I’m writing from Drexel’s Vidas Field to cover the Women’s Lacrosse NCAA Quarterfinal between No. 2 Penn and No. 7 Boston University. Unfortunately the internet is basically non-existent here, so you’ll probably be reading these updates after the game is over and I’ve found a wireless hotspot.

Regardless, this game should be a good one. Both teams are on long winning streaks, although they’ve achieved success differently. Penn has had one of the strongest defenses in the nation, as starting goalkeeper Sarah Waxman’s 6.04 goals-against-average leads the nation. The Terriers meanwhile have the nation’s third highest scoring offense.

With a berth to the NCAA Final Four against either Duke or No. 3 Maryland, it’ll be interesting to which side’s kind of game this becomes. If it turns into an offensive shootout Penn might some have problems as its offense only averages 10.75 goals a game. But if it’s a defensive standstill, the Quakers could get the ‘W’ since they are undefeated when their opponents score under 10 goals.

Early Save by Waxman

BU 1 Penn 0 24:24
BU scores first. This happened last year as well. In fact I think Lauren Morton got both of them. Well she at least scored this year’s opening goal.

BU 1 Penn 1 24:10
Off a fast break senior Chelsea Kocis whips a great cross field pass to senior Rachel Manson, who just rockets it to the lower left of the goal for Penn’s first score.

Nice save off free position 22:43 by BU goalkeeper Rachel Klein.

BU 2 Penn 1 21:12
Sam Wetzel gets BU’s second of the game.

BU 2 Penn 2 20:11
Freshman Giulia Giordano scores off a low shot that bounces off the ground, then the post.

15:45 A goal off of a sweet DeLuca pass to Manson.was called off.

Penn 3 BU 2 13:57
Senior Melissa Lehman gets one off a fellow co-captain Allison Ambrozy pass.

Penn 4 BU 29:14
Kaitlyn Lombardo runs around the crease then fires a low shot for Penn’s fourth goal.

3:38 nice save on a low shot by Waxman.

HALFTIME: Penn 4 BU 2

26:32 Penn shot by Manson goes off the crossbar.

Penn 4 BU 3 25:43
Morton gets her second of the game.

Penn 5 BU 3 23:52
Sophomore Emma Spiro gets her first goal, pushing the Penn lead back to two.

Penn 6 BU 3 16:02
Spiro gets her second of the game of a free position unassisted

Penn 7 BU 3 14:00
Off of a Ambrozy pass Manson gets her second.

Penn 8 BU 3 11:53
Ali DeLuca gets her first goal of the game.

Penn 8 BU 4 11:30
BU’s Sarah Dalton, who came into the game leading the Terriers with 82 points, gets her first goal of the game.

Penn 8 BU 5 5:00
Dalton gets her second. Penn coach Karin Brower calls a timeout.

Penn 8 BU 5 FINAL
BU gets a few shots off, but Quakers goalkeeper Sarah Waxman stops any and all attempts to make the game closer. In the end the Quakers hold onto the ball and get out with the 8-5 vicotry. They’ll face Duke in the NCAA Final Four this Friday at Towson University’s Johnny Unitas Field.

Despite claiming they’re hated 0n, the women’s lacrosse team dominated the Ivy League All-Ivy selections (although the release does misstate that Princeton is facing Colgate in the second round when it’s actually Penn that’s facing the Raiders).

The Quakers led the conference with six selections, including Player of the Year Sarah Waxman, and two other unanimous First Teamers, senior attack Rachel Manson and sophomore midfield Ali DeLuca. The other three recognized Quakers were senior midfield Melissa Lehman and senior defense Tarah Kirnan on the First Team and junior defense Hilary Renna on the Second Team.

Waxman, who leads the nation’s goalkeepers with a 5.97 goals-against-average with only 82 goals given up, is only the Quakers’ second Ivy League POY ever. The other one, ironically also a goalie, was Wendy DiDomenico who won it in 1989. Waxman was voted the IWLCA Goalkeeper of the Year last season.

