Rush the Court recaps how Ivy League basketball teams have done so far. Well at least through last Friday afternoon. (Sorry for the delay). But to bring you up to speed: On Friday Columbia beat Bryant, 70-54, and Portland beat Yale, 77-58. On Saturday Colorado beat Harvard, 70-57, Colgate beat Dartmouth, 65-60, Northwestern beat Brown, 73-64, Sienna beat Cornell, 74-56, UMBC beat Columbia, 66-52, and of course Penn earned the only Ivy win of the day, defeating Monmouth 83-62 at the Palestra. Finally, Princeton beat Army, 55-43, yesterday.

But if it’s City Hoops you care about, the Examiner has you covered. They summarize how some of the City 6 teams did over this past weekend. As an udpate, today La Salle beat Valpariso in overtime, 75-70, and St. Joe’s lost to No. 7 Texas, 68-50.

Note: As we move into basketball season, items about the Big 5 will be included in “Random Notes”

1) Philly.com has launched a new college basketball blog dedicated to City Six hoops. Not only will the blog have posts from the Inquirer’s college sports staff of Mike Kern, Bob Cooney and Dick Jerardi, but five of the six City Six coaches will also post their thoughts.

Interestingly, Villanova’s Jay Wright — in classic we’re-too-good-for-the-rest-of-the-city fashion that Villanova demonstrated when it almost left the Big 5 — “was not able to make the commitment because of his busy schedule during the season,” according to the first post. Is his schedule really that much busier than any of the other coaches? The only possible answer is that the Big East does involve more traveling than the other conferences represented in the city, as the Wildcats travel to Wisconsin, Florida, Illinois and Indiana for conference play. (Ironically, their farthest non-conference game is at Madison Square Garden.)

2) Nittanydelphia, a blog dedicated to Penn State and Philadelphia sports, is publishing previews of all Big 5 teams.  Here is Penn’s entry. From there you can find the other schools’ as well.

3) Many preseason publications had the Harvard men’s basketball team finishing as high as third in the conference. One key reason voters saw the Crimson moving up from seventh to third was 6-foot-10 freshman sensation Andrew Van Nast. However, Van Nast has injured his shoulder and will miss the entire year. The Crimson are not completely out of luck, since they do return all five starters from last year.

4) Looking over the Sagarin NCAA football ratings, four Ivy League teams are ranked above at least one FBS team. Harvard is the top Ivy team at no. 135 and is ahead of eight FBS teams, including Washington State of the PAC-10.  No. 156 Brown is ahead of two FBS schools, and both No. 162 Penn and No. 165 Yale are ahead of No. 171 North Texas.

Earlier this week St. Joseph’s announced its men’s basketball opponents, although no times or dates were released. Two things are worth noting for Quaker fans. First off, as you might remember from this DP article, all of the Hawks 2008-09 home games will be played at the Palestra. So there’s a good chance college basketball’s cathedral will be home to multiple games a day come winter.

But more importantly, a familiar foe of Penn will be visiting the Palesta twice this year. Cornell, yes the very same defending-Ivy League champions, will face St. Joe’s at the Palestra. I’d personally be surprised if Penn coach Glen Miller isn’t in attendance scouting the Big Red, assuming of course Penn doesn’t have a game of its own that day.

So as for you Penn fans, are you going to try to watch the Big Red in the Palestra before they take on the Quakers? I wonder when was the last time a non-Big 5 team visited the Palestra during the regular season to play two different teams. I’m sure it’s happened before.

NB: I found this news from former DP writer Jonnathan Tannenwald’s college sports blog, Soft Pretzel Logic. I strongly suggest you check it out since it’s clearly the best professional blog about college sports in the Philly region.