"He believes in himself and his staff and their ability and they want to be a winner. They don't want to be the team that's known for not winning the Ivy League. They've got an opportunity and that's why they're getting kids you wouldn't expect to be on their campus. I think coach has approached it like they're a high-major program and they're going to recruit it that way," Kenyi's high-school coach told Scout.

With so many swingmen on Penn's roster, I wouldn't get too broken up about this, although I can't say how highly he was regarded by the coaching staff.

On to football, where on Tuesday I wrote about how backup quarterback Bryan Walker's predicament illustrates just how tough it is to be a Division I football player.

Here's his chance to make it all irrelevant.

Walker got a healthy number of snaps in Weeks 1 and 2, and they were mostly a function of Robert Irvin's struggles. But I think that if the same thing happens tomorrow Irvin might get the hook quicker than expected, or at least see fewer snaps overall. This is Dartmouth, not Villanova.

Injuries have hit both Yale and Brown this week. The Bears learned that they'll be without running back Dereck Knight, who had come up big this year, and Yale will have to carry on without All-Ivy defensive end Larry Abare, who tore a knee ligament in last week's game. Both would be eligible to take a medical year off and come back next year -- Abare for two more because he is a junior -- if they have season-ending surgery.

Check back with The Buzz for live coverage of tomorrow's game from our crew up in Hanover.

We have some hazy Ivy League sports transactions to sort out. Here's what we know and what we don't.

Known: Cem Dinc will be lacing up his sneakers at Harvard this fall.

Unknown: Will anyone care?

After a long illness, an unceremonious departure from Indiana, an NBA Draft fiasco, a year of JuCo ball and a fluctuating weight, the transfer from Marshalltown CC is hardly a sure bet as Tommy Amaker's first recruit. But at 6'10" his tools are no joke. Other unknowns: a) If he doesn't pan out, will Amaker lose punch with the Harvard admissions office? b) When he signed on the dotted Hahvad line, what other coaches did he disappoint?

Which brings us to the next hot news bit out of Cambridge...

Known: Women's lacrosse coach Lisa Miller out at Syracuse and in with the Crimson.

Unknown: Will she regret it in five years?

The Orange program has only known Miller. She left an assistant job at then-top-20 Brown for the joys of Upstate, then built a nonexistent program into a contender. Over ten years she has twice as many wins as losses. So I'm a bit stumped as to why a program that has gone 22-55 with eight League wins in the past five years is so attractive. Miller played Harvard three times over that span and cruised to three wins; the average margin of victory was 7+.

Bob Scalise was in a good position to pitch the job to her -- he coached the Harvard men from 1974-87, starting when he was 24. Leave that aside, though -- the man must be a darn good salesman.

Known: Florida jumps on the W. Lax bandwagon and hires Yale's Amanda O'Leary as its coach.

Unknown: Is this the start of a trend?

Lacrosse programs are becoming a hot item for ambitious athletic departments -- like South Carolina, whose team will play its first game in 2009, or Auburn, which is rumored to favor starting up one. And if you're talking about a meal ticket coach, you're talking about someone like Karin Brower, who led Penn to the Final Four this year. Her stock has never been higher.

I thought that the endowment of Brower's position earlier this year would help keep her around, but O'Leary was the only other Ivy women's lacrosse coach with an endowed job, so maybe that optimism was a bit misplaced.

Speaking of bolting the Dunning Center...

Known: Men's tennis coach Mark Riley splits for Kalamazoo and an administrative spot with the USTA.

Unknown: Will his successor lead the Quakers into the NCAAs?

After losing do-or-die matches with Brown in 2006 and Columbia this year, the next Quakers coach has room to improve, and only Mikhail Bekker will be gone from the top six.

Can't say the same for Riley, who will have a tough time setting the bar higher than 69 straight conference titles for the Hornets.

Finally, in a long tradition of picking up the slack for our news department, here are the other hot topics around campus this weekend:

On Friday, the University announced plans for a $370 million biomedical research facility slated to be done by 2010.

And on Saturday, sociology professor Elijah Anderson made the move to Yale. The University will be sad to see him go, but check back for more on that in next Thursday's SP.

That was Northwestern athletic director Mark Murphy speaking to the New York Times after his Wildcats demolished the Penn Lady Laxers in the national semifinal game a few days ago.

Now...