DeLuca was Ivy League Rookie of the Year last year and appears near the top of the Quakers’ stat sheets in nearly ever category this year, ranking first in draw controls (36), caused turnovers (21) and tied for first in game-winning goals (3). She’s also second in assists (14), third in goals (19) and points (33) and fourth in ground balls (21).

Manson and Lehman have led the Quakers’ attack with 27 and 26 goals, and 18 and 10 assists, respectively. Manson was a Second Team selection and Lehman an honorable mention last year. Kirnan and Renna have anchored a defense that has only given up 6.00 goals per game, best in the nation. Renna was a unanimous First Teamer last year.

Looking towards the Quakers’ first round opponent in the NCAA tournament tomorrow, Colgate has only one All-Patriot League selection. Freshman midfield Colleen Bubnack got a Second Team selection after leading the Raiders in assists, caused turnovers and draw controls.

ON THE MEN’S SIDE: Junior attacker Craig Andrzejewski earned the Quakers’ sole First Team recognition. The product out of Parkton, Md., lead the Quakers with 40 points, becoming the first All-Ivy First Teamer since both Will Phillips and Patrick Connelly earned the nod in 2004. The Quakers also had a Second Teamer — freshman midfielder Al Kohart — and an honorable mention — senior Max Mauro, a defender.

A Penn Athletics press release earlier today announced that the football game this year at Princeton will be moved to Friday November 7th from Saturday the 8th. (Actually I just read the Princeton Athletics release and it’s more detailed). The reason for the change? So it can be aired live on ESPNU. The meeting will be the 100th between the schools.

The Quakers’ previous game is Saturday the 1st home against Brown, so the short week should not be that big of a deal. Princeton, meanwhile, will be disadvantaged more by the short week. They play at Cornell on the 1st.

But The Tigers are used to playing under the lights on a national TV audience on Friday night. They beat Brown 17-3 two years ago and Cornell 34-31 last year, both Friday ESPNU games.

This would be the first non-Saturday game the Quakers have played since Thursday October 10 at Villanova in 2002.

What are your thoughts about the change? Post in the comments below.

The NCAA released its Academic Progress Report last week, and it should obviously come as no surprise that the Ivy League dominated the rankings. However, the order might be different from what you would expect.

The Ivies swept the top six spots on the national rankings, in the following order.

1. Yale (28 teams honored)

2. Dartmouth (24 teams honored)

3. Brown (21 teams honored)

4. Penn (20 teams honored)

5. Princeton (19 teams honored)

6. Harvard (18 teams honored)

Then, there’s a bit of a drop off…

t16. Cornell (11 sports honored)

20. Columbia (9 sports honored)

Of course, you have to take the report with a grain of salt, as a lot of the rankings depend on the number of sports a school has and fail to take into account understandable reasons for GPA differences (engineering major vs. history major; Engineering vs. Wharton vs. College, Hotel Management vs. School of Agriculture, etc.). The Academic Progress Report really serves no purpose for the Ivy League — the goal is to improve the LSU’s of the world — but it’s still interesting either way.

If you want to peruse Penn’s report, you can find the link here.

Not too much to report out there in Ivy basketball country, but on Thursday Dick “Hoops” Weiss, writing for the New York Daily News, had a few Ivy points of interests in his “Hoops on Hoops” blog.

First, as stated in a brief in Friday’s DP, John Gallagher has been hired as an assistant coach to Glen Miller. But in addition to reporting on that, Weiss says that the Quakers are interested in Larry Loughery, a former St. Joseph’s Prep player who recently transferred to Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn.

Update:  Loughery is coming to Penn

He also notes that Columbia hosted a Sports Ethics Symposium, but put Weiss and fellow NY Daily news columnist Pat Plunkett on the wait list despite sending out publicity emails. I wonder how that event compared to the one Columbia hosted a few years back called “A Culture of Losing.”

