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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

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Riffs

Going deep with the RPI

POSTED: Monday, February 23, 2009, 2:04 AM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

The weekend's best floor-storming. (Rob Carr/AP)

Not long after I put together those tables of NCAA Selection Committee team sheet data last week, I realized that those numbers merited more serious consideration.

So I decided to assemble that data again, but this time I expanded the number of teams involved. Below you'll find average opponent win and loss RPI, top 50 wins and 201+ losses for all the teams in the conferences of most relevance to us: the Big East, Atlantic 10, CAA and Ivy League.

Big East

Team	Top 50 wins	201+ losses	Avg. win	Avg. loss
Connecticut	8	0	114	19
Pittsburgh	7	0	99	13
Marquette	5	0	138	56
Louisville	5	0	110	47
Villanova	5	0	131	21
West Virginia	3	0	120	23
Providence	1	0	170	39
Syracuse	5	0	113	30
Cincinnati	3	0	156	23
Notre Dame	3	0	165	30
Seton Hall	2	1	174	53
Georgetown	3	0	115	33
St. John's	0	0	228	34
South Florida	1	0	180	57
Rutgers	0	2	243	67
DePaul	0	0	221	63

Atlantic 10

Team	Top 50 wins	201+ losses	Avg. win	Avg. loss
Xavier	4	0	127	63
Dayton	2	0	160	123
Temple	1	0	151	64
Rhode Island	1	0	194	47
Saint Louis	1	1	167	112
Duquesne	1	0	225	61
St. Joseph's	0	0	174	80
Richmond	0	1	194	91
La Salle	0	1	200	68
Massachusetts	3	3	109	119
Charlotte	2	1	169	91
S. Bonaventure	0	4	240	122
G. Washington	0	3	206	124
Fordham	0	5	253	122

Colonial Athletic Association

Team	Top 50 wins	201+ losses	Avg. win	Avg. loss
VCU	0	2	177	130
George Mason	0	2	177	127
Northeastern	0	2	178	121
Hofstra	0	0	185	94
Old Dominion	0	2	205	131
Drexel	0	2	190	105
J. Madison	0	2	214	121
Georgia State	0	5	183	148
Delaware	0	5	202	144
Wm. & Mary	0	4	216	137
Towson	0	4	238	130
UNC-Wilm.	0	4	215	136

Ivy League

Team	Top 50 wins	201+ losses	Avg. win	Avg. loss
Cornell	0	2	226	130
Columbia	0	4	289	168
Yale	0	6	231	199
Dartmouth	0	11	241	217
Princeton	0	10	240	230
Penn	0	4	297	142
Harvard	0	10	220	224
Brown	0	9	284	179

Big Ten

Team	Top 50 wins	201+ losses	Avg. win	Avg. loss
Michigan St.	10	0	101	44
Purdue	5	0	142	23
Illinois	7	0	138	31
Penn State	6	0	169	34
Wisconsin	3	0	104	40
Minnesota	4	0	144	36
Ohio State	6	0	140	27
Michigan	3	0	139	28
Northwestern	5	0	165	46
Iowa	2	0	181	52
Indiana	0	1	149	58

Atlantic Coast Conference

Team	Top 50 wins	201+ losses	Avg. win	Avg. loss
North Carolina	6	0	97	43
Clemson	5	0	127	30
Duke	7	0	105	25
Florida State	4	0	137	25
Wake Forest	5	0	132	88
Boston College	3	1	141	69
Maryland	4	0	146	40
Virginia Tech	2	1	150	56
N.C. State	2	0	211	27
Miami (Fla.)	2	0	140	28
Virginia	1	0	170	44
Georgia Tech	1	0	170	44

4 comments

Penn State 38, Illinois 33

POSTED: Thursday, February 19, 2009, 12:53 PM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

Consider the box score from Penn State's 38-33 upset win in Champaign.

(No, it is not a football box score, though it may resemble one in some ways.)

Take it slowly, as you would a glass of red wine or maybe a plate full of brussels sprouts and asparagus.

