The Penn basketball team might be facing the unanimous No. 1 team in the nation this Saturday, but at least the chances that they’ll face North Carolina’s best player are quite slim.

Senior Tyler Hansbrough, who decided to stay in school for his final season instead of declaring for the NBA draft, has been limited due to a stress reaction in his right shin. In fact, he hasn’t practiced in two weeks. And according to coach Roy Williams, “It’s extremely doubtful that he would play against Pennsylvania, and I emphasize extremely doubtful.”

(Hey, at least he didn’t call us Penn State.)

The reigning National Player of the Year has 48 points and 15 rebounds in two career games against the Quakers.

The Tar Heels also are without guard Marcus Ginyard, one of their best defenders.

1) What does Princeton have in common with Indiana, Maryland, Stanford, Texas Tech and Arkansas?  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, they’re all “esteemed basketball programs” that might finish last in their conferences.

2) Basketball players have always been some of the most obvious BMOCs on campus here at Penn.  And even though he’s only a sophomore, Tyler Bernadini has been selected by Comcast SportsNet as Penn’s representative for their “Big Men on Campus” series.

3) ESPN The Magazine has come up with one stat for each Division I team that best represents both last year and future results. (Unfortunately, the link requires a subscription to ESPN Insider).

Here is Penn’s, with the rest of the league after the jump. The team’s are ranked in order of predicted finish.

2 ) Penn

74.5

The Quakers are coming off of their first losing season since 2000-01, but led by Ivy ROY Tyler Bernardini, they’re well-stocked to challenge Cornell … if they D up. Penn gave up 74.5 ppg last season, its worst performance in 20 years.

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As fall sports start to wind down, winter sports begin.  And never is that clearer than this weekend.  From Friday Nov. 14 to Sunday Nov. 16, there are 13 Penn sporting events involving 12 teams (volleyball plays twice).

This poses a problem for Quakers fans who want to watch two or more games simultaneously.  Fortunately the three biggest events — the football game vs. Harvard, the M. Hoops season opener at North Carolina and M. Soccer’s win-or-go-home battle with the Crimson for the league title — are all at different times (Saturday at noon, 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., respectively).

However, watching the UNC game still might be tough, as it’s only on NESN and Fox Sports South, two channels that aren’t part of normal Philadelphia cable packages.  While sports bars like Cavanaugh’s on 39th St. will, of course, cover the game, there is another option:  According to The News & Observer, the game will be available online.

Meanwhile, the basketball game — with announcers Jones Angell and Eric Montross at the Smith Center — will be broadcast free and live on tarheelblue.com.

It turns out Tar Heels fans have an even bigger dilemma on their hands than Quakers fans.  While the Quakers are in town for basketball, the football team will be playing Maryland at the exact same time (well, technically it starts at 3:30).  And while the basketball team — which became the first unanimous preseason No. 1. in the history of the USA Today/ESPN poll earlier this month — still dominates the Chapel Hill campus, the football team actually is ranked 17th in the nation and would win the ACC Coastal Division if it wins out and Virginia Tech loses one of its last three games.

(HT to Krista Hutz)

1) The Bulletin profiles Penn freshman point guard Zack Rosen, saying “He’s not a showman. He’s a point guard. A throwback floor general who counts wins instead of numbers. Classic Ivy League.”

2) Remember how the NCAA pushed back the three-point line this year for men’s teams?  Well in case you don’t, here’s a summary of the changes and potential impact from The Washington Post. It will be interesting to see how this effects Ivy League teams’ chances of earning a major upset, whether in the regular season or NCAA tournament.

3) Yale Sports Publicity released a season preview of the Bulldogs’ men’s basketball team.

4) As part of Penn Athletics’ marketing push for men’s basketball, fans can now bid on a “Men’s Basketball Player Experience” in which the winner and one guest can sit next to a former Penn great.  First up is last year’s captain Brian Grandieri.

5) As you can see on the schedule, nine men’s basketball games will be aired on television this year, with the highlight being the 10 a.m. Drexel game on ESPN Nov. 18.  The hat tip goes out to The Cornell Basketball Blog for pointing this out.

That site is one of the best sources of Ivy League basketball news, and while it does focus on Cornell, it normally is relatively unbiased. However, this time the blog is extremely opinionated in discussing Penn’s basketball broadcasts.

Talking about a strange decision, the Philadelphia/South Jersey area television network, CN8 opted to broadcast five of Penn’s games, including on the road at Dartmouth and in the Palestra gainst Princeton. Now those are some attractive games. Not! If it is not paintful enough, the gods of television also decided to show Penn at Princeton on ESPNU. We would like to see the tv ratings on that one. Just no love for Cornell– the Ivy League’s defending champions, the Preseason Favorite and the Ivy League school with the largest alumni base.

