Inside the Ivy

Game of the Week
Princeton (2-6) at Penn State (4-4) – Wednesday, December 12, 7:00 pm ET – ESPNU
Mired in a six-game losing streak the Tigers badly need a win. They’ll have their work cut out for them, as Princeton is winless in five games away from home, while Penn State is 4-0 at the Bryce Jordan Center this season. So far the Ivy League has enjoyed some success against the Big Ten, winning two of three head-to-head meetings, but for that trend to continue, the Tigers will need to play much better than they did last time out against Evansville. The game will be shown nationally for those fortunate enough to get ESPNU, so it would be the perfect time for Princeton to get off the schneid.

Line of the Week

12.4.2007 at Wagner TOT-FG 3-PT REBOUNDS
FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN
Baumann, John………… 9-11 3-5 8-10 1 5 6 29 1 1 0 0 30
Impressing

Yale finds its shooting touch. The Bulldogs had been struggling to put the ball in the basket, shooting just 41.7 percent in their previous four games — all losses. In two wins last week, however, Yale shot a much better 51.4 percent from the field and posted its best back-to-back offensive performances since the first two games of the season.
Tyler Bernadini’s big night. In front of a national television audience, the Penn freshman had a game to remember, dropping 26 points on top-ranked North Carolina. The rest of his game still needs some refinement, but at 12.8 points per game, Bernardini has his scoring down pat and looks to be the early favorite to win Ivy Rookie of the Year.
Brown putting it all together. The Bears rank second in the league in offensive efficiency and are tops in defensive efficiency, making them by far the most balanced Ivy squad at this point. It shouldn’t surprise anyone then that Brown has the league’s best RPI, Sagarin, and Pomeroy ratings and had won four of five prior to Sunday’s loss at Providence.
Alex Zampier. James Jones’s best teams have had excellent depth, and he has an excellent option off his bench this season in Zampier. The sophomore guard has played a big role in the last two Yale wins, averaging 13.0 points per game offensively, while turning into a dangerous thief defensively this year with 2.5 steals per contest.
Dartmouth back to .500. Thanks to another close home win this past week over UC Davis, this is the latest in the season that the Big Green as been at or above .500 since 2001. Judging by the first eight games, Dartmouth isn’t going to stop anyone defensively, so it’s going to have to rely on its offense to outscore opponents as it has in the four wins.
Distressing

Columbia plagued by inconsistency. Joe Jones has one of the more veteran teams in the league, and yet Lion fans have no clue what to expect when their team takes the floor. Columbia has played 10 games, and nine of them have been decided by double digits — with alternating blowout wins and losses in the last six against similar competition.
Matt Kyle’s foul problems. Kyle put up 42 points in Yale’s first two games of the season, but he has scored just 32 points since. The 6-10 senior missed the Holy Cross game due to illness and came off the bench against Wagner, but in the other four games after his hot start, Kyle has picked up at least four fouls and played just 17.8 minutes per contest.
Princeton lays an egg at Evansville. Sydney Johnson may want to simply burn the game tape from Wednesday’s 53-32 road loss, in which the Tigers had just 17 points after 28 minutes of play. The Evansville debacle was all the more disheartening coming on the heels of very competitive showings against Seton Hall and Rutgers the previous week.
Niko Scott’s sophomore slump Scott showed off a sweet lefty stroke as a freshman last year when he knocked down 39.2 percent from three, but this season has been another story. He missed his first 12 three-point attempts and hasn’t shot over 33.3 percent in any game, as his shooting percentage from the outside has plummeted to just 19.6 percent.
Road not kind to Crimson. Harvard is 3-0 in Lavietes Pavilion under Tommy Amaker, but as the visitors, the Crimson are an unsightly 0-5. With the exception of the Stanford game, the offensive production has been solid away from home, but the defensive intensity appears to suffer, with opponents averaging 1.28 points per possession.

Jake Wilson

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Basketball U.

Jake Wilson wrote 754 posts

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