Be deliberate in considering all the numbers: the field goal percentages, the assists, the turnovers, the points per possession, the tempo.

Here we have a BCS-conference basketball game in which the leading scorer had 11 points and no other player registered more than seven. No player made more than three field goal attempts in the 40 minutes of play.

Penn State's Talor Battle made three of 11 shots, Jamelle Cornley was 2-for-8 and Stanley Pringle was 1-for-9. Illinois' Demetri McCamey was 2-for-11.

The pace was slow, only 57 possessions per side. Yet the winning team scored 0.66 points per possession, and recorded a floor percentage - the percentage of offensive possessions in which there is at least one point scored - of 33.9 percent.

That latter figure was lower than the losing team's floor percentage of 35.4 percent.

But it is good on a morning like to remember one of the great sporting aphorisms of recent years. Italian soccer star Christian Vieri once said that "goals are like children: they are all beautiful."

If Penn State hears its name on Selection Sunday, the final score of this game will be forgotten. All that will matter is that the Nittany Lions beat a ranked conference opponent on its home floor for the second time this season.

And we can take comfort from having seen far worse since this blog's inception.

Before we leave the land of bad basketball and return to normalcy, we have some more data to consider as March draws ever nearer.

You all know that Kyle Whelliston was at the NCAA Mock Bracket event last week. While he was in Indianapolis, he requested and received the rights to post all 330 team sheets used to create the bracket on Basketball State.

That would be enough of a coup. But in bringing this data to the public eye, Whelliston also highlighted perhaps the single most important function of these sheets. In stunningly simple fashion, they display the RPI of every opponent that a given team has played, separated into four parts: teams ranked 1-50, 51-100, 101-200 and 201+.

The sheets also list the average opponent RPI in all a team's wins and losses.

I have put together a table with the number of Top 50 wins and 201+ losses and the average RPI win and loss for the Schuylkill 16. I have also done a table for select other teams that I think are of interest to our region from the A-10, Big East, CAA and Ivy League.

You can see each team's entire sheet by clicking on their name in the table. You will have to have a Basketball State subscription to see them all, but that seems to me to be the least you can do as a means of thanking Kyle for the service he has provided to college basketball fans.

I know the economy is in the tank right now but we also all know how much college basketball struggles for prominent coverage in print and online, so having resources like this available to us matters.

Teams are listed in order of this week's Schuylkill 16 rankings.

Team	Top 50 wins	201+ losses	Avg. win	Avg. loss
Villanova	6	0	126	21
Temple	1	0	153	62
Penn State	4	0	169	34
La Salle	0	0	201	67
Saint Joseph's	0	1	172	79
Drexel	0	2	191	104
Rutgers	0	1	244	70
Rider	1	2	201	130
Delaware	0	4	194	143
Lehigh	0	4	271	182
Penn	0	2	299	116
Princeton	0	6	236	216
Bucknell	0	8	190	180
Lafayette	0	11	245	196
Delaware St.	0	8	255	153
Monmouth	0	13	252	102

Selected other schools

Team	Top 50 wins	201+ losses	Avg. win	Avg. loss
Connecticut	10	0	110	20
Pittsburgh	8	0	95	14
Marquette	5	0	142	52
Louisville	5	0	113	47
Providence	3	0	170	35
Syracuse	5	0	115	30
West Virginia	3	0	120	22
Cincinnati	3	0	156	23
Georgetown	3	0	115	34
Notre Dame	3	0	169	30
Dayton	2	0	160	128
Xavier	5	0	126	39
VCU	0	2	181	132
George Mason	0	2	178	135
Northeastern	0	2	185	122
Cornell	0	1	218	112

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Game 19: Penn 62, Princeton 55 (OT)

POSTED: Tuesday, February 17, 2009, 6:55 PM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

Filed Under: Penn | Riffs

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UPDATE: Here's the box score, here's the expanded box score and here's the early Inquirer recap. Both papers had staff writers in attendance so there will be a lot more coverage in the morning.

