Game of the Week
Yale (14-11, 6-4 Ivy) at Cornell (10-14, 5-5 Ivy) – Friday, February 24, 7:00 pm
With Harvard completely demoralized after five straight losses, there’s no true marquee game this week. Since Yale-Cornell is the only matchup between upper division teams, that’s as good as it gets this weekend. The earlier meeting in New Haven was competitive, with Yale rallying in the second half and pulling away in the final minutes to end Cornell’s four-game winning streak. If you ask the Bulldogs, they’d probably tell you they’re still hoping for an Ivy league title, but even they know Penn isn’t going to lose three of its final five games. So this is about finishing strong and aiming for second place. Additionally, Yale is probably the only Ivy team left with any prayer of getting an NIT bid, and that would almost certainly require wins in its four remaining games. Cornell has plenty of incentive itself, looking to repeat last season’s second-place finish. But first the Big Red will need to break a three-game losing streak that started with the loss at Yale. For their part, the Buldogs will be seeking their second Ivy road win after getting that monkey off their back on Saturday at Harvard. The Cornell Athletic Department puts together excellent Internet video broadcasts of its games, so if you’re not in central New York and want to watch the game, you have that option as well.

Lines of the Week

2.17.2006 vs. Penn TOT-FG 3-PT REBOUNDS FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN Armstrong, Justin…… 10-15 1-2 2-2 1 4 5 23 0 2 0 1 28   2.17.2006 at Cornell TOT-FG 3-PT REBOUNDS FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN Greenman, Scott……… G 10-15 4-6 3-4 1 0 1 27 4 2 0 3 50   2.18.2006 at Cornell TOT-FG 3-PT REBOUNDS FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN Jaaber, Ibrahim……… G 9-14 5-10 6-7 2 2 4 29 2 0 1 4 40
Impressing – Ibby Jaaber. We’ll go ahead and say it: Best individual season in the Academic Index Era. Just wrap your mind around these numbers in Ivy play: shooting 65.3 percent overall, 52.5 percent from three, and 86.5 percent from the line and averaging 20.1 points, 3.1 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 4.0 steals, and just 0.8 turnovers per game. – Columbia’s big sweep. The school picked a great weekend to induct its inaugural athletics hall of fame class, with a pair of electrifying upsets of Penn and Princeton. And the program needed that kind of pick-me-up in the worst way after a rough couple of months that had left a number of loyal Lions fans disillusioned. – Scott Greenman. The diminutive Princeton guard has done things in the last few weeks that most of us had no idea he was capable of doing. And we’re not just talking about his late-game herioics at Cornell — Greenman has taken the team on his shoulders and delivered time after time down the stretch in league games. – Justin Armstrong. What a weekend for the Columbia guard, who got things started with 23 points in 28 minutes off the bench, keying a Lion comeback and a stunning upset of Penn. The next night, Armstrong followed up that that performance with 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting and hit the game-winning shot with 10.9 seconds left to beat Princeton. – Yale off the schneid. James Jones didn’t want to admit there was a trend at work, but his team had lost eight straight — and 15 of its last 18 — Ivy games away from Lee Amphitheater until Saturday’s win at Harvard. Now Yale will have a chance to prove that was no fluke when it gets back on the bus for this weekend’s New York road trip.		Distressing – Harvard tanks. The back-to-back hearbreaking losses to Cornell and Princeton turned out to be absolute backbreakers, as the Crimson has dropped the three home games since then — and all by double digits. Harvard looked totally lifeless this weekend in the losses to Brown and Yale, despite being favored in both contests. – Penn frontcourt struggles in New York. The Quakers lost on Friday at Columbia and had trouble on Saturday at Cornell because they got almost nothing out of their starting forwards. Steve Danley and Mark Zoller combined to score just 27 points in the two games, shooting 10 of 27 (37.0 percent) and committing 15 turnovers. – Cornell close-out problems. The Big Red blew a late nine-point lead against Princeton and lost in double-overtime, then seemed to run out of gas late for the second straight Saturday night. While Greenman’s second shot certainly was an unfair break for Cornell, Steve Donahue’s team should have won that game in regulation. – Matt Stehle’s lost weekend. It’s tough to hold it against him after the consistently great numbers he has put up the past three seasons, but Stehle was a shell of himself this weekend. He got a few inside looks to fall in the second half against Yale to make his final line look better, but the Harvard star’s game just was’t there either night. – The league’s youthful inconsistency. Of the 110 starts in the past week, only 22 went to seniors. We knew the Class of 2006 was weak when it was recruited four years ago, and now we’re seeing the result of a league dominated by underclassmen, as teams struggle with consistency from week to week and even night to night.