• Tonight’s game marked the first time in Brian Grandieri’s career that Penn lost an Ivy League contest at the Palestra.

• As a team, the Quakers shot 9-17 from downtown, hitting three more triples than the Bears. The difference was the play inside. Despite Brown’s smaller size, the Bears etched out 30 points in the paint (compared to Penn’s 24) thanks to a number of smooth backdoor cuts. More importantly, the Bears got to the free throw line 26 times — Penn was 2 of 6 from the charity stripe. Brown’s 61.5% clip wasn’t impressive, but it was good enough.

• Grandieri overcame his recent shooting woes tonight, going 9-15 from the field and 2-4 from beyond the arc. He was the Quakers’ only reliable option in the second half — especially with Kevin Egee on the bench in foul trouble — and hit a number of clutch shots down the stretch.

• Cameron Lewis did not see any action tonight, and though Remy Cofield did see 12 minutes, he left the Palestra wearing a Tom Brady-like protective boot.

Tomorrow’s game against Yale has been moved up to 6 pm. If you can’t make it to the Palestra, ESPN Classic will be televising the game. Stay tuned to The Buzz for more coverage.

P.S. Jack Eggleston was a guest earlier this week on UTV’s DP Roundtable and was asked about the incident with Noah Savage at the end of the Princeton game. With Princeton inbounding the ball under its own basket down by 3 with 9 seconds to go, Savage took a swing towards Eggleston’s groin area and was called for a technical foul, essentially ending the Tigers’ chances. On an earlier possession, Savage missed an important shot that would have put his team in better position to win. On the show, Eggleston said that right before Savage picked up the “T,” Eggleston — who played with Savage a lot over the summer — said something to him about the missed shot, prompting the hot-headed reaction. Zidane, anyone?

There were roster changes aplenty last night against Temple. The obvious one was the return of Harrison Gaines. He played well for 10 minutes, and with eight days off before Harvard we have no reason to think he won’t be 100 percent by then.

Ironically, in Gaines’ first game back since NJIT, Kevin Egee played his cleanest game yet, logging 29 minutes without a turnover.

Andreas Schreiber benefited from the presence of Temple 7-footer Sergio Olmos. As Penn’s best interior defender along with Cameron Lewis and Jack Eggleston, Schreiber was a logical choice to stay on the floor for more time than normal. Justin Reilly, who usually gets more minutes that Schreiber, played just 4, and Eggleston played 33 minutes in his best game so far.

Video of the postgame press conference can be found here.

Just finished watching the Blue-bloods beat the Cherry and White easily at the Wachovia Center. No surprise there. The Dukies had plenty of help (from the guys who are supposed to be colorblind). Enough to build a 16-point lead before the refs realized, hey, we should give Temple a few non-calls to make this thing exciting. Alas, as always seems to happen, the officials righted their ship too late to save the integrity of the evening.

The Inquirer’s audio of the post-game conferences can be found here, here, here and here.

One of the ESPN announcers mentioned that the Big 5 is “down” this year as opposed to last. Numbers-wise, I’m not so sure. Let’s take a look.

Temple is in almost exactly the same spot. The Owls are 6-7 with an RPI of 71 (after tonight’s loss); they were an identical 6-7 at this point last year with a final RPI of 67.

La Salle was an even 6-6 twelve games into 2006 and is 3-9 now, but its current RPI is actually a bit better than last year’s finish.

St. Joe’s is 8-4 with an RPI of 36 (after tonight’s win); the Hawks had a slightly worse record a year ago, 7-5, and a much lower RPI at year’s end, 95.

Villanova has regressed a smidge, but the Big 5 is in roughly the same spot as last year — outside of Penn, which has spun backwards from its ‘07 team.

In another Big 5 item of note, the renovations to the Hawks’ Alumni Memorial Field House that we heard about in early 2006 will indeed force St. Joe’s to play its 2008-09 games at the Palestra, the Daily News reports.

Dick Jerardi also gives us a notebook on the local storylines.

Now on to the Quakers. Freshman point guard Harrison Gaines suffered another setback after playing 24 productive minutes against NJIT, coach Glen Miller told PSN’s Brian Seltzer.

“We’re a little worried about Harrison,” Miller said. “He probably came back too quick; he re-tweaked his hamstring and he didn’t practice yesterday and probably won’t practice today [Wednesday]. We really need him on the court.”

Miller didn’t say whether the injury came in the NJIT game or in a subsequent practice, but either way Gaines has another five days to recover before Penn faces La Salle. He had eight assists against NJIT.

While I’m not ready to eat my words just yet on Cameron Lewis, Miller had good things to say about him, which you would expect after the last two games. What are your thoughts on Cameron Lewis and the men whose minutes he’s taking, Jack Eggleston and Justin Reilly? Should Lewis continue to start?

