Game of the Week
Penn (22-8, 13-1 Ivy) vs. TBA – March 15 or 16
It’s been nearly a decade since the Ivy League’s last NCAA Tournament win, and given Penn’s showings against major conference opponents this year, changing that history will be a very difficult task. Then again, last season nobody gave the Quakers a chance as a tough-luck 15 seed against a Texas team deemed worthy of a top seed, and yet Penn came very close to pulling off a stunning upset. The key will be slowing down tempo and resisting the urge to try to get out and run on an opponent with superior quickness and athleticism. After that, it’s all about limiting second-chance opportunities by the opposition and, as always, making shots. If Penn can shoot the three like it did last year against the Longhorns and get a much better game out of Ibby Jaaber, it just might have a shot.

Line of the Week

3.2.2007 vs. Yale TOT-FG 3-PT REBOUNDS FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN Zoller, Mark………… 9-15 1-3 3-3 3 14 17 22 6 2 4 4 36
Impressing – Penn streaks into tourney. Unlike last season, when the Quakers limped to the finish line and dropped two games in the final few weeks of Ivy play, this year’s squad will take a 10-game winning streak into Selection Sunday. With a number of teams with similar resumes competing for 13 and 14 seeds, Penn couldn’t afford a slip-up down the stretch. – Huffman living up to freshman billing. A rough sophomore year caused many people to forget that Damon Huffman was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 2004-05, but he’s not slumping any more — as Princeton and Penn fans can tell you. Huffman scored in double figures in 11 of 14 Ivy games and ranked fifth in the league with 15.1 points per Ivy contest. – Lions meet revised goal. Following the disappointing performances at Penn and Princeton, Columbia knew it had to win three of its final four to finish at .500 in the league. When the Lions dropped their next name at Brown, the task grew even taller, but Joe Jones’s team blew out Yale in New Haven and swept Dartmouth and Harvard to finish right at .500. – Goffredo’s final flourish. It’s safe to say Jim Goffredo’s final season didn’t go the way the Harvard guard had envisioned, but he snapped out of a funk with the biggest scoring weekend of his career. After torching Cornell to the tune of 32 points on Friday, Goffredo dropped 24 in his final game on Saturday, earning a nice ovation from the opposing fans. – Yale and Princeton put on a show. It was a matchup between a last-place Princeton team and a Yale squad coming off costly back-to-back drubbings, but none of that mattered on Saturday. Both teams hit big shot after big shot late in the game, as the lead swung back and forth, and fittingly the outcome wasn’t decided until the final buzzer.		Distressing – Tigers go out with a whimper. The worst Ivy League season in school history ended with a thud on Tuesday, as a relatively sparse and quiet crowd watched Princeton get handled easily at home by Penn. Joe Scott almost certainly will get a fourth season to turn things around, but he has to be feeling the pressure to go at least .500 in the league next year. – Sullivan out at Harvard. Monday brought word of Frank Sullivan’s dismissal after 16 seasons coaching the Crimson, despite managing to go 3-7 in a good Ivy League without his best player. If the Harvard administration is serious about upgrading everything about program, then fine — but if it thinks Sullivan was the problem, it’s flat-out wrong. – Some tough senior farewells. A number of Ivy seniors went out under less than ideal circumstances. From Leon Pattman’s quiet eight-point night at Cornell, to Casey Hughes getting hurt and sitting out his final game, to Justin Conway and Edwin Buffmire battling injuries just to get on the floor, this wasn’t how these players wanted to end their careers. – Jaaber’s disappearing outside shot. Ibby Jaaber was a very effective three-point shooter last season (38.4 percent) and started out this season 14 of 31 (45.2 percent) from outside the arc. However, since the Navy game on December 7, Jaaber has lost his three-point shooting touch, connecting on just 19 of 76 attempts (25.0 percent) from three. – Cornell left defenseless. Back-to-back losses at Penn and Yale derailed the Big Red’s season, and Friday’s home loss to second-division Harvard gave the Crimson a very unexpected season sweep of Cornell. The common thread in these late losses was poor defense, as the Big Red gave up an alarming 1.20 points per possession in the three games.