Zack Rosen's Line of the Game and audio of the postgame press conferences are below the live blog transcript window. Princeton center Zach Finley's 11 points and 15 rebounds, which led to a game-high efficiency figure of 21, are duly noted. But Rosen gave an outstanding performance at both ends of the floor in his first college game against the Princeton offense.

The old adage about former Penn coach Fran Dunphy is that he refused to play freshmen (and sometimes other underclassmen) against Princeton unless absolutely necessary because of the intricacies of the Tigers' system. But Rosen proved his mettle tonight, including a three-pointer in overtime that was arguably the game's biggest shot.

PRINCETON, N.J. - Beneath the soaring, geodesic dome-like roof of Jadwin Gymnasium, there hang a total of 18 banners celebrating the rich history of Princeton basketball: dozens of Ivy League titles, NCAA Tournament and NIT appearances, and the retired No. 42 of Tigers legend Bill Bradley.

But as the home team took the floor tonight to face their most hated Ivy League rivals, the overwhelming majority of the 6,854 seats that surrounded them lay empty.

In years gone by, most famously when Pete Carril's offense was wreaking nationwide havoc on college basketball, the second Tuesday in February was defined by the first of two biennial meetings between Penn and Princeton.

Yet of late, it has often seemed that this game in this building has been watched by as many ghosts as people.

This year, and perhaps this night, could offer a chance for that restive flame to be re-kindled.

Both Penn and Princeton are led this season by dynamic freshman guards: Philadelphia native Douglas Davis at Princeton and Colonia, N.J. native Zack Rosen at Penn.

If this game is to return to prominence, perhaps these two young men are the ones to lead the way.

Off we go.

Name	Min	FG	FT	3pt	OR	DR	TR	A	S	TO	Blk	PF	Eff	Pts
Z. Rosen	38	6-12	0-1	2-5	1	7	8	4	2	1	0	4	18	14

1 comment

Game 18: Penn 68, Yale 63

POSTED: Sunday, February 15, 2009, 7:56 PM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

Filed Under: Riffs

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Not so long ago, Penn's annual visit to New Haven was one of the must-see games of the Ivy League season.

For any number of reasons, the Bulldogs have given the Quakers fits at John J. Lee Amphitheater for much of this decade. Even Fran Dunphy's best senior-laden squads got their biggest challenges in the shadow of the gigantic tower over Payne-Whitney Gymnasium, the multi-sport facility to which the basketball arena is attached.

It wasn't just some kind of jinx, though. The Bulldogs (or Elis, depending on who you ask) have been regular challengers for the Ivy League title in recent seasons, even if they only got to first place once. Their best years drew big crowds to a facility that is the polar opposite of the Palestra architecturally, but can get just as loud just as fast.

But in the last two seasons, the crowds have diminished as Yale has fallen out of the Ancient Eight's upper echeleon. Is it a coincidence that Penn's win last night was their second straight on that floor?

You'd think it has more to do with the players than the fans. But as I looked across the floor and saw a Yale student section that was almost all sitting down, and noticed that the distinctive balconies above the baselines (see the photo gallery) were empty, I couldn't help thinking about what used to be.

In my years covering Penn basketball I have noticed that the team's fans have a tendency to take some things for granted. Beating Yale in New Haven has never been one of them.

You've probably noticed by now that I covered last night's game for the Inquirer. When dealing with the space limitations of print, you don't always get everything in the story you might want. So while I was able to refer to a few big plays late in the game, there was one sequence I omitted that deserves mention.

Penn led 65-63 with 30 seconds left in the game when Yale forward Greg Mangano swatted a shot by Harrison Gaines out of bounds and straight into one of the Penn band's bass drums behind the basket (the drummer was unscathed, though I probably would have freaked out if the ball was coming at me).

Only three seconds remained on the shot clock, and Quakers coach Glen Miller called his final timeout of regulation to draw up a play on his clipboard.