The last Ivy note is about Cornell coach Steve Donahue. There was a lot of talk about Brown’s coach Craig Robinson leaving, and in the end he did go to Oregon State. But Donahue has also gotten some coaching buzz after leading the Big Red to their first Ivy title since 1988. While not reporting any rumors, Weiss himself believes Bucknell might be a good fit for Donahue because it offers scholarships and Cornell has yet to expand its financial aid like some of the other Ivy schools have.

After the women’s lacrosse team beat Princeton 9-5 yesterday to clinch at least a share of the Ivy title I interviewed sophomore Ali DeLuca, seniors Sarah Waxman and Rachel Manson and coach Karin Brower. Unfortunately I couldn’t include all of their quotes in my recap due to limited space in the DP, so over the next couple of days I’ll post some material here to the Buzz. First up was THE RUN. Second was THE IMPACT ON THE RANKINGS. Lastly here is PLAYERS’ REACTIONS.

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Upon winning their second straight Ivy League title, the women’s lacrosse team was quite ecstatic. Despite their experience winning the league last year, the Quakers still had a very emotional response to clinching the league yet again.

“Oh my god, this is the most amazing feeling ever” sophomore attack Ali DeLuca said.

Even senior Sarah Waxman, last year’s All-American goalkeeper who leads the nation this year with a 6.23 goals-against-average, was quite emotional. After the game she barely could contain the tears, tears of joy.

“I am weeping; my emotions are all over the place,” Waxman said. “I’m speechless… This is the happiest day of my whole life, I’ll never forget it ever.

“We’re one of the hardest working teams here at this school. This means so much to the senior class, who’ve put so much into this truly believing we can turn this program around. I don’t know enough words to explain this.”

Waxman’s classmate and co-captain Rachel Manson also was quite flabbergasted after winning. While I interviewed her she literally was at a loss of words saying, “I can’t even think or concentrate right now. It feels amazing.”

Beating Princeton at Princeton — for the first time in 22 years — for the Ivy League title made the win even more remarkable for the team. This was especially true of DeLuca, who is a native New Jerseyan.

“It’s weird coming here,” said DeLuca, who hails from nearby Hillsborough, N.J. “We scrimmaged here in the fall, but I’ve never actually played in Princeton’s stadium. I remember coming here in high school and watching Princeton games. So it was an amazing feeling just to be able to play in this stadium and win here.”

UPDATE: THE QUAKERS JUST BEAT BROWN 12-5, AND NOW ARE OFFICIALLY IVY LEAGUE CHAMPIONS WITH A RECORD OF 12-1, 7-0 IVY.

After the women’s lacrosse team beat Princeton 9-5 yesterday to clinch at least a share of the Ivy title I interviewed sophomore Ali DeLuca, seniors Sarah Waxman and Rachel Manson and coach Karin Brower. Unfortunately I couldn’t include all of their quotes in my recap due to limited space in the DP, so over the next couple of days I’ll post some material here to the Buzz. First up was THE RUN. Now, THE IMPACT ON THE RANKINGS

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With the win over previously undefeated Princeton, the women’s lacrosse team will look to move up in the rankings when next week’s polls come out Monday. Right now the Quakers (11-1, 6-0 Ivy) are No. 6 in both the Inside Lacrosse media poll and the IWLCA coaches’ poll.

After beating Princeton (10-1, 4-1), the consensus No. 2 team in the nation according to both polls, the question isn’t really whether or not they’ll move up, but the question is how many spots.

Well, it’s only certain they’ll move up if they win at home against Brown Saturday. But that shouldn’t be a problem for the Quakers. Brown (5-7, 2-3) has only beaten the bottom two teams in the Ivy League (Dartmouth and Columbia), and all of its non-conference wins are over mediocre America East teams (their best win is over 9-7 Sacred Heart).

