The best basketball nugget today comes courtesy Brian Seltzer's Penn Sports Network podcast, which you can see here. Glen Miller had some very optimistic words for freshman Tyler Bernardini, the kind that go beyond normal coachspeak:

Tyler has a scorer's mentality, and we want him to shoot the ball if he has good open shots. He has to play within himself, but he's maybe the best shooter on our team, so we want to get him in areas of the floor where he can get his shot off.

Whether he starts and plays 25 minutes or comes off the bench and plays 15, that's a sign we could see a lot of Bernardini this year, which I hadn't really expected until now.

The Ivy League preseason media poll was also released yesterday, and Penn was picked to finish third. Can't really argue with Cornell at No. 1 or Yale at No. 2; I guess the only nitpicking I could do is criticize the random first-place votes for Columbia and Brown.

Throw any other thoughts on the poll in the comments section.

Elsewhere, the Inquirer has news about Villanova's lineup.

And in football, the Providence Journal reports on Yale's next obstacle to the Ivy title, and the Hartford Courant does the same. The Register profiles Yale's QB-turned-DE, Brady Hart, and the Crimson offers a good look at ex-Harvard QB Andrew Hatch, who's now at LSU.

The Red and Blue scrimmage certainly was a sloppy one, but with 10 days before the season starts and months until the Ivy League, the team has some time to iron out the kinks.

Other than Harrison Gaines, who sat with a sprained ankle, we also got a first look at the freshman class.

Tyler Bernardini seemed like he was always in the game, hitting some mid-range jumpers early on, but cooling off later. Jack Eggleston, a 6-foot-8 forward, could provide some size down low for this team. He may not have a developed post-up game, but he played solid interior defense, getting a few nice blocks on guys that thought they had an open layup.

The most interesting player to watch was Remy Cofield, not the female rapper Remy Ma, but an athletic 6-foot-4 guard. In warmups he was dunking with ease – he could probably jump high enough to dunk a beach ball if he had to.

In the game he made a couple mistakes – he may not fully understand the offense and didn’t seem as comfortable with the ball as the other guards. But he may have been the most tenacious player out there. He drove at least five times, sometimes getting blocked, but more often fouled. He may be a slight project, but he seems to have to tools to be a good player at some point.

It’s hard to pick out an MVP of the scrimmage, but if I had to give one out, I’d hand it to Cameron Lewis. We know the big man is a threat on the defensive end with his shot-blocking abilities, but he showed some nice post moves yesterday, often yielding him wide open layups.

Other notes:
Glen Miller challenged Justin Reilly for what might have been his shot selection on one play. Seems perfectly normal, but Reilly was on the other team.

The Quaker mascot was there, wearing a Penn jersey. Not sure how Nike feels about that, he was donning one of the old And 1 unis.

The three point shooting was dreadful. If I had to guess I’d say five-to-10 players attempted threes but Darren Smith was the only guy to hit half of his. But even Smith had one glance off the far side of the backboard without touching rim or net.

Mike Howlett officially became the fourth member of Glen Miller's Class of 2012 at Penn, according to his father, Jay.

Howlett committed to Lehigh last year, but made the "difficult decision" to take a prep year and re-do the process after Mountain Hawks coach Billy Taylor left unexpectedly for Ball State just before school started.

Howlett, whose father said he is "between 6-9 and 6-10," narrowed his list down to Davidson, Bucknell, Holy Cross and Penn, before finally deciding between Penn and Holy Cross. He attends the New Hampton School in New Hampshire and joins Zack Rosen, Rob Belcore and Garvin Hunt in Miller's second recruiting class.

I'll have a full story on this in tomorrow's DP.

More on this in tomorrow's DP (depending on who we can get on the phone this afternoon), but this is certainly good news for the Quakers and might mean that this year's recruiting effort is complete.

See Monday's DP for a full notebook, but there was confirmation that junior wing Tommy McMahon will sit out the year with an eye towards returning for a fifth season of hoops.

McMahon underwent surgery to his left hip over the summer, and a recovery time of seven months will keep him off the court as his teammates look to make it four league titles in a row.

"It's a blow in the sense that Tommy's a talented player," Miller said. "But at the same time, he battled through injuries last year, persevered, but he couldn't practice every day and it held him back from being the player that he's capable of being."

Last year, McMahon started 11 of 30 games for the Red and Blue and averaged 5.0 points per game, but his production waned as the season progressed.

He plans to stay at Penn for an extra year, and will apply for the additional season of eligibility when the time comes.

"I haven't been healthy since the middle of freshman year, so if I can be healthy for two full years, that would just be optimal," he said.

The slant on Ben-Eze is that the 6-11 center should fit in instantly in the Crimson frontcourt and be a legitimate contender for top rookie honors.

Penn will likely have another recruit announced sometime, but this is probably the biggest 2012er yet for any Ivy team outside of Zack Rosen. He will be a player to watch going into next year for sure.

As reported in today's Daily Pennsylvanian, an administrative snafu meant that there were no introductions to the Penn basketball teams at this year's Line.

Someone should have been there. If it's not the entire team, then at least two or three names that fans might recognize.

Drawing comparisons across sports is risky business, but look at the NHL. It's got a cult following, just like mid-major basketball does. But marginal fans will never develop a real knowledge of the sport, in large part because of the anonymity of the players. Five guys on the ice is five guys on the ice. Barely anyone can pick Jean-Sebastien Giguere out of a lineup.

And unless Penn basketball fans can see for themselves exactly who Harrison Gaines is -- and The Line was the perfect opportunity -- they won't know who it is they're cheering for the first time he swishes a three-pointer. That's a shame.

Consider the hallowed No. 1 wristband. I wouldn't necessarily expect the spot to land with a die-hard fan, since the odds of being in the right place at the right time are low. I wouldn't expect that the Holy Grail of The Line ended up with a 50-plus-year-old lawyer, either, but that's exactly what happened.

The gentleman, who is enrolled in an individualized CGS master's program, saw his first Penn game in 1966 and has a family full of Quakers alumni. But he never knew what The Line was before stumbling on it on his way to the office the other night. After a bit of questioning, the Athletic Department assured him that, because he was an enrolled student, he was welcome to participate. (He asked that his name not be used because his employer is unaware of his academic projects.)

He won't be participating in The Line's overnight stay at the Palestra -- he's been excused because he has a full-time job -- but he says he will still probably get a ticket package. I suggested chairbacks.

Put Greg Echenique on your list of players to watch for Penn's Class of 2013, according to this report. The forward attends the same high school as point guard Zack Rosen, who has been the big get so far for this year's recruiting class.