now, just four short years later, Cornell comparisons have fallen to the company of Grambling State, Southern Utah, and Lamar. Of course, that’s what happens when you go from the Sweet Sixteen to a 1-13 non conference record faster than you can say Wroblewski or Chemerinski.

1-13.

I write it again because it’s stark. 1-13, what do you do with that? In theory, it’s simple. You change.

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The Country’s Leading Rebounder Resides in Hanover

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We may need to dub Gabas Maldunas the Vilnius Vacuum based on the way the Lithuanian has cleaned up the boards this season.
We may need to bestow upon Gabas Maldunas the nickname “The Vilnius Vacuum” the way the Lithuanian has cleaned up the boards this season.

1999. It’s been fifteen years since Dartmouth finished Ivy League play with more wins than losses. Under head coach Dave Faucher, last millenium’s final incarnation of the Big Green went 10-4 to finish three games back of a title and in a respectable third place. In the decade and a half since then, the Big Green have finished at 7-7 twice but have not reached the promised land of a winning record. With Ivy teams four through seven currently separated by less than 40 teams in the Pomeroy rankings, some have suggested that the boys of Hanover may have a shot to improve on last year’s 5-9 finish and break the 15-year streak of futility.

Looking at their results so far this year though, you may be inclined to think this is the same old Dartmouth of years past. In their seven wins, the Big Green have yet to beat a team in the top 85% of Division I, racking up victories over five sub-300 squads and two D-III outfits. But credit Dartmouth- the team has not fallen into the common trap of playing down to the competition; the young troops have gone out and beaten all seven of those weak teams by double-digits. Against its strongest opponents, Dartmouth has stayed competitive on the road, taking Illinois to the wire in Champaign behind a barrage of late-game three-pointers and playing Harvard even for a half in Allston.

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What's Up with Yale?

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Before Yale's win over D-III Baruch, the Bulldogs had lost four straight games. What's ailing Yale?
Before Yale’s win over D-III Baruch, the Bulldogs had lost four straight games. What’s ailing the Elis?

Before this season, followers of the Ivy expected a lot out of Yale in ’13-14. This was a team that won seven of its last ten games last season, sweeping both Princeton and Penn twice.

So far though, the Bulldogs have been a disappointment. At 6-8, Yale’s best win is on the road at Hartford, a five point victory against the country’s 263rd best team according to Pomeroy. Opportunities for BCS wins were squandered at Rutgers and at Providence; stinkers were laid against average squads such as Bryant and Albany. So what’s going on? What’s keeping this Yale team from being as good as it should be?

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