I think interpretations of the comment could go in a couple directions. Either Murphy was: a) Disparaging Ivy League athletics by saying that participation -- not winning -- is all that matters in the League; b) Pointing out a legit contrast between his school and the Ivy League's committment to getting the best athletes; c) Trying to cover up the fact that Northwestern is trying (and failing) to have it both ways; d) Some combination of a), b), and c).

Leaving aside the comments' validity, I think that Murphy needs to pay a lot more attention to what he says. Public statements like that demean Ivy League athletes, no matter what his intentions are.

On whether or not he has a point, I hope to get some official reaction in the coming week, and until then I encourage your feedback and thoughts in the comments section below.

Anyway, as soon as I saw the headline on ESPN.com, I cringed.

Amaker to become lone black Harvard head coach

Not because I don’t think there should be any black coaches at Harvard. I don’t care what color my coaches are.

But because Tommy Amaker is already getting the “minority Randy” treatment.

When new Miami football coach Randy Shannon arrived, one of his first questions was about being The U’s first black football coach. And he presented a priceless response.

“I'm a ball coach. I don't think it has anything to do with minority issues,” Shannon said. “When I go to the ACC meetings, they're going to look at me and go, 'Hey, Randy, how you doing?' They're not going to go, 'Hey, minority Randy.' I'm just going to be Randy Shannon.”

I hope with all my heart that Tommy Amaker’s welcome at Harvard on Friday won’t be about hiring a black coach.

I hope it will be about hiring a coach who’s been in the Big East and the Big Ten, and is by all accounts, a great coach and a great person. Hell, I don’t even care if it’s about all about coach who’s never won anything besides an NIT at the head coaching level.

As long as it’s not about the token black guy.

I don’t deny that given our nation’s history of discrimination against black people in the workplace, it’s a big deal that Harvard diversified its coaching staff.

However, it’s an unfair way to introduce a man who should stand for a lot more than the color of his skin.

For today’s Spring Fling forecast, we’re going to turn to James Russell of the Spin, who gave this writer no credit in his hijacking of the Spring Fling forecast.

You want to start dueling forecasts? I’m always down for a good duel. You set the terms, I’ll set the prize.

Last week, I talked to three of the brightest minds in Ivy League basketball about coaching searches and Harvard in particular.

I only gave you a few quotes from Jake Wilson of basketball-u.com, Penn assistant AD Mary DiStanislao and color commentator Vince Curran. So here’s what else they had to offer.

Wilson said that former disgraced Ohio State coach Jim O’Brien was a candidate for the Harvard job. Add his name to that of Mike Jarvis, who faced scandal at St. John’s and you have an interesting pair for candidacy at America’s most prestigious university.

“Both guys would come in with some baggage,” From their end, I’m guessing they’re looking at Harvard as an opportunity to scrub their images a little bit and maybe do some atonement… [Jarvis] had a pretty squeaky-clean reputation prior to St. John’s.”

As for what would happen if Harvard took on a coach with a name like Jarvis’ or O’Brien’s, which was the subject of my column this week, here’s what DiStanislao said. And I wholeheartedly agree with both parts:

”It would be interesting. They may get a lot of mileage at first from someone with a lot of name recognition. Use all the cliches you want about the rubber hitting the road and the end of the day, it’s all about getting the right people in your program and coaching them up the right way.”

Curran agreed and expounded on Harvard’s history of underfunding the men’s basketball program, which has still never won an Ivy League title: “It comes down to what tools the university is going to give the coach. The big-school coach is not as big a deal as the big school commitment.”

Today’s Spring Fling forecast comes from NBC-10 via Philly.com:

Friday: Partly sunny. Highs in the upper 50s.
Saturday: Unlisted

That bad, huh?

One side, the American League or the Red Rolfe Division thoroughly dominated the other in interleague play. For instance, the team that finished last in the Rolfe (Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale and Brown) had the same record as the team that finished first in the Lou Gehrig division.

Except nobody told St. Louis, the 83-78 NL Central champion or Princeton, the 11-9 Gehrig Division champion, that they weren't supposed to have a chance, and the weaker division took the title in both cases.

But this year, the balance of power has shown some early signs of a shift. With the first of the two interdivisional weekends nearly complete (Brown and Cornell play a makeup this afternoon), Penn's division has already surpassed its win total from all of last season's 32 interdivisional games.

After going 6-26 against the Rolfe in 2006, the Gehrig is 9-6 this season, led by Penn's 3-1 effort against Harvard and Dartmouth.

And while this is good for Penn from a standpoint of balance of power, don't expect to be able to make the championship series with 11 wins.