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Last chance for Ivy title drama

Posted on by in Blog, Ivy League, Penn, Princeton

Usually Penn-Princeton games decide Ivy championships. Tonight’s game will determine whether we have a race or a coronation this season. The Tigers are the league’s only hope to avoid a repeat of last year’s runaway Ivy title for the Quakers. With Cornell and Yale both three games behind in the loss column, they’re essentially both eliminated with a Penn win tonight. Even Princeton is probably done with a loss, as the Tigers would be two games out with seven to play, and it’s hard enough to imagine Penn going 5-2 in the second swing through the league, let alone Princeton running the table.

Penn’s Osmundson cleared for Princeton game

Posted on by in Ivy League, News/Slant, Penn, Princeton

Eric Osmundson practiced on Monday and is expected to play in Tuesday’s showdown with Princeton. The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that the senior point guard was diagnosed with a separated shoulder resulting from an incident on Saturday night, late in the win over Harvard. But Osmundson was cleared by team doctors and was back at practice on Monday, where the Penn captain indicated to the DP’s Zachary Levine that he will be able to play against the Tigers.

Inside the Ivy

Posted on by in Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Inside, Ivy League, Penn, Princeton, Yale

Princeton at Penn – Tuesday, February 14, 8:00 pm
On paper this looks like a big mismatch, as Penn simply has played much better basketball this season — even lately. But the Quakers haven’t faced many matchup zone defenses like what they’ll be seeing out of the Tigers on Tuesday, and it’s impossible to say how they’ll respond. Princeton has been shooting the three-pointer very well the last two weeks, and the only chink in Penn’s defensive armor is their opponents’ 36.5-percent shooting from outside the arc. Penn has been disrupting opposing offenses with its defensive pressure and forcing turnovers, but Princeton has cut down on its turnovers dramatically in Ivy League play. If the Tigers can get open and knock down their outside shots, the Ivy League race could get very interesting.

Tuesday’s showdown has sudden significance

Posted on by in Blog, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Ivy League, Penn, Princeton, Yale

A few weeks ago you could have gotten pretty good odds on Princeton being 5-1 coming into tomorrow night’s clash with Penn. But after receiving the kinds of breaks they didn’t get last season when they started 1-5, the Tigers have undergone a pretty miraculous resuscitation in league play.

Wrist injury sidelines Yale’s Kaplan

Posted on by in Ivy League, News/Slant, Yale

The Yale Daily News reports that Yale power forward Sam Kaplan will undergo an MRI Monday on what are believed to be torn ligaments in his wrist. The injury occurred in practice last week and Kaplan did not play in either game this weekend. The YDN story says Kaplan could return to the starting lineup for this weekend’s Dartmouth-Harvard road trip. The junior had been enjoying a breakout season, averaging 11.4 points in just 23.8 minutes per game and shooting 57.1 percent from the floor.