Zack Rosen inbounded the ball to Brennan Votel near the side of the lane about halfway between the free throw line and the baseline, and Votel kicked it out to Tyler Bernardini for a three-point attempt.

The shot hit the rim, resetting the shot clock, and Jack Eggleston tipped the loose ball to Harrison Gaines. Because of the reset, Gaines was able to dribble out towards the perimeter and pass the ball to Zack Rosen, who was fouled by Chris Andrews with 21 seconds left.

"It was kind of nerve-wracking," Gaines admitted, adding that "we kind of got lucky right there."

Of course, it would have put the game away if Bernardini's shot had gone in, but the reset was worth something too. On the whole, credit is due to Miller and his players for how the plan from that clipboard drawing played out, including the work by Eggleston and Gaines to secure the rebound.

If there was any one thing I wanted to make sure got into the print game recap, it was the statistic about Penn ending its two-year losing streak in Saturday night road conference games. Miller seemed a bit caught off-guard when I asked him about it after the game, but he's been in the league long enough to know that the Ivy League's trademark Friday-Saturday back-to-backs are a unique grind.

Until last night, Penn's last Saturday win on the road in conference came on February 24, 2007 - the last such game for the senior trio of Ibraim Jaaber, Mark Zoller and Steve Danley. But it was by only two points over a Dartmouth team which finished that season 4-10 in the league and ranked 298th in Pomeroy. On the road Saturday prior to that, Penn lost at Yale, its only Ivy loss of its last championship season.

I'm not sure a streak like this would be of consequence in any other conference in Division I, especially since it was only four games long. But while the sample size was pretty small, I don't think it was a coincidence.

The other stat I'm glad I got into the print story was Yale's field goal shooting in the first half. I've seen plenty of teams with offenses oriented around two-point shots, but until last night I'd never seen a team play a half of basketball in which every made field goal was scored from inside the paint.

I wonder what St. Joe's fans think of that.

I wrote on Friday that I figured many of you won't ever end up in Providence, and I'm sure even more of you don't have any reason to go to New Haven. But if you find yourself driving by on Interstate 95, the city offers a worthwhile reason to get off the highway - especially if you're hungry.

Though this may sacreligious be for many Philadelphians, I'm not afraid to say that New Haven's pizza scene is among the best in the Northeast.

Schuylkill 16 voter Jon Solomon, who knows the establishments better than I do from covering Princeton basketball for many years, is a fan of Sally's. Others I know swear by by Pepe's. Yorkside, which I visited after last night's game, is right in the heart of the commercial strip on Yale's campus and has a much wider menu than just pizza.

But my personal favorite no longer exists. Naples Pizza, a classic late-night student hangout a few blocks off Broadway (literally), was bought out last year and has been renamed.

Yale's campus is worth checking out in general. The buildings aren't all as old as they look, but all those dark stones convey a pretty strong sense of place and authority. Hockey fans will want to visit Ingalls Rink, whose whale-shaped roof was designed by famed architect Eero Sarinen.

That's enough from me for this weekend. I'll be back tomorrow night with the latest Schuylkill 16 rankings.

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Game 17: Penn 73, Brown 52

POSTED: Saturday, February 14, 2009, 1:28 AM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

Filed Under: Line of the Day | Penn | Riffs | Villanova

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Was this the night it finally came together for Penn?

Thanks to a strong defensive effort and big offensive games from sophomore guards Tyler Bernardini and Harrison Gaines, the Quakers blew out Brown, 73-52, in front of an announced and late-arriving crowd of 1,139 at the Pizzitola Center.

"We did play good defense tonight," Penn coach Glen Miller said. "I was pleased with the effort from a defensive standpoint."

The two teams stayed close early on, and were tied at 21 with seven minutes left in the first half. But an open three by Brennan Votel started a 9-0 Penn run, and at halftime the Quakers took a 39-29 lead into the locker room.

Penn shot an impressive 56.0 percent from the field in the first 20 minutes, including 4-for-5 from three-point range. Two of those treys came from Bernardini, who had been in a slump coming into tonight.

