ITHACA, N.Y. — Greetings from Cornell’s Schoellkopf field. We’re in the single digits for temperature and there is a light snow falling. At stake for Penn is a slim shot at the Ivy League title if the dominoes fall just the right way in this final game of the season.

11:01, Fourth quarter: Penn 23, Cornell 6

Samson breaks the single-season Penn field goal record with a 44-yard boot, his longest of the season. Penn’s passing game is totally inept, but McNally, DiMaggio and Matt Hamscher have been running the ball effectively enough to run tons of time off the clock. Cornell has a lot of ground to make up and can’t let Penn tack on any more field goals.

2:27, Third quarter: Penn 20, Cornell 6

The Big Red finally get back on the board with a 32-yard field goal.

6:31, Third quarter: Penn 20, Cornell 3

Cornell actually produce a couple of first downs, but then three incomplete passes forced them to go for a 35-yard field goal. The kick never had the distance and fell about 5 yards in front of the posts — and I dont believe it was tipped. Penn takes back over.

Also, I can officially say that Penn will not win this year’s Ivy League title, since Harvard’s win over Yale ensures that they will have only one league loss on the year.

Halftime: Penn 20, Cornell 3

Penn advanced enough to let Samson hit a 28-yard field goal to close out the half. Penn SID Eric Dolan informs me that Samson just tied the Penn record for field goals made in a season. Off to halftime.

0:30, Second quarter: Penn 17, Cornell 3

Just when I thought this would be the most boring second half of football ever, Penn’s Jonathan Moore picked off a Nathan Ford pass and outran most of the secondary to the Cornell 14 (although an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on defensive back Josh Powers pushed it back to the 29). Penn might not be able to make anything of this, but it’s at least a momentum boost going into the half.

8:00, Second quarter: Penn 17, Cornell 3

Penn worked methodically down to the Cornell 37, but then Mike DiMaggio ripped through a hole in the linebacker corps and took it to the house. Too easy. Penn now has a commanding two-touchdown lead.

Scoreboard watching: Penn’s miracle scenario for winning the Ivy League title isn’t looking too likely. Harvard is up by a touchdown over Yale at the half, but Brown looks to have Columbia in a bind, leading by two touchdowns at the half.

0:14, First quarter: Penn 10, Cornell 3

The Quakers settled for a 40-yard field goal on the last drive, Andrew Samson’s longest of the season. More interestingly, the player who has been Penn’s biggest spark lately, quarterback Keiffer Garton, is on the sidelines on crutches. This is a recent development. Stay tuned to see if he returns, but for now it appears that this is Brendan McNally’s game to win or lose. Robert Irvin is dressed and on the bench but hasn’t moved a muscle yet.

0:58, First quarter: Penn 7, Cornell 3

Cornell didn’t do anything on their next drive, and ended it with a shanked punt that netted them a whopping 11 yards. Penn now has the ball on the Cornell 28 to start its drive.

2:44, First quarter: Penn 7, Cornell 3

Helped by a 15-yard roughing the passer penalty, Penn answered with a 13-play, 59-yard touchdown drive. Luke DeLuca punched it in from a yard out, and we got our first sighting of Brendan McNally, who took about half of the snaps on this drive.

8:45, First quarter: Cornell 3, Penn 0

Both teams went nowhere on their first drives, but on Cornell’s second quarterback Nathan Ford threw a couple of nice passes in the flat to engineer a 10-play 40-yard drive that ended in a 32-yard field goal. On another note, Penn nose guard Joe Goniprow was ejected from the game for a personal foul that I personally did not see.

1) Earlier I posted a Washington Post article on the three-point line change in college basketball.  Here is a New York Times article on it, but from the perspective of… Cornell, of all teams.

2) Speaking of the three-point changes, Ken Pomeroy is tracking the difference in long-distance percentage from last year to this year.

3) The New York Times isn’t writing just about Cornell’s team, though. It also ran a profile on Penn’s Zack Rosen.

4) On Friday, the Ivy League released its Ivy Hoops guide for both men’s and women’s basketball.

5) Lastly, congratulations to the men’s soccer team, which beat, Harvard 1-0 on a breakaway goal off a turnover in overtime to clinch the Ivy League’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Senior goalkeeper Drew Healy earned his 11th shutout this year, which set a new Penn record. The Quakers, in all likelihood, are going to be the only fall team to take home an Ivy League crown, unless the football title is split four ways.

I know football season is just around the corner, but forgive this basketball interlude.

College Basketball 24/7 is a blog run by 15-year and self-proclaimed “fanatic about college basketball” Jakob Kagel. For a teenager, it’s not bad, but one of his more recent posts is a little puzzling.

On Tuesday he wrote a post entitled “Why Cornell Will be the best team in the Ivy League… Ever.” His argument is basically the following: Cornell returns a lot of talent, despite Adam Gore’s injury (yet he only mentions Ryan Wittman). The schedule has “very winnable early season games against brand name schools,” such as Indiana, Minnesota and St. John’s. Also, without an Ivy Conference tournament, they could clinch conference play early. Finally, he then says that if Cornell goes 14-0 in the League, they’ll have won 29 straight.

First off, I’m still not completely convinced Indiana will be an easy win, especially considering the game’s in Bloomington, not Ithaca. Going into Assembly Hall and getting a win is easier said than done, regardless of Indiana’s recent sub-par results (sub-par by its standards).

I’ll grant him the fact that the conference tournament clearly helps Cornell since they have a greater shot at making the NCAA Tournament without having to face single elimination.  But going 29-0 in a two-plus year span doesn’t make them the best ever, considering Penn won 48-straight Ivy League games from 1992-1996.

