If you thought I was done, sorry.

I just wanted to post about the fun pagentry of commencement and graduation, which is almost as cool as sports uniforms.

First, we have the hoods. All Penn grads get a red and blue-lined hood with another color symbolizing their field of study. The red is pretty close to the new Penn red, which is good.

Now on to the gowns. I think a real fun part is the academic procession, where professors and administrators all march in, wearing the robes and colors of their alma maters.

Of course, Princeton’s gown is particulary garish.

Penn’s gowns are red and blue, and I think they look kinda nice.

The colored gowns are only for Ph. D’s, though, so they’re better because they are rarer.

President Amy Gutmann gets her own special presidential robe, trimmed with gold, and has four stripes on her sleeves instead of the usual doctoral three stripes.

She also got to wear this huge medal with the University seal on it.

Added 5 p.m.: Lastly, the fashion statement of the day that I forgot to mention earlier goes to (I’m pretty sure it was him) Sean Estrada of the football team. While I don’t have a picture, the guy who I think was Estrada doffed his cap to reveal a San Francisco 49ers logo taped on the top.

Estrada, of course signed with the Niners last week. Kudos to him already wearing the company logo.

All in all, it was a good time and a colorful event. Thanks for putting up with this section of the Buzz and me in general for the last few years.

On Sunday, I wrote that I questioned catching a fly ball in foul territory in the bottom of the eighth of a scoreless game with less than two outs and a runner on third.

That play cost the Quakers Game 1 of the Ivy League Championship Series against Brown. But I was only going off of the boxscore, and I admitted that I hadn’t seen the play. So now I give you the view of someone who did, Athletic Communications’ Matt Kirsch.

“I think if you asked anyone there they would’ve thought Steve Gable was going to make a strong throw to the plate. It was a very shallow hit ball and I was actually shocked that the runner tagged. But he had to catch it because it was so close to the line that if he let it drop, it could’ve landed in fair territory. Even though the official score was a foul pop, it just as easily could’ve been scored a fair pop up. That’s how close it was.”

So I guess then the credit goes to Brown’s runner for trying the scoring attempt and making it. It’s a tough way to lose, but that happens in baseball sometimes.

Yesterday was not a good day for the Quakers, as both bat and ball sports were swept from Ivy League title contention.

Baseball, at Brown, lost Game 1 in a 1-0 heartbreak, as Penn was three-hit by Jeff Dietz. Ace Todd Roth was very good for the Quakers, but he allowed an unearned run in the eighth off a sacrifice fly to the second baseman in foul territory. I wasn’t there, but I question catching a ball in foul territory in that spot unless you know you can throw the man out.

In Game 2, Ace No. 2 Jim Birmingham just didn’t have it. He lasted just 1.2 innings, allowing a grand slam in each of the first two innings. Penn was down 11-0 after three, and never had a chance in a 20-6 loss. The Quakers end the season in disappointing fashion, at 20-19. Brown advances to the NCAA Tournament at 24-18.

Softball was at Harvard, and its trouble was offense. In Game 1, the Quakers were no-hit by the Crimson’s Shelly Madick, and lost 4-0.

Penn fell behind Harvard 2-0 in Game 2, tied the score in the third, but then immediately gave up two more runs in the fourth. The Quakers had a few more chances to score, but couldn’t, and lost 4-2.

The silver lining for Penn is that it finished at 23-19, the most wins in program history, and it was the first winning season since 1982.

For full coverage of this weekend’s events, check out the graduation issue of the DP.

After a few years of discussion, the NCAA has approved moving back the men’s three-point line a foot, to 20 feet, nine inches, beginning in 2008-09. The measure still has to pass another NCAA committee on May 25 before it is finalized.

I think this is a great move for college basketball, where almost anyone on every team shoots threes, which I think can sometimes cheapen the game. While it’s still three feet shorter than the NBA three line, it’s farther than the international line of 20′6″. While this may not bring back the mid-range jump-shot, big men who shoot threes will have to either adjust their games to be able to hit the longer shot, or will have to work on their mid-range games more.

While runs sparked by threes are exciting, it sometimes feels that it’s a gimmick for teams like VMI who shoot more threes than twos.

More importantly for Penn, I’m interested to see how the new line will affect the Princeton offense, which is designed around the three-point arc and shooting threes. The Tigers have struggled in recent years without big men who can shoot, and making the line farther will only make that harder. Also, with everyone now having to stand a foot farther back, there will be more space inside the line for the cuts to be made. We’ll see what adjustments new coach Sydney Johnson makes.