"For him to be able to step up and knock a few down really helped us," Miller said of Bernardini.

Penn also won the second half, 34-23, with a combination of good defense and poor Brown shooting. The Bears shot 7-for-26 from the field after halftime, and committed 10 turnovers.

The defensive effort was symbolized by the fact that Bears guard Adrian Williams, who led his team in scoring with 15 points, was held to only one field goal attempt and no points in the second half.

Williams, by the way, is the son of former Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams, which gives him better athletic bloodlines than most of the players you'll see in the Ivy League this season.

Bernardini led all scorers with 16 points, while Gaines added 12. The highlight of Gaines' night came with 3.8 seconds to go in the first half, when he slashed through the lane for a nifty layup-and-one and converted the free throw.

Tonight's final score read like the old days of this series, but that was an era the current team's freshmen and sophomores have only read about.

Miller was on the receiving end of some of those results while at Brown. But he also took the Bears to heights not seen in decades, so there weren't as many complaints.

"Penn's not an easy place to coach if you're losing - I think that's an understatement," Miller said to laugher from the pack of reporters outside Penn's locker room. "But a credit to our players is that they come every day and just try to block out all the negatives and keep on working."

Well, there was one negative the players didn't block out. They were well aware of the fact that last weekend's home losses to Columbia and Cornell were the first time since 1968 that Penn was swept at the Palestra on an Ivy weekend.

"Everybody was frustrated, we know we didn't give our best effort" sophomore forward Jack Eggleston said. "Everyone came together and said this can't happen again."

You might recall that after Penn won at Harvard two weeks ago, Eggleston spoke about the challenge posed by the Ivy League's trademark back-to-back games.

Right on cue, Penn lost to Dartmouth the next night. Now they've got another Friday night win, and they're off to face a Yale team that dealt Princeton its first conference loss of the season tonight.

"It just takes energy and effort on the second day," said senior forward Cameron Lewis, who scored 10 points tonight off some solid work under the basket. "It's not matchups or anything, it's just who really wants to win more."

Miller returned to a familiar refrain.

"We're a young team - I've said that a million times and I'll continue to say it," he said. "Our whole thing is to just try and get better every day. If there's a lot of negativity that exists we have to do our best to block it out and have fun playing basketball, and try to get better. So tonight, I think we got better."

In that respect, Miller was certainly right.

Now the question is what comes next.

I figure that many of you have no good reason to travel to Providence any time soon, and that's fair. But if you find yourself here next season for a Penn or Villanova game, there are a few ways to kill time.

Granted, the main attraction in town is an enormous shopping mall a block from the Amtrak station and the State House. But if you get up College Hill towards Brown, there's a much better vibe on Thayer Street, which is the main commercial strip near campus.

And if you walk back down the (very big) hill towards downtown, you'll find a nice strip of bars and restaurants along Waterman Street between Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design.

If you're here during the summer, the best thing to see is the WaterFire display, in which a long series of barrels along the three rivers through downtown Providence are lit up at night. It's an art piece, not a show as such, but it draws a crowd.

Alright, I give up. It's not much. I like this town, but I admit that I'm biased because I have some family roots here. Still, two of the Big 5 teams are here on a regular basis, and that's more than Morgantown, West Virginia can say.

Speaking of Morgantown, you can't be all that surprised by Villanova's 93-72 loss at West Virginia tonight. WVU Coliseum is a nasty place for any visiting team to play, and the Mountaineers still have plenty of talent left over from the last few high-flying seasons.

So we'll split Line of the Day honors into scholarship and non-scholarship divisions, highlighting the performances turned in by West Virginia guard DeSean Butler and Penn's Tyler Bernardini.

