Get schooled.
Two of the top teams in the league begin their quests for the Ivy title today, as Yale and Cornell give their home fans their first looks at this year’s squads. Out west, Harvard and Dartmouth will look to bounce back from lopsided defeats in their first games of their respective multi-team events.
The 2007-08 season kicks off for the Ivy League today when five Ivy teams take the court in venues across the country. Unlike past years where we’ve seen a staggered start with some teams playing in early season tournaments and others playing their openers a week later, all eight Ivies will play games this weekend. Here’s a rundown of Friday’s games, as well as some links to follow all the action.
When writing a preseason preview, experience repeatedly comes up as a factor in projecting how a team will perform in the season ahead. Lazy scribes tend to glance at a roster and count up the juniors and seniors when evaluating a team’s experience level. While upperclassmen theoretically are more mature and refined from years spent in the program, there’s just no substitute for actual game experience. So how do the Ivy teams stack up in terms of career minutes played?
James Jones brought in a balanced freshman class this fall with a lead guard, an off guard, and two frontcourt recruits. Given what Yale returns from last season, there’s not going to be a lot of playing time available. However, the freshmen as a group are ready physically and mentally for the college game, so a few of them could find their way into Jones’s typically deep rotation.
When point guard recruit Jeff Peterson reneged on his commitment to Princeton, Joe Scott’s final recruiting class at Old Nassau took on a decidedly different look. Peterson eventually signed with Iowa, leaving new coach Sydney Johnson with a group of incoming freshmen without much in the way of recruiting accolades. None of the four members of the 2007 recruiting class were ranked in HoopScoop’s Top 1000 recruits, and the only freshman to be rated by any of the national scouting services never made it onto the Tiger roster. Still, at least one of these newcomers should get a chance to make an impact this season, and another likely will get the opportunity sooner or later.