As always, leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Here are my third Ivy Rankings installment. The number in parentheses is how far everyone’s RPI has risen or fallen since the last edition.

1. Brown [8-6; Previous Ranking: 3; RPI: 90 (+29)]
The Bears are still playing well despite a loss to Baylor, and Damon Huffman continues to be one of the League’s top scorers.

2. Cornell [6-5; Previous Ranking: 1; RPI: 123(-5)]
A 14-point loss to Duke won’t lose Cornell many points. Point guard Louis Dale is creating a lot of buzz around the League.

3. Harvard [6-11, 1-0 Ivy; Previous Ranking: 4; RPI: 281 (+20)]
Tommy Amaker’s roster changes are helping Harvard score, and the Crimson enter Friday’s rematch with Dartmouth riding two straight blowout wins.

4. Columbia [6-8; Previous Ranking: 2; RPI: 215(-12)]
Two steps forward (beating Lehigh), one step back (losing to American). Ben Nwachukwu might finally be picking up steam.

5. Yale [5-8; Previous Ranking: 6; RPI: 166 (-8)]
Another underwhelming week for Yale against three underwhelming teams; thumping 2-15 Longwood doesn’t prove much.

6. Penn [5-9; Previous Ranking: 8; RPI: 270 (-15)]
A bad loss (Miami) and a bad win (NJIT) were two more steps back for Penn this week. Continued struggles at point guard negate Lewis’s hot streak.

7. Princeton [2-12; Previous Ranking: 5; RPI: 309 (-18)]
A blown lead and overtime loss to Lafayette is a tough way to drop a record 12th straight game. Look for Sydney Johnson to shake things up even more than he already has to get the Tigers out of their historic funk.

8. Dartmouth [5-8, 0-1 Ivy; Previous Ranking: 7; RPI: 262 (-21)]
Dartmouth’s only game this week was that disaster against Harvard, so it drops into the cellar for the time being.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Greetings from about two blocks away from the Miami Hurricanes’ BankUnited Center, where the Quakers will try not to set any more dubious NCAA scoring records Wednesday night.

As of midnight, Penn is a 20- or 21-point ‘dog, and it’s not hard to see why. The ‘Canes were ranked for two weeks, then suffered their first loss (to Winthrop) and fell out of the Top 25, but they’re still a darn good team on paper.

No way will Penn come out as flat as it did against Florida Gulf Coast, but the Quakers just don’t seem to match up well in this game. Miami shoots the lights out from three-point land (nearly 44%), which has killed the Quakers all year. The 6-foot-1, 185-pound junior Jack McClintock has been particularly ridiculous in this department; he leads the ACC with 2.91 threes per game and a 54.2% clip from deep and has a 20-point scoring average. James Dews, a sophomore with a bit more size, is a distant second in the conference in three-point percentage (47.9) and scores nearly 12 per game.

According to Penn’s game notes, Brennan Votel, Harrison Gaines and Michael Kach are doubtful again after missing the FGCU game, which means we’ll see plenty of Aron Cohen (who’ll start) and Andreas Schreiber, plus some more Kevin Egee, Conor Turley and possibly Cameron Lewis as well.

Check back here at 8 p.m. where I’ll be blogging the game live. Afterwards, myself and fellow DP Sports Editors Krista Hutz and Sebastien Angel will all have stories on dailypennsylvanian.com breaking things down.

As promised, here are my personal Ivy Rankings, Edition 2. (Here’s No. 1.) RPI is included this time as well, and starting in the next edition I’ll include how each team’s RPI moved in the previous week.

1. Cornell (6-4, Previous Ranking: 3, RPI: 118). The Big Red had the best-quality win of the week — Stony Brook — so the No. 1 spot is theirs by default.
2. Columbia (5-7, Previous Ranking: 4, RPI: 203). 46-point victories are in short supply around the Ivy League, even against an opponent like Polytechnic.
3. Brown (6-5, Previous Ranking: 1, RPI: 119). The Bears got blown out by Notre Dame, but the Irish are 10-2, so Brown only moves down two spots.
4. Harvard (4-11, Previous Ranking: 7, RPI: 301). Harvard is still losing, but by smaller and smaller margins. I’m predicting a win over Dartmouth on Saturday.
5. Princeton (2-10, Previous Ranking: 8, RPI: 291). Still not much for the Tigers to be proud of, but their nine-point loss to Monmouth this week pales in comparison to what the three teams below them did.
6. Yale (3-7, Previous Ranking: 6, RPI: 158). 35-point loss. (Kansas.)
7. Dartmouth (5-7, Previous Ranking: 5, RPI: 241). 35-point loss. (Siena.)
8. Penn (4-8, Previous Ranking: 2, RPI: 255). 30-point loss. (Florida Gulf Coast.) Pick the outlier in that group. Sorry, Quakers, but last place is a lock this week.