Name	Min	FG	FT	3pt	OR	DR	TR	A	S	TO	Blk	PF	Eff	Pts
D. Butler	38	12-23	13-15	6-13	1	2	3	2	1	2	0	1	33	43

Name	Min	FG	FT	3pt	OR	DR	TR	A	S	TO	Blk	PF	Eff	Pts
T. Bernardini	23	5-11	3-4	3-6	1	2	3	2	2	2	1	3	14	16

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Temple-St. Joe's aftermath

POSTED: Friday, February 13, 2009, 2:23 PM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - One of my main rules when watching college basketball is that if a team is up by 10 points with a minute to play, the game is not necessarily over.

I have believed that since the night of January 27, 2001, and those of you who follow the ACC know exactly why.

You probably remember it too: Maryland held a 10-point lead over Duke with 55 seconds left in the game, and the red sea at Cole Field House was roaring in anticipation of a big win.

But somehow or other, the Blue Devils came back. Duke's Nate James tied the game with two free throws, then Shane Battier won it in overtime with a three-pointer and a blocked shot on the final possession.

Even though eight years have gone by, the memories of that night are still seared in the minds of a generation of Terrapins fans and so many others who follow the game.

So I'm not surprised when a team makes a late rally and gets itself a legitimate chance to tie or win the game in the final seconds.

The descent into chaos went something like this: a big three by Darrin Govens that started the momentum, a freshman and a big man making all the late trips to the free throw line for Temple, and Tasheed Carr slashing through the lane for two layups and an assist.

And oh yeah, the Palestra's best crowd of the season by far.

It all set up a stunningly straightforward chance for the Hawks to tie or win the game with 4.7 seconds left.

But Phil Martelli was just surprised as everyone else that Carr let fly a three from just inside the halfcourt line when he had, as Martelli said, "another two dribbles" to get closer to the basket.

In a way, shooting that early could be considered a good thing, because Garrett Williamson had enough time to get off a shot from the rebound.

Still, you wonder. But it's probably not worth wondering too much, because the fact that St. Joe's was even there at the end was remarkable in and of itself.

Maybe the ghosts were offended by the possibility of a team winning by double digits.

Speaking of ghosts, there might be a few in the house on Saturday night for the Big 5 Hall of Fame ceremonies. Unfortunately, I won't be there, but I was able to get Fran Dunphy's thoughts last night on former Penn star Jerome Allen's induction.

"It's great - it's fabulous, really, to be honest with you," Dunphy said. "He's certainly deserving of it and now he's obviously had a chance to be there live, which is what I think had been the delay in recent years. So I'm really thrilled."

Dunphy will attend tonight's private reception for the honorees, but Temple's game at Duquesne will keep him away from tomorrow's public ceremony at halftime of the St. Joe's-La Salle game.

I asked Dunphy if Allen was the best player he had in his 17 years at Penn.

"Just overall, yeah," Dunphy said. "He had that something special about him that many people don't have. And then of course the surrounding parts with him were magnificent. Matt Maloney had a fabulous college basketball career, and everybody else picked up the pieces - they knew what their roles were."

As I looked over the Temple-St. Joe's box score, I thought about all the talk coming in about Christmas vs. Nivins and all that. From my viewpoint, I don't think either player answered the question definitively last night.

Nivins scored 21 points, and you cannot overlook his perfect 7-for-7 free throw shooting. If you're an opposing coach trying to design a defensive strategy for Nivins, it has to scare the daylights out of you that he can convert like that if you foul him in the lane.

Christmas scored 19 points, but was only 2-for-5 from three-point range. That was all Garrett Williamson, and indeed Christmas scored a lot of his points when Williamson wasn't on the floor.

But Christmas gets the nod for Line of the Game because of his contributions elsewhere in the box score. In fact, he got more rebounds than Nivins did.

So the Owls take Round 1. The rematch on North Broad Street will be on the last Thursday of the regular season, and this time it will count in the Big 5 standings.

I don't know how much more I'll be posting this weekend, but feel free to post your comments on tonight's Villanova-West Virginia game and tomorrow's A-10 action while I'm gone.

And if you're still looking for ways to pass some time, check out Kyle Whelliston's impressively detailed reporting from the NCAA's mock bracket event in Indianapolis yesterday.

