A confession: The current editors of IvyGate are an effete crew of muscle-atrophied weaklings. As such, we have no way of evaluating the content and/or accuracy of the Sun's NCAA basketball blog, though we find the graphic design on the top banner quite nice. (If any of your more robust Ivy Leaguers are interested in sportswriting, do drop us a line!)

Luckily, Insider Higher Ed has created the only March Madness bracket we are capable of understanding, one that pits brains vs. brains and forgets the brawn! In "A Bracket Not to Bet On" IHE crunches each team's academic stats via some complicated voodoo known as "math" (yeah, we're not too good at that, either -- thank god for the Humanities) and finds that Cornell would make it to the Final Four, if only smart points could be swapped for athlete points. And oh, what a voodoo that would be, one that I wished for daily in middle school gym class but, alas, never arrived.

A few surprises: Due to the team's (not the school's) smart points, Cornell beats Stanford straightaway, then trounces Marquette. Davidson goes further than anyone expects, and Vanderbilt drops out early.

IHE's complete academic bracket is downloadable on their website, or visible on our website, after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, remember when we wrote the other week about Harvard's unconscionable number of black coaches -- y'know, zero -- out of 41 head coaching positions? All better!!! The Crimson last week hired Tommy Amaker, who is black, to lead its men's basketball program. Given that the last African-American to hold the title left 16 years ago, we can look forward to equitable representation in December 2071. (We think that math is right.)

Actually, the real news is that Amaker comes to Cambridge from freaking Michigan, which must make it feel like the rims are set at an elementary-school eight feet. How ever did Harvard land him? Amaker's shit performance in Ann Arbor (no tourney berths in six years) certainly has something to do with it, but the truth is much simpler: a fat paycheck. A very reliable source tells us Amaker will make $225,000 a year; at Harvard, that works out to about $20,000 per win.

Who's the happiest team in college basketball right now? UNLV, thrilled to be the lowest seed still alive in March Madness? Ohio State, still giddy from their improbable last-second comeback against Xavier?

Not a chance. It is good to be a Princeton Tiger tonight, as coach Joe Scott will announce at 5 p.m. tomorrow that he's leaving the flaming wreckage of his program to take the top spot at Denver. What'd he accomplish while in town? As the Princetonian explained last week in a piece about widespread demands for his head on a pike:

Against Monmouth on Dec. 14, 2006 the Tigers scored just 21 points -- tying the Division I record low for a game since the inception of the three-point shot. Just two weeks later, Princeton fell to Carnegie Mellon, the first defeat at the hands of a Division III program in school history. And this season, Princeton did the unthinkable, falling to last in the Ivy League for the first time ever.

You may remember Scott from our January post about the teensy li'l issue of his players hating him so much they left the team -- eight of them over three years. (And you may have noticed we don't have any Princeton ads up in this piece anymore, butthat'sallwe'regonnasayaboutthat.) We have to admit, part of us is sad to see Scott go; we were hoping to dine out on him and Harvard's Tim Murphy as a kind of batshit coaching duet for years to come. Alas, alack, we'll have to find another clipboard-wielder to hate on. Goodnight, Joe Scott. You were too beautiful for this world.

(Princeton's on spring break right now, but we'll update with reactions when we get 'em.)

Aging rockers get a raw deal. Your fans are old and saggy, the new generation doesn't know your name, and if you get a reunion tour, what you could once do with utmost sincerity -- like wearing a cocksock or eating a bat -- starts to feel like self-parody. It takes a certain kind of unabashedness to keep on keeping on. Some do just fine -- William Shatner leaps to mind. Others (Cheap Trick, Jimmy Buffett) might as well start piling on the dirt.

We're not sure where Simon Kirke fits into all this, but we and perhaps a few hundred dedicated Penn students are about to find out. The former drummer for Free and Bad Company is set to play the halftime show at the Penn-Harvard men's basketball game this weekend. We'll let the press release take it from here:

Kirke, along with the University of Pennsylvania Band, will entertain the crowd at halftime with a medley of Bad Company songs, including "All Right Now!"  Kirke will also be available to sign autographs of his new Drumming DVD: "Lessons from a Legend."

