Game of the Week
Cornell (5-8) at Penn (6-4) – Friday, January 13, 7:00 pm
After some positive buzz in the preseason magazines and a pair of strong showings on ESPNU to open the season, the Big Red looked every bit an Ivy contender. But Cornell has gone just 4-7 since then, with a trio of consecutive losses to poor Hartford, Lafayette, and Quinnipiac teams, and enters the game ranked outside the Top 250 in all three major ratings systems. Big Red fans will be quick to point out that most of those games were lost without reserve big man Jason Hartford. The 6-9 JuCo transfer looked great in the first two games, but broke his wrist in the Syracuse game. Steve Donahue will need all the help he can get against a Penn team that looks to be the class of the league after the first two months of the season. The Quakers are playing suffocating defense and have recently gotten untracked from the outside after struggling with their perimeter shooting early on. Cornell has struggled offensively this season, ranking 277th in adjusted offensive efficiency, while Penn ranks 24th in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency. Donahue is going to have to find a way to score against his former boss, or the Big Red could wind up under the 40 point mark for the second time this season.

Line of the Week

1.4.2006 at The Citadel   TOT-FG 3-PT   REBOUNDS                 FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN Grandieri, Brian……………   1-3 0-2 0-0 2 8 10 2 10 1 1 2 21
Impressing – Jim Goffredo. Nobody is happier to see Brian Cusworth back on the court than Goffredo, who scored 33 points Saturday in Harvard’s win over Dartmouth. The junior is averaging 18.0 points per game and shooting 43.8 percent from three-point range when Cusworth plays. – Ibby Jaaber’s consistency. Jaaber is on his way to running away with the Ivy Player of the Year award after a sensational first ten games. The junior guard is averaging 18.8 points per game, shooting 54.8 percent, and has scored at least 14 points in every game. – Scott Friske. The Brown freshman has exploded the last four games, averaging 19.3 points and 8.8 rebounds per game in that span. Friske has put himself in position to follow in the footsteps of teammate, fellow Michigan native, and 2004-05 Rookie of the Year Damon Huffman. – Cornell at Washington. Hec Edmundson Pavilion can be a tough place to play, but the Big Red didn’t get blown out by 10th-ranked Washington. In a performance similar to Penn’s showing at Duke earlier this year, Cornell kept things moderately interesting almost the entire game. – Eric Osmundson finds his shot. The Penn captain broke out of an extended shooting slump with some huge shots in the win at Hawai’i. This seemed to get him untracked, as Osmundson shot a combined 7 of 12 from three-point range in the next two games at BYU-Hawai’i and The Citadel.		Distressing – Princeton’s demise. There’s just no way of getting around the fact the Tigers are simply a shockingly terrible basketball team right now. The storied program ranks dead last or next to last in the league in pretty much every meaningful statistical category out there. – Yale’s turnover problems. Princeton is saved from being the worst in the league at turning over the ball by Yale’s awful 26.3-percent turnover rate. Sloppy ballhandling and passing by the Bulldogs played a key role in Kansas turning a close game into a blowout. – Columbia’s skid. The Lions are 2-6 in their last eight games, including a pair of home losses to lower-tier Patriot League teams. This weekend’s road trip to Princeton and Penn will tell us whether Saturday’s blowout of CCNY was fun and games or a sign of a coming turnaround. – Joe Scott’s constant lineup juggling. Scott just can’t seem to decide what he’s doing with this team, talking about a youth movement one moment, then refusing to play Geoff Kestler and Alex Okafor the next. What’s next — a lottery-style drawing to determine the starting lineup? – Terry Dunn searching for answers. Scott isn’t the only coach in the league trying to figure out who he wants to play, as Dunn has played 15 different players this season outside of garbage time. Though 12 games, only three Big Green players are averaging over 20.0 minutes per game.