I’d like to get your thoughts on a big personnel question during the final exams lull. How should Glen Miller divide up time in the Penn frontcourt over the next few games?

Well, it depends on the answers to a few other questions:

• Is Justin Reilly’s offensive game worth his defensive lapses?

• Is it the right decision to bury Brennan Votel on the bench?

• Should Cameron Lewis be more than a defense/rebounding role player?

• Should we see more of Conor Turley after the boost he gave against Monmouth?

• Will Andreas Schreiber ever be able to stay out of foul trouble?

For a frame of reference, here’s how the minutes and points have been divvied up so far. I’m not counting Brian Grandieri in this group, although he’s been listed as a forward most of the year.

Eggleston: 10 GP, 26.4 mpg, 7.7 ppg, 51.8 FG% (29-56), (7-18) 3-pt. FGs, 4.7 rpg
Reilly: 10 GP, 18.4 mpg, 7.1 ppg, 46.0 FG% (23-50), (7-13) 3-pt. FGs, 2.3 rpg
Schreiber: 10 GP, 13.8 mpg, 5.0 ppg, 54.1 FG% (20-37), (3-14) 3-pt. FGs, 3.7 rpg
Votel: 9 GP, 9.4 mpg, 1.9 ppg, 33.3 FG% (7-21), (1-7) 3-pt. FGs, 2.6 rpg
Lewis: 8 GP, 8.1 mpg, 1.5 ppg, 33.3 FG% (4-12), (0-0) 3-pt. FGs, 1.3 rpg
Turley: 5 GP, 7.2 mpg, 1.4 ppg, 28.6 FG% (2-7), (0-3) 3-pt. FGs, 0.4 rpg

Leave your comments on this frontcourt mess below, but be fair. If you suggest that one player should see more time, please indicate who those minutes should come from.

Brian Seltzer’s weekly podcast offers some insight on Harrison Gaines’ absence from the starting lineup against Monmouth; Miller commented that he was looking for “more organization for our offense” and better decision-making — when to push things and when to put on the brakes. With a couple of days’ hindsight, I think it also had something to do with Gaines’ night against North Carolina, where he looked completely out of sorts.

If you’ve followed Penn basketball for more than 10 minutes, you probably know that the team will take a major blow without recently-graduated and current European basketballers Mark Zoller and Ibrahim Jaaber this season. It sounds bad, but the stats make it look even worse.

Zoller and Jaaber averaged 34.1 points per game, or 46 percent of the team’s total. And if you take out Stephen Danley’s (graduated) 8.7 and Tommy McMahon’s (medical redshirt) 5.0, (and yes, Adam Franklin’s 0.7) the current team (10 returning players) only accounted for 34 percent of last year’s points. Other than Brian Grandieri, the highest average last year was Kevin Egee’s 3.9 points per game.

Coach Glen Miller is clearly not oblivious to this issue.

“We’re trying to find out [who’s going to score], we don’t have those answers right now,” Miller said last Friday. “Just like the Ivy League has a lot of parity, on our team from top to bottom there’s a lot of parity.”

So where will the points come from in 2007-08?

The obvious answer is that Grandieri (11.7 points per game) will pick up the slack. Grandieri is the team’s best player, but he’s a guy that slips into the short corner and nails 10-footers or finds a loose offensive rebound and puts it in, not a guy who breaks a defender’s ankles and throws it down over a guy like Drexel’s Frank Elegar. He was a cog in last year’s offense, and without the parts around him can he do the same thing?

All is not lost, though. There is a lot of potential in this team.

Darren Smith, while he was tentaitive last year and his shot isn’t exactly beautiful, can knock down that corner three as well as anyone in this league. He hit an astounding 22 of 46 from deep (48 percent), he’s just got to be less gun-shy (a.k.a. shoot other than just on the game’s first three possessions) in his second season.

Egee also hit at a great percentage from three, going 20 for 39, but his strength is his all-around offensive game. He had a couple of strong drives in the Red and Blue scrimmage that ended in a runner (one went in, one didn’t). And he has the strongest triceps on the team.

Guys like Aron Cohen and freshman Tyler Bernardini are real unknowns, but each has a nice shot and could put it to use.

The inside game will be a big question mark, as guys like Justin Reilly, Brennan Votel and Cam Lewis have to prove they can score on the block. Lewis’ post game looked improved in the Red and Blue scrimmage, so we’ll have to see what he can do in a game, and how the other two will fare. Lets just say they weren’t the deadliest of shooters last season - Votel and Reilly went a combined 8 for 31 from three in 2006-07 (26 percent), while averaging a respectable 39 percent from inside the arc.