Thursday, December 02, 2004
Saturday Bloody Saturday
Tough week so far for PL teams (4-6 not including Army's trouncing of the NY School of Art and Design or whatever it was). But it's going to get worse.
While Lehigh continues its efforts to return to the Play In Game should they win the PL again (their schedule is littered with crappy teams like Harvard, Dartmouth, Wagner, Columbia and Towson), the other 7 teams play teams on Saturday that will can and probably will beat them.
Bucknell takes on Yale, a team that is a sleeper in the Ivy this year. This game is the one real tossup on Saturday-- a Bucknell win on the road wouldn't be shocking.
Lafayette travels to the land of tobacco and river folk, taking on Rick Pitino's Louisville squad. Can you imagine being a team in Conference USA, especially after next season when a number of teams leave? I am completely uninterested in anything that happens in that league. Tulane-SLU and ECU-TCU are supposed to get me excited? Sheesh. Anyway, the Leopards are going to get beat up. It's not going to be pretty.
AU hosts Vermont, home of Taylor Coppenrath, future NBA star and current folk hero in his home state. Coppenrath, you will remember, is the gentleman who dropped 43 on Maine last year to get his team to the NCAAs. Oh, and he had a broken wrist at the time. I watched the game, and I fear for the AU and HC frontcourt players, who will have to deal with this behemoth. Vermont is beatable-- but not if Coppenrath isn't sick or hurt.
Holy Cross travels to the frozen tundra of Minnesota, where weather.com predicts a pleasant 41 degree high on Saturday. Minnesota, you'll remember, was only notable for the presence of Kris Humphries, who led the Big Ten in scoring and rebounds. Minnesota was lousy otherwise, going 12-18 and 3-13 in conference play. Humphries has moved on to the Utah Jazz, but Minnesota is still not that good for a Big Ten team. However, they should still beat the Cross, given their size and home court advantage.
Colgate heads to Syracuse. You know what happens when Colgate goes to Syracuse. This will be either the 39th or 40th time in a row Colgate gets beat. It doens't seem fair.
Army goes to St. Francis NY, but since they're Army, they're the underdog regardless when they are on the road.
Rounding out the losses, Navy travels to Ohio. While Navy did get a legitimate DI win yesterday, they won't be beating any MAC teams for a while.
So, if the league goes 2-5 this week, someone will have to pull a big upset.
Ivy Ownage
As far as this week's action so far, there really haven't been any surprises, save for Navy's victory. Penn has beaten PL teams 19 times in a row, a ridiculous amount. And Princeton is just really good at playing the game their way, slowing down offenses, and keeping scores under 60 (they held Syracuse to 56).
At some point, the Patriot League as a whole is going to be better than the Ivy League. In fact, most of the league is probably better than 6 of those 8 squads. The key to getting the league better than the Ivies is getting Army and Navy to a respectable level. They drop everyone else's RPI in the league by a significant margin. Lehigh could have been a 15 or 16 seed easily last year, if only they hadn't played Army and Navy five different times.
If those two schools increase their level of play, it will elevate the level of play for everyone else in the league. In the meantime, PL teams are still going to lose to the Princeton and Penns of the world.
Don't get me wrong: I think Army and Navy are great for the league. They provide a tradition and fan base that none of the other schools can. They're also the most prestigious schools in the league. If you graduate from either of those schools, you are going to have a good job whenever you want. But until they improve their basketball programs they are going to hurt the league as a whole. And it is possible to have a good program at a service academy-- look at Air Force hoops and football, Navy baseball and football, and Army.. well I don't know about Army.
It might not be fair to tie the two losses this week to the Ivies to Navy and Army's struggles-- I mean, they weren't even in the gym. But in looking at the greater scheme of things improvement by the academies will be a big step. @ 10:01 AM
Tough week so far for PL teams (4-6 not including Army's trouncing of the NY School of Art and Design or whatever it was). But it's going to get worse.
While Lehigh continues its efforts to return to the Play In Game should they win the PL again (their schedule is littered with crappy teams like Harvard, Dartmouth, Wagner, Columbia and Towson), the other 7 teams play teams on Saturday that will can and probably will beat them.
Bucknell takes on Yale, a team that is a sleeper in the Ivy this year. This game is the one real tossup on Saturday-- a Bucknell win on the road wouldn't be shocking.
Lafayette travels to the land of tobacco and river folk, taking on Rick Pitino's Louisville squad. Can you imagine being a team in Conference USA, especially after next season when a number of teams leave? I am completely uninterested in anything that happens in that league. Tulane-SLU and ECU-TCU are supposed to get me excited? Sheesh. Anyway, the Leopards are going to get beat up. It's not going to be pretty.
AU hosts Vermont, home of Taylor Coppenrath, future NBA star and current folk hero in his home state. Coppenrath, you will remember, is the gentleman who dropped 43 on Maine last year to get his team to the NCAAs. Oh, and he had a broken wrist at the time. I watched the game, and I fear for the AU and HC frontcourt players, who will have to deal with this behemoth. Vermont is beatable-- but not if Coppenrath isn't sick or hurt.
Holy Cross travels to the frozen tundra of Minnesota, where weather.com predicts a pleasant 41 degree high on Saturday. Minnesota, you'll remember, was only notable for the presence of Kris Humphries, who led the Big Ten in scoring and rebounds. Minnesota was lousy otherwise, going 12-18 and 3-13 in conference play. Humphries has moved on to the Utah Jazz, but Minnesota is still not that good for a Big Ten team. However, they should still beat the Cross, given their size and home court advantage.
Colgate heads to Syracuse. You know what happens when Colgate goes to Syracuse. This will be either the 39th or 40th time in a row Colgate gets beat. It doens't seem fair.
Army goes to St. Francis NY, but since they're Army, they're the underdog regardless when they are on the road.
Rounding out the losses, Navy travels to Ohio. While Navy did get a legitimate DI win yesterday, they won't be beating any MAC teams for a while.
So, if the league goes 2-5 this week, someone will have to pull a big upset.
Ivy Ownage
As far as this week's action so far, there really haven't been any surprises, save for Navy's victory. Penn has beaten PL teams 19 times in a row, a ridiculous amount. And Princeton is just really good at playing the game their way, slowing down offenses, and keeping scores under 60 (they held Syracuse to 56).
At some point, the Patriot League as a whole is going to be better than the Ivy League. In fact, most of the league is probably better than 6 of those 8 squads. The key to getting the league better than the Ivies is getting Army and Navy to a respectable level. They drop everyone else's RPI in the league by a significant margin. Lehigh could have been a 15 or 16 seed easily last year, if only they hadn't played Army and Navy five different times.
If those two schools increase their level of play, it will elevate the level of play for everyone else in the league. In the meantime, PL teams are still going to lose to the Princeton and Penns of the world.
Don't get me wrong: I think Army and Navy are great for the league. They provide a tradition and fan base that none of the other schools can. They're also the most prestigious schools in the league. If you graduate from either of those schools, you are going to have a good job whenever you want. But until they improve their basketball programs they are going to hurt the league as a whole. And it is possible to have a good program at a service academy-- look at Air Force hoops and football, Navy baseball and football, and Army.. well I don't know about Army.
It might not be fair to tie the two losses this week to the Ivies to Navy and Army's struggles-- I mean, they weren't even in the gym. But in looking at the greater scheme of things improvement by the academies will be a big step. @ 10:01 AM