Name	Min	FG	FT	3pt	OR	DR	TR	A	S	TO	Blk	PF	Eff	Pts
D. Christmas	39	8-16	1-2	2-5	0	11	11	4	1	1	0	0	23	19

4 comments

Dos a cero

POSTED: Thursday, February 12, 2009, 12:53 AM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

Sam's Army celebrates the big win. (Paul Vernon/AP)

Lots of results flying around tonight: La Salle over GW at Tom Gola, Drexel upsetting Northeastern in Boston, Dayton routing Xavier at home, Connecticut blowing out Syracuse in Storrs, and North Carolina exploding past Duke in the second half for a 101-87 triumph.

It was the first time in 457 games that Duke gave up triple digits, the last one having come against UCLA (100-77) on February 26, 1995.

(You might have noticed that the ESPN graphic said 2005. I saw that and thought it wasn't possible to play 457 games in four years. So I went to the Duke media guide and found the real answer.)

Name	Min	FG	FT	3pt	OR	DR	TR	A	S	TO	Blk	PF	Eff	Pts
T. Lawson	34	8-11	9-9	0-1	1	3	4	5	2	5	0	1	27	25

2 comments

Agita on 33rd Street

POSTED: Monday, February 9, 2009, 1:50 AM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

Filed Under: National | Penn | Riffs | Saint Joseph's

Man, are the natives ever restless at the Palestra.

There was quite a bit of grousing Saturday night as the Quakers lost to Cornell, 88-73. Coupled with the 74-63 loss to Columbia on Friday, it marked the first time since 1968 that Penn was swept at home on an Ivy weekend.

(Oddly enough, those games - March 1 and 2, 1968 - were also against Columbia and Cornell, in that order.)

Poll: Fantasy HORSE Invitational Semifinal 2 (90 votes)

1 comment

Introducing the Fantasy HORSE Invitational

POSTED: Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 8:54 PM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

NOTE: If you came here from Mike Miller's great Beyond the Arc blog at MSNBC.com, we've moved on to later rounds in the tournament. Click here to find out about the latest round.

Since we don't have any games tonight, let's try something a little different.

Or the last few weeks, I've been kicking around the idea of a fantasy H-O-R-S-E tournament with some of the top scorers in college basketball. I finally had enough time today to sit down and figure it all out, and I've come up with a field of eight players.

Team	Record	Conf.	Big 5	Pomeroy	RPI	Sagarin	BB State	SOS
Drexel	12-8	8-3	2-0	128 (138)	99 (94)	125 (135)	117 (125)	125 (94)
La Salle	12-8	3-3	1-2	106 (115)	105 (107)	105 (107)	101 (103)	102 (137)
Penn	5-11	1-1	0-4	225 (232)	218 (229)	237 (243)	222 (223)	146 (147)
St. Joseph's	12-8	5-1	1-1	91 (98)	67 (66)	87 (92)	80 (80)	66 (95)
Temple	12-8	4-2	1-1	45 (42)	49 (49)	61 (55)	45 (48)	12 (15)
Villanova	17-4	5-3	1-1	16 (26)	12 (26)	17 (28)	20 (29)	61 (86)
Penn State	17-5	6-3	1-1	57	66	49	48	147

Poll: Fantasy HORSE Invitational Game 1 (83 votes)

1 comment

Dick Vitale and the South Street Bridge

POSTED: Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 10:53 AM

Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com

Filed Under: Big 5 | Penn | Riffs | Saint Joseph's | Villanova

SOMEWHERE IN NEW JERSEY -- Strange as it may seem, the two entities above have something in common.

They are both topics of discussion in this blog post.

(Rimshot.)

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About this blog

Soft Pretzel Logic is Philly.com's college sports blog, with a primary focus on the University of Pennsylvania. You'll also see coverage of the Big 5, other major college sports events in the region, and the annual Penn Relays track and field meet.

Reach Jonathan at jtannenwald@phillynews.com or 215-854-2330.

Jonathan Tannenwald Philly.com

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