Finally, the women’s game decided not to change their line, leaving it at 19′ 9″, so there will have to be two lines, a foot apart, put on college basketball courts. Let’s see how confusing that is for people, at least that first year.

OK buckle up and get comfortable, this might take a while.

First on the agenda is the text-messaging ban during recruiting that the NCAA recently adopted.

As Andrew Scurria wrote recently, the Ivy League proposed the ban. I was able to talk to some of the people involved in the proposal, and here’s the low-down:

The League first proposed the ban (or an alternative severely limiting texting) last spring. It was reviewed by NCAA committees last summer, along with an alternate proposal by the NCAA Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet, which was supposed to limit the hours of the day that texting was allowed.

In January, the NCAA management council decided that only the Ivy proposal would go forward; the other one was too hard to enforce.

This is the league’s reaction, courtesy of spokesperson Carolyn Campbell-McGovern:

“Our league as a whole was in favor of eliminiating text messaging or at least limiting it in some way so we’re happy that the proposal will be adopted.”

But what’s more interesting is that she told me that the ban was orignally proposed by the Ivy League Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), meaning that it was students who came up with the ban.

I spoke to someone who was in on that original committee meeting, Penn softballer Julia Cheney.

She said that the biggest reason for the proposal was not out of some sort of moral outcry, but more because it was costing recruits too much money when coaches would text message them all the time.

Cheney also said that there was too much pressure to always have your phone around you and on, responding to coaches at all hours of the day, in class and at night, because athletes would feel that if they did not answer right away, the coach would lose interest.

“We felt an invasion of privacy,” Cheney said. “It puts more pressure on student-athlete recruits than there needs to be.”

Lastly, Cheney said that she is excited that the NCAA took a proposal by a SAAC seriously, and hopes that it sets an example for other student groups.

“That’s pretty big for us,” she said.

Up next on the docket is Penn’s next chances for Ivy League titles, courtesy of the two ball/bat sports.

Softball got the help it needed in its weekend off, and won the inaugural Ivy League South Division with a 14-6 record, and will play either Harvard or Dartmouth this weekend in the best-of-three Ivy League Championship Series.

The New England teams will play a make-up doubleheader today at Dartmouth, with the Crimson needing one win of three to take the title. The two teams also have a suspended game, tied 4-4 in the fifth, to make up. If Harvard wins two games, it will host Penn, if not the Quakers will host the series.

Penn’s baseball team won the Gehrig Division by virtue of Princeton not quite being able to pull off a sweep of Cornell, losing Game 4 in extra innings. The Quakers are 12-8 in Ivy play, and will travel to Brown (14-6), winner of the Red Rolfe Division, for Saturday and Sunday’s (if necessary) ILCS.

Finally, the men’s tennis team had a little deja vu, losing a playoff to Columbia after dropping the final match of the season to the Lions. The Quakers will not get that Ivy title, and will have to wait and see if they get an NCAA Tournament bid.

Enjoy finals.

They’ve waited 10 years for a Lou Gehrig Division title, and now the Quakers must wait a little bit longer. With a chance to clinch the division with a sweep over Cornell today, Penn came up just short, losing Game 2 11-10 in 12 innings. Penn had a dramatic five-run ninth-inning rally including four with two outs, to tie the game, but the Quakers couldn’t push across the winning run up in Ithaca, N.Y.

The Quakers were fighting from behind all game, although they brefly held leads of 1-0 in the first and 2-1 in the second.

Penn got exactly what it needed in the first game of its make-up doubleheader against Cornell, though.

The Quakers thrashed the Big Red 13-1, getting three innings from Jim Birmingham and four from Doug Brown for the win.

Catcher Jeff Cellucci was 4-for-4 with four RBIs, and Joey Boaen hit his fourth homer for Penn (12-8 Ivy). Cornell, losers of four out of five, is eliminated with a 7-9 record.

Now the Quakers must root for the Big Red to win at least one game against Princeton in their two doubleheaders Friday and Sunday. Only a four-game Princeton sweep would create a tie in the standings.

More to come in tomorrow’s DP.

So your Lou Gehrig Division standings look like this going into the weekend’s games:

Penn 9-5
Cornell 5-5
Princeton 6-6
Columbia 7-9

First off, is the obvious scenario. If Penn sweeps Princeton and its make-up doubleheader against Cornell, Penn wins the division at 15-5, and will have a great chance to host the Ivy League Championship Series.