Washed-up nobody or distinguished class act? Hard to tell. But it can't be good that in four short years, Kirke has gone from "Merchants of Cool" (2002) to merchant of low-rent instructional DVDs.

Video, Pennsters! We want video!

People just don't like playing for Princeton men's basketball coach Joe Scott.

Scott, who has the unenviable role of filling the shoes of former coach John Thompson III, has been by all accounts a huge bust for the Tigers. And it's becoming increasingly clear that his personality has something to do with it. Scott, late of the top job at the Air Force academy, tends to start each season by kicking a few players off his team. This year was no exception (although Princeton did issue this hilarious "roster clarification" to make it seem like sophomore Geoff Kestler actually didn't leave the program, which, we're telling you, he did).

But now players are saving Scott the trouble of booting them by fleeing the team themselves. In early January, one the squad's top freshmen, Blake Wilson, announced he would be leaving Scott's program to transfer to St. Joseph's. Senior Max Schafer's minutes were cut so sharply he quit. And last week, recruiting site Scout.com broke news that the team's top recruit -- Jeff Peterson -- would break his commitment to Princeton (despite getting in early decision) and find another school to play for.

Princeton has a decent record overall, but they're 0-2 in Ivy play so far, including a loss to Cornell in which they scored just 35 points, the school's fewest ever in an Ivy game* since the introduction of the shot clock. For audio evidence of how grating Scott is, check out the sound of his voice here. Jesus -- we thought we'd never find another Princetonian as annoying to listen to as this guy.

Last summer, Keenan Jeppesen, Brown's best basketball player, applied to transfer to Penn, and was turned down. Was his GPA too low? Did he have discipline problems? Do they suspect his involvement in a certain kidnapping?

Nope. Penn's president and dean of admissions felt it would make Penn too good at basketball and Brown too bad. From the DP:

"We feel badly about taking students from Brown, a member of our league," [dean Lee Stetson said]. Stetson stressed that the decision had nothing to do with academic standards. Rather, he cited a desire for fairness and a concern for the integrity of a fellow Ivy League institution.

President Amy Gutmann "and I talked, and we just don't think it's fair to take someone from the other Ivies," Stetson said. "It just isn't fair. He is a Brown student, he chose to go to Brown, and we're hoping he flourishes there. He made his choice, and Brown is his place, just like we would not want to have students taken out from underneath of our program at Penn."

Jeppesen -- who, we should probably point out, is a human being and not just a thing that dribbles -- was faced with returning to a school and a team he didn't like. So he's opted to drop out of school.

Jeppesen is by all accounts a great kid, and certainly a terrific athlete. He lost his chance to earn an Ivy League degree because a couple of academics decided to stick their noses in an arena they know very little about. Somebody let us know the next time these two give a speech about "student-athletes" with a straight face.

Despite having pointed out that Dartmouth is the worst team in college basketball, we noted with disapproval the suckers-only 35.5 point line assigned to a recent game at No. 5 Kansas. C'mon, Las Vegas -- that's just mean. That's a punchline, not a point spread. Shame on you.

Um. The Big Green managed to outdo itself, losing by 51. As the AP lede notes,

Teams have been coming into Allen Fieldhouse to play Kansas for more than half a century. Every one of them managed to score more points than helplessly outmanned Dartmouth Tuesday night.

At least no Native Americans were offended, though. That should definitely remain the Dartmouth Athletic Department's No. 1 priority.

Also in embarrassing Ivy sports news: Power-mad Harvard football coach Tim Murphy was re-signed through the 2011 season on Monday -- except he wasn't. According to Harvard Athletic Communications, Murphy was -- anyone else's acid reflux acting up? -- "reappointed." Only in the Ivy League.