First off, besides the Princeton and Dartmouth games mentioned above, the games that CN8 will televise are the Villanova, Saint Joseph’s and Temple games (as well as the one against Harvard).  Clearly televising Big 5 games is a good move for a Philadelphia-based television station.

Second, the reason for the Princeton away game being televised on ESPNU (or why last Friday’s football game at Princeton was on ESPNU) is that Princeton has a deal with ESPNU to cover several games throughout the academic year.  In fact, in each of the last three years the Penn at Princeton basketball game has been on ESPNU.

Finally, Cornell will get at least two televised games, against Indiana and Syracuse, as well as potentially more if they go far in the preaseason NIT. (If you click “details” for each game on the schedule you can see the media information.)

All said, does this reaction by The Cornell Basketball Blog remind anyone else of Andy’s Cornell opinions on The Office two weeks ago?

1) The Penn-Brown football game this Saturday will be nationally televised on Versus as the Ivy League Game of the Week. And unlike last week’s fluff game between then-winless Columbia and still-winless Dartmouth, this game will actually be important. Both teams enter the game with 3-0 conference records, so the winner will be in the driver’s seat of the Ivy title race.

Only twice before have Brown and Penn met with undefeated Ancient Eight records. Penn won both in 1984 and 1986 en route to league championships.

2) Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams have their preseason intrasquad scrimmages this weekend, just before the homecoming football game. And in case you need some practice watching morning basketball before the men’s team takes on Drexel at 10 a.m. Nov 18 you’re in luck:  The men’s scrimmage starts at 10:45 a.m.

3) On the heels of a documentary about the 1969 “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29″ game, this Saturday, NESN will air a 90-minute documentary on Ivy League football.

Rob Eiter was formally named the Penn wrestling head coach today. He had been the interim head coach after Zeke Jones stepped down to take over the head coaching position for USA Wrestling.

A full article will appear in tomorrow’s DP.

We normally don’t make a big deal out of Penn football players who win Ivy League Player of the Week awards, since there are so many of them you can get on the list for just 73 total yards.

But the following nod certainly deserves recognition.  After earning two interceptions, recovering a fumble, deflecting two passes and notching six tackles — including one for a loss — senior defensive back Britton Ertman received FCS National Defensive Player of the Week honors, as announced by The Sports Network.

(Since I hate having a short, two-paragraph Buzz post, I thought I’d throw in this nugget:  The women’s basketball team was picked sixth in the Ivy League media preseason poll.)

Just like basically every single preview magazine, the preseason men’s basketball media poll picked Penn to finish second in the Ivy League, behind Cornell.

Interestingly, the Big Red received all 16 first place votes.

The complete poll:

2008-09 Ivy Men’s Baketball Preseason Media Poll
1. Cornell — 128 points (16 first-place votes)
2. Penn — 110
3. Yale — 80
4. Harvard — 77
5. Brown — 75
6. Columbia — 45
7. Dartmouth — 33
8. Princeton — 28

(Also, did anyone read page E4 of yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer? If so you would’ve seen an ad for a Penn football game. One problem: It featured Penn’s game versus Columbia, which already took place.  D’oh!)

In case you were worried that Penn Athletics was only focusing on marketing the men’s basketball team, the women’s basketball team is also receiving the wisdom of Nelligan Sports Marketing.

Against Drexel Dec. 19, the team will attempt to set an all-time attendance record for a home game as part of the yearly “Pack the House” Challenge. Part of the campaign also includes getting school groups to come to the Palestra — a necessity, since the game is during winter break.

Of all the women’s basketball games I’ve been to, the most spectators I’ve ever seen is about 200. So there’s certainly a lot of seats to be filled in the Palestra. Also it’s interesting that both the women’s and men’s games against Drexel this year are part of NCAA-wide gimmicks. The men’s team will play at Drexel for the first time ever, and it’ll be at 10 a.m. as part of ESPN’s 14-hour hoops marathon.

Here are two other Random Ivy notes:

1) Ivysport.com, which for the most part is a site that sells Ivy League apparel, has an “infopedia” on the Ivy League. Most of you probably already know the vast majority of what’s on this site, but in case you ever want to find out which Ivy League school doesn’t have a Latin motto (Cornell), or you want to see a good timeline of Ivy League history, this is the site for you.

2) Pumped up for college basketball after The Line?  Well here’s a reason to like every single basketball team in America.  Penn’s reason:

Glenn Miller has himself a deep rotation. Darren Smith and Tommy McMahon missed last season. Zach Rosen leads the recruiting class that’s pretty awesome. Harrison Gaines has an awesome rich man name. And the Quakers have four returning starters. Flat out.