On Second Thought...

Only one team made a statement in Ithaca Saturday night.

Cornell 86
Harvard 50

Cornell may break into the Top 25 (in the ESPN/USA Today poll -- they are well out of the T-25 in AP) next week.

And in the NBA, the Celts have a made a statement of a different type this week, losing @ORL, @ATL, and to LAL at home.

With KG in the line-up.

(And with Paul Pierce (interestingly) turning down a shot to win at Crunch Time to throw a floating pass to Ray Allen.)

Heady Days for Harvard Hoops

Tonight's Ivy League clash in Ithaca, NY may not be the most important college basketball game of the year -- but it may be the most publicized game that won't be on TV.

Harvard (14-3, 3-0) basketball -- thanks to a good loss at UConn followed by an impressive win over Boston College -- has enjoyed a boomlet of publicity in the past few weeks, beginning with a Time Magazine article on Jeremy Lin in late December. Cornell (17-3, 3-0) has been solid all year, and nearly shocked then-Number-One Kansas at Allen Field House a few weeks ago. Tonight, Cornell hosts Harvard in a game that -- with no conference tournament in the Ivies -- will put one team in the driver's seat for the League title.


Just this week, Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg all previewed the Crimson-Big Red tilt. KenPom has Cornell winning by 4. With the pressure on Cornell to 'hold serve' at home, the game may be even tighter.

But Lin and the current Harvard players are not the only Crimson in the news this week. Former Crimson player and current US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan enjoyed a generally positive profile in the New Yorker. Two take-aways: Duncan, thanks to a decade of playing hoops with Obama, may be the closest Cabinet member to the POTUS. And his educational agenda is far more centrist than most Obama supporters would have imagined.

A New Era at Harvard?

While the NY Times is still reeling from the 'should-have-published / shouldn't-have-published' story about Senator John McCain's close, um, ties, to lobbyists on behalf of Paxon Communications, another controversial bombshell was printed this weekend, but in the sports section.

Less than a year after being named the Harvard basketball coach, the Times story details a series of aggressive recruiting tactics that appear destined to upgrade the talent level in Cambridge.

The Ivy League holds itself to a higher standard than the NCAA for athletic recruiting; its "Academic Index" or AI, has been the standard by which athletes have been measured for years.

For example, a student with a 3.1 grade-point average and just over 1,560 out of a possible 2,400 on the SAT would register roughly a 171 on the Academic Index, the minimum score allowed by the Ivy League for athletes.

(For more on AI and Ivy League recruiting generally, see The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, by (former Princeton president) Bill Bowen and James L. Shulman, or Playing the Game: Inside Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League, by Chris Lincoln.)

Harvard, for years has had standards at the high end of the scale, even with the Ivy League, as detailed in the Times article. In short, the previous assistant coaches were working from the expectation that the team -- as a whole -- had to average 202, and that kids below about 195 were, basically inadmissible. The Times indicates that the average for Harvard going forward will be significantly lower, and that at least one potential recruit has not yet met the minimum threshold (171) to allow admittance at all.

But somewhat like the McCain story -- where the implication of an inappropriate romantic relationship overshadowed the more substantive John-McCain-can- be-influenced-by-lobbyists angle -- the more explosive element of the Harvard article is the citing of two specific (potential) NCAA recruiting violations.

First, one of Harvard's assistants (possibly before he officially accepted his position in Cambridge) played basketball last summer with two of the kids that Harvard ended up recruiting, and in one instance drove approximately 200 miles to play.

Second, Harvard coach Amaker himself 'bumped' (to use the recruiting parlance) one recruits' parents in a grocery store approximately 280 miles away from Cambridge. (The recruit ended up committing to Penn, which is undoubtedly how the story became public.)

While Amaker and his staff may be making great efforts to upgrade the level of talent that will be play in Cambridge in the next four years, it is far from clear that Amaker can harness such talent into a winning team. Just ask fans from Seton Hall or Michigan.

But ironically, the rap (at least according to the Times' own story when he was hired) on Tommy Amaker at Michigan was that he was "too principled to run a major college program."

Walkin' in Memphis

Last night's (#1) Memphis vs. (#2) Tennessee game (won by the Vols, 66-62) had plenty of interest for the Ivy League basketball fan.

Memphis, as has been well-documented, has been running an extension of the "Princeton"-offense, called "Dribble-Drive Motion" by Coach John Calipari. DDM moves the center to the weak side, rather than to the high post, but the net effect is similar: opening up the lane for cuts (Princeton) or dribble penetration (DDM).

(Calipari earlier in the year was calling DDM "Princeton-on-steroids" although now he seems to be exclusively using the "DDM" terminology; no word on whether Calipari has attempted to trademark "DDM", as he did with "Refuse to Lose" at UMass.)

Tennessee, meanwhile, appears to incorporate some elements of the Princeton-sets into its quick strike offense (at least on those possessions where the Vols aren't fast-breaking), using guard dribble-exchanges and having the center backscreen to create opportunities for cutters. On longer possessions, Tenn sent their big men down to the low post, and resulting series of hook shots were reminiscent of Georgetown's Roy Hibbert.

But as important, last night's game featured two teams that could easily face the prospective Ivy champ, Cornell (with all due respect to Barack Obama's brother-in-law, whose Brown Bruins are 3 games behind). Sports Illustrated projects Cornell as a #14 seed, and ESPN has them as a #13; the RPI puts Cornell at #72 and KenPom rates them as #127.

But with the trip to Penn and Princeton upcoming in two weekends, Cornell has not clinched an undefeated Ivy season yet. The Penn/Princeton weekend has been traditionally difficult, and the pressure of closing out a 14-0 season will likely make both games hotly contested.

The Tournament Committee (and the RPI/KenPom computers) will punish Cornell for a late-season loss. If so, don't be surprised to see the Big Red at #15 (or worse), and playing (perhaps) Memphis or Tennessee.