Another certain thing is that it’ll be nearly impossible for the Quakers to surpass three-time defending national champion Northwestern and become the No. 1 team. The unanimous No. 1 Wildcats have won all 13 of their games, and even if they were to lose either of their games this weekend (home against No. 17 Johns Hopkins and No. 11 North Carolina), there’s a good chance a 13-1 Northwestern with only a loss to a top 20 team would still maintain the top spot.

The teams currently ahead of Penn are the same in both polls, although their order is different. In the media poll, the three, four and five slots are Maryland (12-1), Syracuse (11-2) and Virginia (11-3), respectively. In the coaches’ poll the Cavaliers and the Orange are switched.

While beating No. 2 would be the best win of the week barring a Northwestern upset, Penn is not the only top-six team to earn a quality win this week. The Terrapins did beat No. 8/9 Georgetown handily, 14-7, so unless the Terps lose to 4-12 Virginia Tech Saturday, they likely would claim the Tigers’ No. 2 spot.

Virginia also got a quality win, beating No. 12 George Mason by a decisive 12-3 margin.

Syracuse doesn’t have any quality wins this week, as they’ve only beaten 7-8 Colgate and play 6-8 Loyola (Md.) Saturday.

At a minimum, Princeton should drop to six, and Penn would move up to five. More likely, Penn would leap frog at least Syracuse, regardless of the Orange’s game at the Greyhounds. At the same time, on just the strength of beating an undefeated team at their place, it’s still possible the Quakers would jump as high as third or even second.

While the Quakers don’t analyze the rankings too much, they still believe their impressive win over Princeton warrants a jump in the polls.

“9-5, that’s a decisive win,” senior attack Rachel Manson said. “If we don’t move up in the polls, that’s laughable.”

Coach Karin Brower, who has repeated on several occasions that she doesn’t look at polls, still believes the team should move up, plain and simple.

“It’s black and white,” she said. “We should be No. 2.”

Last year Penn was in a similar situation late in the season. On April 2, the Quakers were ranked 12/11, and after beating No. 10 Penn State at Happy Valley they jumped to No. 6 in both polls on April 9. Then after beating No. 14 Dartmouth, they moved up to 5/3. Finally after beating No. 15 Princeton the Quakers earned the four spot from Inside Lacrosse and the second spot from the coaches.

More importantly than regular season rankings, however, is seeding in the national tournament. The top four seeds are guaranteed home games for the first two rounds of the sixteen team tournament. The Final Four and championship games are played at a predetermined spot (this year it’s at Towson; last year it was at Franklin Field).

Last year, after finishing the regular season ranked third by Inside Lacrosse and second by IWLCA, the Quakers did earn a top seed, drawing the four seed.

Just like with the regular season polls, this year’s Quakers believe that by beating Princeton and earning the Ivy League’s automatic bid they deserve a high seed.

“I think we’re going to have a really good seed for the tournament,” Manson said. “And I think this proves that last year wasn’t a fluke. We’re here every year to dominate the Ivies. This is the beginning of a dynasty.”

Next up: Players’ reactions

UDPATE: Well only the minimum happened. The coaches’ poll has yet to be released, but in the media poll, Penn only moved up a spot to number 5. Ahead of them are Northwestern, Maryland, Syracuse and Virginia, respectively. One reason for the little movement is that no team ahead of Penn lost. Also, looking at laxpower.com’s power ratings, Penn is eighth, behind the above four teams as well as Duke, Boston University, and surprisingly Princeton. This last part is also surprising, since the Tigers not only lost to Penn last week, but also lost 13-12 to Dartmouth on Saturday. This probably hurt Penn’s chances of leap frogging a team like Syracuse since their win over the Tigers was slightly diminished. I’ll post the coaches’ poll later today when it comes out.

Update 2: Although it didn’t get updated until 8 am today, the IWLCA coaches’ poll finally got updated and there’s some good news for the Quakers (12-1).  The “more likely” scenario occurred here, as the Quakers jumped over 13-2 Syracuse and now are the No. 4 team behind Northwestern (15-0), Maryland (14-1) and Virginia (12-3). Syracuse (13-2) is No. 5, followed by Princeton (10-2) at No. 6, just like the media poll.

