Game of the Week
Harvard (8-18, 3-7 Ivy) at Cornell (18-5, 10-0 Ivy) – Saturday, March 1, 7:00 pm ET
Barring shocking road upsets by both cellar-dwellers Princeton and Dartmouth in the home gyms of the top two teams in the league, Cornell should be poised to punch its ticket to the Big Dance with a win on Saturday. They’ll get the chance to do so against a Harvard team that is coming off a huge sweep of Princeton and Penn and will be looking for some revenge for what the Big Red did two weekends ago in Boston. However, the Crimson has been a terrible team away from home this season, losing all 13 road contests so far. Defense hasn’t been a strong suit for Tommy Amaker’s team, so success against Cornell probably will come down to putting up some points. The way the Big Red is playing right now, Harvard faces a very tough task in spoiling the net-cutting party planned for Saturday night at Newman Arena.

Line of the Week

2.23.2008 vs. Brown TOT-FG 3-PT REBOUNDS FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT TP A TO BLK S MIN Reeves, Geoff………. 5-5 4-4 0-0 1 0 1 14 0 1 0 0 17
Impressing – Adam Gore steps up. Often overshadowed by Louis Dale and Ryan Wittman, Gore led Cornell in scoring both games this past weekend, scoring a team-high 18 points each night. After starting out the season 9 of 33 (27.3 percent) from three-point range in his first seven games, the 2005-06 Ivy Rookie of the Year has knocked down 36 of 76 (47.3 percent). – Brown’s senior standouts. Great guard play and senior leadership are major comforts to a head coach, so Craig Robinson has to be loving what he’s getting out of Damon Huffman and Mark McAndrew. McAndrew leads the league in scoring and Huffman is fifth, and the duo is the main reason the Bears have great shot at a second-place finish this year. – Brian Grandieri finishing strong. Playing through pain and looking visibly frustrated with his teammates’ inexperience on the court at times this year, Grandieri has turned it up a notch recently. The past two weekends he has played like the First Team All-Ivy player he was projected to be, averaging 16.5 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. – Jeremy Lin. The sophomore guard started out the season very strongly before going through some ups and downs, but this past weekend he looked like the best player on the court as Harvard swept the Ps. Lin led the Crimson to a thrilling comeback over Princeton on Friday with 20 points, then did that one better the next night against Penn with 21. – Mosley heats up from the outside. One of the streakier shooters in the league, DeVon Mosley has been riding a major hot streak from long range the last two weeks, canning at least three three-pointers in each game. Over that four-game stretch, the Dartmouth junior has gone 15-for-30 from the outside and averaged a team-best 15.5 points per game.		Distressing – Yale’s poor second halves. The Bulldogs can blame road woes for their losing league mark, but they’ve been ahead at halftime in three the four away losses. During the current three-game skid, Yale has outscored opponents by a 102-97 margin in the first half, only to end up on the wrong side of a lopsided 137-90 second-half scoring differential. – Tigers lose their touch. Since raining threes at Cornell on February 8, Princeton has struggled mightily as a team from beyond the arc, shooting just 33 of 119 (27.7 percent) over the last six games. With nearly 40 percent of its attempts coming from three-point range over that span, it should come as no surprise that the Tigers have dropped all six contests. – Baumann looking for help from classmates. Columbia’s promising Class of 2008 already lost Justin Armstrong to chronic knee problems earlier this year. While John Baumann is flourishing, the other Lion seniors (Ben Nwachukwu, Brett Loscalzo, Mack Montgomery, and Kashif Sweet) are averaging just 15.9 points per game as a group this month. – A step back for Penn. It didn’t take Harvard long to chase away any lingering good vibes from Penn’s demolition of Dartmouth the night before, as the Crimson abused the Quakers for 45 first-half points on Saturday. It was a reminder after two consecutive blowout wins that Glen Miller’s team still is the youngest and least experienced in the league. – Cornell’s slow starts. In both games this past weekend, the Big Red had to rally from halftime deficits at home to claim victory. Take away the huge first halves at Columbia and Brown, and Cornell has outscored its Ivy opponents by an average of just 1.8 points in the other eight league contests, forcing it to rely on big second halves to stay undefeated.