We don't know what's worse, the fact that Harvard is trying to use a word that equates Murphy's job (for which he gets paid more than $100,000 a year to coach 10 meaningless games) with that of a dean or department chair, or the fact that the Crimson and Associated Press both took the bait. If he's King Murphy, does that make you his serfs?

The Quaker faithful who showed up in full force for Penn basketball's home opener on Saturday didn't just come for the game. They came for the cheesesteaks.

A fan-favorite promotion holds that everyone in attendance gets free cheesesteaks from local joint Abner's whenever Penn scores 100 points at home -- and when you're playing woeful Division II opponent Florida Gulf Coast, that's a distinct possibility.

Granted, these are the worst cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, but they're free nonetheless. Unfortunately, Florida Gulf Coast's coach, Dave Balza, has also heard about this little promotion -- so with his team down by 23 points late in the game, he decided to run down the clock and prevent Penn from reaching the century mark. Penn's coach, Glen Miller, responded by sending his starters back in to run up the score, but in the end, Penn recorded a measly 97 (a 23-point victory), prompting boos and hisses from the stands.

Also noteworthy from the Red and Blue Crew cheering section: a banner that read "Thank you for making us Penn's 2nd worst opponent -- Dartmouth." Mean! Meaner: it's not true; Dartmouth is actually worse than Florida Gulf Coast. The Big Green are statistically the worst team in college basketball so far this year, losing all three of their games by an average of more than 31 points.

Why They Won't Win: An Ivy Basketball Preview (Part I) 

NCAA rules, lamentably, stipulate that one Ivy League basketball team has to win the conference each year, and then get throttled in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in March. We don't know which team will win, but we have a good idea of why each team won't. Here's Part II of our preview of the 2006-07 men's basketball season, with teams listed from worst to slightly less worse:

4.Why Cornell won't win: When Cornell students want to get out of the cold and snow that blankets their campus 10 months of the year, what do they do? Do they sit inside a warm gym, cheering for an exciting, high-scoring basketball team? Nope. Instead, they'd rather stand around a frozen chunk of ice and watch a 0-0 scoreless tie. Talk about fun! The Big Red won't start winning on the hardwood until people realize the school actually has a basketball team.

3. Why Columbia won't win: Because they're Columbia. How bad is Columbia at sports? Well, at last year's homecoming, the highest-attended event on campus was the schools "Symposium on Losing," in which alums could pester the president and athletic director about the school's self-described "culture of losing." One solution that came out of the symposium? Create a school mascot, a freakishly large-breasted lion named Roar-ee. (Get it? You get it, right? 'Cause lions roar? Roar-ee, with a hyphen! "Rory" would have totally gone over people's heads!) This from the same university that gave us the Manhattan Project.

2. Why Princeton won't win: A few reasons:
1.) Whereas nobody wants to play at Brown or Yale, Princeton coach Joe Scott doesn't want anyone to play for him. Most schools start the basketball season with a "midnight madness" pep rally. Scott's tenure at Princeton starts every year with his ceremonial purging of the team -- where he kicks off five or six players.
2.) The Tigers' best player last year was Justin Conway. He started on Princeton's JV team (that means he was unrecruited) and was called up to play center for the varsity squad because the Tigers were so bad. The one problem? He's 6-foot-4. Most teams have guards bigger than him. The prospects of winning with Justin Conway as the leader of your team are similar to the prospects of winning with Howard Dean as the leader of your team ... oh, wait.

1. Why Penn won't win: Okay, we admit it. Penn is the only team in the league that we would refer to as a legitimate sports team. However, that doesn't mean they won't screw it up. There's a new coach in town -- former Brown head man Glen Miller -- and there is ample precedent for a new coach coming into a talent-laden squad and screwing things up. Just ask Joe Scott. And no coach has better potential for a Chernobyl-like meltdown than Miller. But don't take our word for it, take his: "We got jammed up our asses by three officials. That's why there's such inbalance in this Goddamn league, because you can't go to Penn and Princeton and get a fair shake." (Full diatribe here.) Well Glen, you're with the Quakers now. You better win the "Goddamn league."