Game of the Week
Penn (18-7, 10-1 Ivy) at Yale (15-12, 7-5 Ivy) – Friday, March 3, 7:00 pm
The entire season basically comes down to this game, fittingly between the only two teams with winning records and Top 200 RPIs. The first meeting in Philadelphia was downright bizarre, with Yale running out to a 16-1 lead and Penn outscoring the Bulldogs 51-13 over a 21-minute stretch. But as we’ve been reminding you for some time, Yale is a very different team at home, where the Bulldogs are undefeated in Ivy play this season. Meanwhile, Penn comes into the matchup banged up, shorthanded, and possibly playing its worst basketball of the season. The Quakers haven’t fared well in New Haven recently, going 1-3 the previous four seasons at Lee Amphitheater. The Bulldogs are out of the Ivy title chase themselves after Penn’s win on Saturday, but a weekend sweep might give them a sliver of a chance at an NIT bid. From a league perspective, this is almost certainly the best shot at having a real race, as Princeton needs Penn to drop a game on the weekend to give Tuesday’s game any meaning beyond the rivalry and Penn’s seeding. It would be foolish to say Brown has no shot at beating the Quakers on Saturday, but if there is to be an upset, it’s far more likely to come courtesy of Yale. If Penn leaves New Haven with a W, you can probably punch its ticket to the Big Dance.

Lines of the Week

2.25.2006 vs. Harvard TOT-FG 3-PT REBOUNDS FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN Koncz, Kyle………… 9-11 5-6 0-0 2 4 6 23 3 0 0 2 34
Impressing – Princeton’s offensive explosion. The Tigers ambushed Harvard with an absolute offensive clinic, nailing 13 of 19 three-point attempts and recording 21 assists on 25 field goals. Princeton’s 75 points came on just 55 possessions, and the 1.37 points per possession was the best offensive performance of the Joe Scott Era. – Penn’s one-two punch. Despite off nights offensively by Mark Zoller on Friday night and Ibby Jaaber on Saturday night, the Quaker duo still combined for 69 points, 37 rebounds, five assists, six blocks, and 10 steals in the two games. The juniors have developed into one of the better two-man combinations in recent Penn history. – Dominick Martin. It took Martin a while to get into a groove after sitting out the first semester, but he’s been on a roll of late, averaging 18.4 points and 10.3 rebounds in Yale’s last seven contests. Even after missing the first seven games of the season, the senior big man is building a very strong case for First Team All-Ivy. – Brown shows improvement. The Bears have played nearly the entire Ivy League season without lone senior Luke Ruscoe, but Brown has already managed to match last year’s Ivy win total with Jason Forte. Granted, the league was much better from top to bottom last season, but Glen Miller has to be feeling good about his young team. – Lots of thrilling endings. We’ve seen a number of Ivy games go right down to the wire this year, with 13 of the 47 games decided in overtime or in regulation by four or fewer points. This is an improvement over last season, when — for all the parity in the league — we saw just 10 such games over the course of the 56-game Ivy schedule.		Distressing – Harvard’s shocking demise. Even with the strong effort in Friday night’s overtime loss at Penn, the Crimson remains in free fall with a seven-game losing streak. The second-best team in the league in the first half of the season was demolished by 27 points by a Princeton team it had outplayed two weeks earlier up in Boston. – Fran Dunphy stands pat. Brennan Votel played five minutes aginst Colorado and six against Villanova, but Dunphy couldn’t give him a few minutes in a pinch against Harvard? The Quakers clearly needed another big body out there when Harvard grabbed 13 of the next 14 rebounds after Steve Danley left the game injured. – Cornell’s Senior Night letdown. With a good crowd behind it and Lenny Collins and Ryan Rourke playing their final games at Newman Arena, the Big Red should have been able to take care of business against Brown. But Cornell played very poorly defensively and blew its chance to improve on last year’s 8-6 league mark. – Lions take a step back. Winners of three straight at home, Columbia had a chance to keep its momentum going with Saturday’s game against Yale, the league’s worst road team. Things looked good at halftime with the Lions holding a six-point lead, but they went cold from the arc in the second half and dropped a tough one to the Bulldogs. – Dartmouth not faring well in close games. Last year the Big Green finished at .500 in the league largely on the strength of a 4-1 record in league games decided in overtime or by four or fewer points. After the tough loss at Princeton on Friday, Dartmouth is now 0-3 in close Ivy games this season — the difference between 3-9 and 6-6.