Dave Zeitlin

A letter to Grace Calhoun

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Car RadioDear Dr. Calhoun,

I have seen a lot of Penn Basketball over my lifetime. Thus I must say Dave Zeitlin’s great piece in the Pennsylvania Gazette about the 2005 Penn-Princeton game, filled me with much wistful melancholy.

First, a confession: I was more than 100 miles away from the Palestra on game day.  Instead of being in the stands, I was sitting in my car on that cold, rainy night in Rockaway Beach Queens near JFK Airport listening to the Princeton broadcast as it faded in and out across my car radio. Unimpeded by the tall buildings of Manhattan and beamed over a frigid New York Bay, I knew from years of experience that this secluded landmark could adequately receive a reasonable but faint signal from the New Jersey hinterlands. To get to my vantage point I took a 20-mile detour on my way home from work.  If that’s not fandom I don’t know what is.

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#IvyTweetWatch

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Time for a new Ivy Hoops Online feature – #TweetWatch will round up some of the best Ivy hoops-related tweets in a given week. Ancient Eight, meet 21st century:

Lots of good stuff going on here. First, I’ve never seen Jerome Allen smile that wide at a postgame presser, win or lose. Second, everyone who bet that Allen would win a “pop-a-shot” arcade competition between City 6 basketball coaches before Penn basketball won its first game can collect. Still, props to Allen and his City 6 counterparts for shooting hoops to raise money for the nonprofit food bank Philabundance, which does fantastic work. The Camp Out for Hunger campaign was sponsored by the Preston and Steve morning radio show from local Philadelphia station 93.3 WMMR. Keep making it rain, Jerome.

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