But even if Penn can win three of four against Princeton, and then splits its against Cornell (likely early next week), the Quakers will finish 13-7. That would mean Cornell would have to go 7-1 against Princeton and Columbia to tie Penn. That’s something for the Quakers to shoot for.

If the Quakers lose two to Princeton but sweep the Big Red, they will still finish 13-7, which will eliminate the Tigers and force Cornell to sweep Princeton and Columbia.

However, if Penn only wins three of its last six games, finishing at 12-8, things get a little dicier. That leaves Princeton still alive, and gives Cornell a chance to go only 6-2 or 5-3 to tie (depending on which games Penn wins), and Penn can do nothing about it.

On the softball side, it’s a similar situation, but a little more advanced in time. The South Division looks like this:

Penn 12-4
Cornell 8-4
Princeton 8-4
Columbia 7-9

This time, Penn has to go to Princeton, and even a sweep doesn’t guarantee the Quakers anything, as Cornell could win out over Columbia and Princeton to tie Penn — but the Quakers would be in a great position. Three wins would also eliminate the Tigers, but then Cornell can go 7-1 to tie.

Meanwhile, if Penn splits, things get interesting. Princeton would have to sweep Cornell to tie, and Cornell would have to go 6-2 against Columbia and Princeton to tie. So in that case, making the Princeton-Cornell series meaningful may actually help Penn, which means that two wins might be better than three.

So the bottom line for both teams, is, two wins this weekend is a must, which puts both squads in very good positions in their divisions.

So Penn senior Ibrahim Jaaber has won Big 5 Player of the Year honors. Congratulations to Ibby on winning, and to Penn for its first win of the award since Tony Price in 1979, but I’m not sure Jaaber should have won, and might not have even been the best candidate on his own team.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Jaaber was a fine choice for Ivy League Player of the Year, and the Quakers would have gone nowhere without him. But I think that the Big 5 POY could go in three different directions, and I don’t think Jaaber fit any one of them.

First, the Big 5 could have given the award simply to the best player in the city. In my opinion, that was Curtis Sumpter of Villanova, who averaged a team-high (in the Big East) 17.4 points and 7.2 rebounds per game, along with an 81 percent foul-shooting percentage.

Jaaber, on the other hand, averaged 15.9 points per game and 4.5 rebounds, but did tie a Penn record for assists in a season and broke the Ivy League career record for steals. He was great, but I think Sumpter was greater.

Second, the award could have gone to the best player on the best team, which again was Sumpter, of a 4-0 Big 5 team and the higher-seeded (by five lines) of the Big 5’s two NCAA Tournament teams.

Finally, the Player of the Year could have been the player who was best during the Big 5 games. Without going into the box score of each team’s Big 5 games, I think that Jaaber is ruled out on his own squad. Consider the numbers of fellow senior Mark Zoller in Penn’s four Big 5 clashes as compared to Zoller:

Points per game: Zoller 24, Jaaber 20.5
Rebounds per game: Zoller 7, Jaaber, 4.8
Assists per game: Jaaber 7.8, Zoller 2.3
Steals: Jaaber 9, Zoller 8
Turnovers: Zoller 9, Jaaber 18
FT Pct: Zoller 95.5 (21-22), Jaaber 54.5 (12-22)

Also worth noting are Zoller’s huge clutch free throws to beat Temple this year.

The two players are close, as they were in the Ivy POY race, but this time I think Zoller gets the edge.

Again, this is no knock on Jaaber, I just think that he wasn’t the best candidate for this award.

First off, congratulations to Penn guard Ibrahim Jaaber, who has been invited to play at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament. If you’re not familiar with the event, it’s a showcase tournament for college seniors to show off for NBA and foreign scouts, held in Portsmouth, Va., early next month.

The last Penn player to play there was Tim Begley two years ago. Hopefully Jaaber can impress enough to get a shot to make an NBA roster over the summer.

Now, for the irrelevant, but good stuff:

Much has been made about Penn’s nine-game NCAA Tournament losing streak. Last year, we figured out that Fran Dunphy’s eight-game slide is the longest for all coaches. But are the Quakers in possession of the longest slide in history?

