Game of the Week
Cornell (13-9, 6-2 Ivy) at Penn (14-8, 5-1 Ivy) – Saturday, February 16, 7:00 pm (YES Network)
It feels strange to highlight another matchup the week of a Penn-Princeton game, but with the Tigers in the basement, this is the game that truly matters. The Quakers shook off a pesky Big Red squad in the second half to win going away in the first meeting a month ago in Ithaca. Since then, however, Cornell has been playing its best basketball of the season and winning six of seven to pull into a second-place tie with Yale, just one game behind Penn in the all-important loss column. Glen Miller can’t be happy with what he’s seeing out of his team lately, because the Quakers haven’t played a solid game at both ends of the court in a month. Someone is going to have to beat Penn to inject some real drama into the title chase, because the odds of one of the second-place teams winning out are very long — 4.7 percent for the Bulldogs and 0.7 percent for the Big Red, according to Pomeroy. If Cornell wants to hang around in the Ivy race, it almost certainly has to win on Saturday.

Line of the Week

2.9.2007 vs. Harvard TOT-FG 3-PT REBOUNDS FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN Gunn, Lincoln………….. g 7-14 5-11 3-4 1 3 4 22 5 0 0 1 50
Impressing – Quakers take care of business. Neither outing was going to win any style points for Penn, but Glen Miller’s crew had little problem dispatching Dartmouth and Harvard. The defensive numbers ended up looking oustanding in both games, but this probably had more to do with the opposition’s performance than anything the Quakers did defensively. – Andrew Naeve. Cornell’s precocious freshmen are getting most of the attention, but with the youngsters going through rough patches in Ivy play, it’s been Naeve who has carried the Big Red. If not for the senior’s man-sized efforts against Columbia, Brown, and Yale, Cornell probably would find itself under .500 in the league instead of hot on Penn’s heels. – Dartmouth wins sans Pattman. The Big Green prevailed at Princeton in a battle of struggling teams missing their leading scorers. Alex Barnett had problems with his shot at Penn, but his pull-up jumper was falling on Saturday night, and he poured in over half of his team’s 45 points, as Dartmouth won at Jadwin Gym for the first time in 20 years. – Patrick Foley. Going into the season, the conventional wisdom was that Foley would be starting at the point for Joe Jones by the Ivy season. It took a little longer than expected, but the freshman made his first start in a Columbia uniform on Saturday — part of a big weekend for Foley, who totalled 30 points and 11 assists against just three turnovers. – The return of the three-way race. If it seems like it’s been a while since we’ve had three teams within a game of first place after three Ivy weekends, that’s because it has been. The last time we saw this was in 2003-04, when Penn and Brown were a game back of 6-1 Princeton in the loss column headed into the second swing through the league.		Distressing – Yale’s rough loss. Casey Hughes has had a very good senior season, and Yale wouldn’t be in this position without his contributions. The blame for Saturday’s loss ultimately should lie with the entire team, which found itself trailing in the second half for the sixth time in eight league games this year — only this time the Bulldogs couldn’t pull it out in the end. – Tiger outlook bleak. Following Saturday’s home loss to Dartmouth and given Kyle Koncz’s uncertain medical status the rest of the way, Princeton finds itself in dire straights. At 1-5 in the Ivy League for only the third time ever, unless the Tigers can pull off the shocker on Tuesday, another losing Ivy record is looking inevitable for Joe Scott. – Sore digit means single digits for Jaaber. Playing with his injured finger taped up, Ibby Jaaber had a very quiet weekend by his standards, averaging just 10.5 points and 4.5 assists. The reigning Player of the Year turned over the ball nine times and shot just 6 of 16 (37.5 percent) — missing all four three-point attempts in the two Penn wins. – Harvard refuses charity. The Crimson got a massive 33-point effort out of Drew Housman and led most of the way at Princeton on Friday, but an appalling 4-for-10 performance at the line to close out regulation and in the first overtime rendered all of that moot. The result was the latest in a long line of painful Harvard losses at the hands of their Tiger tormentors. – Close games not going Brown’s way. Since raising their record to 5-7 back on December 29, the Bears have played five games decided by four or fewer points and are 0-5 in those games, which is why their record now sits at 7-16. It’s been a problem in particular in league play, where three of Brown’s six Ivy losses have come by four or fewer points.