After the women’s lacrosse team beat Princeton 9-5 yesterday to clinch at least a share of the Ivy title I interviewed sophomore Ali DeLuca, seniors Sarah Waxman and Rachel Manson and coach Karin Brower. Unfortunately I couldn’t include all of their quotes in my recap due to limited space in the DP, so over the next couple of days I’ll post some material here to the Buzz. First up, THE RUN.

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With the score 3-1 Penn at half time of the women’s lacrosse game against Princeton yesterday, the game was still very much in the air. Even though Penn had dominated the first half by holding onto the ball for at least 20 of the 30 minutes, Princeton was just a run away from taking back control of the game.

At the same time, the Quakers were pretty confident they’d be the team to pull away in the second.

“Going into the game and at halftime there never was a doubt in anyone’s mind that we weren’t going to win this game,” senior attack Rachel Manson said.

Still coach Karin Brower had to say something at halftime to make sure the Quakers followed through on their confidence.

“Our goal has been to play for 60 minutes,” she said. “I told them we played a great 30 minutes but we need to think like it’s 0-0. We got 30 minutes to beat Princeton and remember this for the rest of our lives.

“I think that defensively keep up what we were doing. They were very patient, playing good one-on-one defense and weren’t doubling early. Keep working on denying cuts. On offense we just wanted to be patient. And in the second half it just opened up for us.”

And open up it did. Within just the first 10 minutes of the second half, the Quakers scored five goals, while surrendering zero. During the stretch Princeton held the ball for less than two and a half minutes and only got off three shots, two of which were off target. By the end of the run the game had gone from a 3-1 tight-knit match, to an 8-1 dominating performance.

“I thought it was important to come out hard at the first whistle of the second half,” Manson said. “Just to put them away and make sure they’re not going to comeback, they’re not going to win this game. So I think it was really pretty awesome that we scored at the beginning of the second half and we kept that run going. And if they scored we either answered back or got a stop. We never let them back in it.”

While she’d never take responsibility herself, if you had to credit just one player for the run, it’d have to be Manson. The product out of lacrosse power St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes in Alexandria, Va. scored the first two goals of the run (she also had the game’s first goal). The first goal in the run came off of a free position shot that bounced its way past Princeton goalie Kaitlin Perrelle, and the second was off of a heads up play when she cradled a rebound off of Perrelle and shot it right back into the net.

But the best goal of the run was scored by sophomore Ali DeLuca. Senior Chelsea Kocis, weaving behind the Princeton goal, threw up a pass over the goal that DeLuca jumped for, snagged out of mid-air, cradled and shoot, all without touching the ground, just like an Alley-oop.

Despite the increased scoring in the second half, some Quakers didn’t really feel they had changed their game plan after the break.

“It wasn’t anything different,” goalkeeper Sarah Waxman said. “In the first half we had the ball a lot, and we were patient and they just didn’t have the ball at all … People bash our attack as well. But I think that run we went on is another example of how our attack is good.”

With the lead much larger than it had just been 10 minutes ago, a significant degree of pressure was lifted from Waxman after the run.

The run “was like a gift from God,” the senior captain said. “But any good goalie is going to tell you they don’t let the momentum of their team dictate their play. So it was 0-0 to me the entire game. But in the back of my head when we scored I’d be like, ‘ok, we’re up by six goals.’ It’s also a lot easier to talk to people going back to the draw [after a goal].”

Regardless of its impact on Waxman, the run in it of itself was significant. How significant? Without it, Penn would’ve lost by one goal, 5-4.

Next up: Impact on the rankings

According to a couple media sources, Brown men’s basketball coach Craig Robinson will be the new coach at Oregon State.

Barack Obama’s brother in law took home an impressive 11-3 record in the Ivy League this year, losing only to Cornell (twice) and Yale in overtime. The Bears lost to Ohio in the first round of the College Basketball Invitational, 80-74.