Not quite, but they’re close. Here are the top 12 losing streaks of all time (with 11 of them happening to be current)…years of the streak are in parentheses:

1- Murray State: 11 — 1 2nd round, 10 1st round (1988-present)
2t- North Carolina A&T: 9 — Never won a game, including seven straight years from ‘82-’88 (1982-present)
2t- Holy Cross: 9 — 1 Elite 8, 8 1st round (1953-present)
2t- Penn: 9 — 1 2nd round, 8 1st round (1994-present)
5t- Louisiana-Monroe: 7 — Never won a game (1982-present)
5t- Eastern Kentucky: 7 — Ditto. (1953-present)
5t- Davidson: 7 — 1 Elite 8, 6 1st round (1969-present)
9t- Nebraska: 6 — Never won a game (1986-present)
9t- BYU: 6 — 1 2nd round, 5 1st round (1993-present)
By the way, BYU has just passed Princeton for the worst record to .500 in NCAA Tournament history, at 11-25. The Tigers are 13-27. Penn, meanwhile, sits in third worst at 13-25.

9t- Northeastern: 6 — 1 2nd round, 5 1st round (1982-present)
9t- Winthrop: 6 — Broken this year! 6 1st round (1999-2006)

Next up, we have the title of “Worst Team Ever.” Every tournament in all sports, I like to see who is the “worst” team, in that it lost to a team that lost to a team that lost to a team, etc., until the champion. For example, last year’s team was Iowa, which lost to Northwestern State, which lost to West Virginia, which lost to Texas, which lost to LSU, which lost to UCLA, which lost to Florida.

Since the NCAA Tournament began in 1939, the team that has done this more than any other, and thus is “The Worst Team Ever,” are your Wyoming Cowboys! Here are all the teams to have done this at least twice (Don’t worry Penn fans, the Quakers can’t do it this year since Texas A&M beat Louisville):

Wyoming, 4: 1941, 1947, 1948, 1953
BYU, 3: 1950, 1957, 1979
Kentucky, 3: 1945, 1955, 1964
Princeton, 3: 1952, 1969, 2001
St. John’s, 3: 1978, 1984, 1988
Arkansas, 2: 1949, 1958
Bowling Green, 2: 1959, 1968
Furman, 2: 1973, 1975
Louisville, 2: 1974, 1977
Rhode Island, 2: 1961, 1966
Temple, 2: 1944, 1967

Incidentally, Penn has only done this once, in 1970.

Finally, we have an Anything but Uniform special edition. You may have noticed that Nike decided that four teams needed radically different uniform designs just for the postseason, so they unveiled The “System of Dress” for Syracuse, Arizona, Florida and Ohio State.

I don’t normally like to comment on national uniform issues, but when we were in Lexington last week I couldn’t resist asking an Ohio State player about it. Also, it doubled as a legitimate excuse to go to the Buckeyes’ locker room to see the Man-Child.

So I asked Ivan Harris what he thought of the uniforms, and I got an interesting answer. First, he liked the fact that the OSU unis, as opposed to all the other System of Dress teams, have the LeBron James logo on them. What’s funny about that, of course, is that when I say LeBron, I’m sure college basketball is exactly what you think of. But he is from Ohio, and maybe would have been at OSU for a year if the NBA age limit was in effect then. Never mind, it’s still ridiculous.

Harris also said he likes the look of the tight jersey and huge baggy shorts.

“It’s a nice fit. It’s a nice style,” he said.

The best thing he said though, was specifically about the tight jerseys.

“Not much to grab, that’s good for the jersey,” Harris said.

That’s a pretty good point, and goes along with football players having tighter and tighter sleeves to reduce holding. It is probably annoying to be constantly getting grabbed when playing. I think all Princeton opponents would benefit from this kind of jersey.

Anyway, that’s it for me. Enjoy Bill Raftery.

I can’t believe what I have just seen in the last two hours. First, Clemson beat Syracuse after nearly blowing a 17-point second half lead and its students rushed the court.

Then Air Force held on in a tight game against De Paul and the Falcons fans stormed the court.

In case you’re not aware, this was the QUARTERFINALS OF THE NIT!!!!!!! Both home teams were favored (at least by the NIT committee) and while this was the last home game of the season for these schools, it is absolutely inexcusable to rush the court in the quarters of the NIT. First of all, it’s the quarterfinals, and second, it’s the NIT! I can’t even say this any other way.

And Clemson was up 17 in the second and almost blew the game! What if they won by 20? Still rushing?

And there’s no way this happens if these games aren’t on TV. So you may have disagreed with me about the Penn-Temple game, but this is what I’m afraid of. If court rushing becomes so casual, then it’s no longer special. It’s just like singing the Red and the Blue after Penn games.