Oregon State is a member of the Pacific 10, one of the best conferences (if not the best) in college basketball, but the Beavers went a miserable 6-24 record, and an even more pathetic 0-18 in the conference, losing their last 21 games. Yes, you heard me right, 21 games.

The Beavers lost at home to Washington, not a tournament team, 97-59. Their best win last year was against Idaho State. Needless to say, the man who may be leaving Brown after only two years has his work cut out for him.

Is this a good move for Robinson? Was he, in a way, using Brown, just coaching there for two years before leaving? Leave your comments below.

To start off, I believe that as a Penn fan you have to root for Cornell.

Not only are the Big Red repping the Ivy League, former Penn assistant Steve Donahue is as likable a guy as it gets. Cornell is clearly better than anyone else in the Ivies and deserves to be there. The Big Red also don’t dive like Brown, cheat like Harvard, or pop their collars like Princeton. Okay, never mind, we like to do that too.

Anyway, No. 14 Cornell, No. 11 Saint Joseph’s, No. 12 Temple and No. 12 Villanova are all underdogs, but some aren’t by much.

In Vegas, No. 6 Oklahoma is a mere 1.5-point favorite over the Hawks - the only line that’s more even is No. 7 Miami vs. No. 10 St. Mary’s. Temple is +6.5 against No.5 Michigan State and Villanova is +6 against No. 5 Clemson. Finally, Cornell is getting 14.5 points against the No. 3 Cardinal.

First, I truly believe St. Joe’s is going to win. Not only are the Sooners slightly overseeded in many people’s minds, the Hawks are a very good team. Ahmad Nivins and Rob Ferguson are forces down low, Darrin Govens and Tasheed Carr are good ball-handlers and scorers, the lanky Garrett Williamson is a solid defender and 6-foot-10 guard Pat Calathes is a matchup problem for anyone. If you’re a traditional guard, he’ll shoot over you. If you’re a forward, he’s drive right past you.

Also, the Hawks play their best basketball when they are desperate.

St. Joe’s made a nice run in the Atlantic 10 Tournament, soundly beating Fordham, Richmond and then 3-seed Xavier, all games it needed to win. Perhaps once rumblings started of them being in the NCAA Tourney even with a loss to Temple, the Hawks lost the desperation Phil Martelli wanted them to be playing with, and dropped a 69-64 decision to their Philly rivals. When I stepped into their locker room, it was dead silent, and Ive never seen someone look as angry and depressed as the captain Carr was after that game. Look for St. Joe’s to come out firing against a team it can definitely beat.

Temple will have to play a very good game for an upset, while Villanova and Cornell will have to play great ones.

The Owls are playing great basketball, and should have been higher than a 12-seed. Michigan State is a great team, but not only guards Mark Tyndale (an absolute beast - had 15 rebounds against Charlotte in the semifinal) and Dionte Christmas (can score with the best of them) are playing well, the supporting cast - from 5-8 Chris Clark to 6-9 Lavoy Allen to 7-foot Sergio Olmos - is better than it ever has been. This should be a game, and it’s hard to pick against the Owls.

Villanova and Cornell may have a shot, but it’s slim. The Wildcats slip into the Tournament, and play Clemson, a team that really has Final 4 potential. The Tigers are 4-5 against Tournament teams, but four of those losses are to North Carolina or Duke, including having fallen twice to the Tar Heels in overtime and again last weekend by a thread. Scotty Reynolds is getting more help these days, but K.C. Rivers and Clemson’s multiple big men inside as well as shooter Terrence Oglesby should be too much for Villanova

True, it didn’t do much in the non-conference schedule, but it’s hard to go against Cornell’s win streak. Still, does it have a shot of stopping the Lopez twins? Probably not. But any team that shoots as well as the Big Red do, both from the field (49.2 percent, 41.4 from three) as well as from the line (76.3 percent) can be prime for a big upset.