After this basic argument, he then says if Cornell does the above and goes 14-0 (which personally I don’t think will happen even if they are the league favorites), they’ll invite comparisons to Bucknell who “has been the most recent low major to escape from the confines of playing in a league that had not won an NCAA tournament game in 40 plus years.”

And here’s where his argument completely derails.  First off, the Patriot League was founded in 1986 as the Colonial League. And that first year Navy won three NCAA tournament games. Similarly, the Ivy League has had many tournament wins in the last 40 years plus year, as they have averaged just about one every two years since March 1967 (20 in 42 tournaments).

So maybe comparisons to Bucknell and the Patriot League aren’t apt.  Well what about the statement further down that “no team out of the Ivy has won an NCAA tournament game in 20-plus years.”  That’s simply not true. There’ve been three since 1988, most notably Princeton’s upset over defending champion UCLA in 1996.

After this error, Kagel then shifts back to Cornell, saying, “This year’s Cornell team will be the best that the league has had to offer for the last 15 years, at least.” Wait, I thought they were supposed to be the best team ever?  Oh no, actually it’s just that “the expectations for an Ivy League team have never been this high … ever.”  Oh so, it’s their expectations that are an Ivy record?

The end of the post kind of redeems him.  I think it could be argued that this team might be one of the best Ivy ones over the last 15 years.  Although I’m sure the Penn teams of Michael Jordan, Matt Maloney, Ugonna Onyekwe or even Ibrahim Jaaber might have something to say about that, not to mention some of the good Princeton teams in the 1990’s. And I’ll certainly agree that the expectations are quite high on this Cornell group.  But then again, the Big Red’s two best players, Wittman and Louis Dale, are just juniors, so it’s not like they have the extra pressure of only one more year to win an NCAA tournament game.

What do you think about Cornell’s chances of greatest Ivy team of the last 15 years, or even of all time?

The definition of schadenfreude is “satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else’s misfortune,” and right now Penn basketball fans might be feeling it.

Courtesy of the Ithaca Journal, Cornell senior guard Adam Gore torn his left ACL, in workouts. He’ll be out to at least mid-January, if not later. He had previously torn his right ACL at the end of the Big Red’s 2006 season-opening win on Nov. 11, causing him to miss the remaining 27 games of his sophomore year.

Gore had won Ivy League Rookie of the Year award in 2005-06, and last year, he was an important contributor, averaging 10.1 points per game in 27.3 minutes, while shooting 42 percent from behind the 3-point arc and a league-best 93 percent from the foul line. He also scored a season-high 19 against the Quakers at the Palestra in March.

Of course, Cornell returns one of the deeper tea ms in the league, and probably still will be favored to defend its Ivy title.

But Penn fans might be feeling a little extra happy today, even if they’re ashamed to admit it.

UPDATE: According to the Cornell Basketball Blog, there’s a solid chance that Gore might return for a fifth year in the 2009-10 season, as he already received an extra year of eligibility after his first torn ACL.  The blog also says his injury “is likely to cause him to miss the entire 2008-2009 season.”  So looks like the initial prognosis was on the optimistic side.

Giant Killer?

Yeah right.

Scratch that last remark. It is as bad as it could be, because it couldn’t be much worse than being down 38-17 at halftime. Cornell missed three key shots in the last minute and a half, and Stanford pounced to stretch their lead from around 14 to 21 in a matter of moments.

Steve Donahue’s club has problems. Cornell shot just 5-for-32 from the field, compared with 16-for-32 for Stanford. The Big Red were supposed to have the advantage from deep, but they’ve only hit 2 of 14 three-point shots. Louis Dale, who was on a hot streak coming into this game, has been playing out of control and has had trouble finishing over the Cardinal’s big men. He hasn’t scored yet after 8 shot attempts. Jeff Foote has 3 fouls, and Adam Gore hasn’t gotten open enough to take quality shots.

Cornell is on pace to break the Tournament record for lowest shooting percentage in the shot-clock era. They’re at 15.6 percent right now; the lowest ever was when Prarie View A&M shot 23 percent against Kansas.

Michigan State 72, Temple 61

Things aren’t looking good for Cornell either, although only being down 12 with three minutes to go isn’t nearly as bad as it could be, considering how awfully they have shot the ball. Also, who is the kid running the point for Cornell, and what did he do with Louis Dale?

A few previews of the Cornell-Stanford game, which I will be tuning in to, come hell or Poli Sci recitation:

• CBS Sportsline
• Palo Alto Weekly
• New York Times
• ESPN.com (scroll down)
• Joe Lunardi
• Associated Press
• Ithaca Journal
• Stanford Athletics
• Cornell Athletics

After the jump, my thoughts on what Cornell has to do to win along with some more stats.

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Okay, I was wrong. Cornell — with an RPI of 65 — got a 14-seed, not a 13 like I thought, outdone by Winthrop (with an RPI  of 109), Siena (67), Oral Roberts (53) and San Diego (94). In retrospect, a relatively poor strength of schedule outside the Ivies (186th in the country) probably hurt. Still, for the second season in a row the seeding of the Ivy representative leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

Cornell will have to deal with third-seeded Stanford, which is playing just around six hours by car from campus. They’ve been playing well lately, too, but so have the Big Red.

P.S.: It’s okay to root for Cornell here, even if you’re a Quaker at heart, so no angry comments please.

As of 9:30 p.m. tonight, by my count, there are thirteen teams with tickets to the Tournament who have RPIs worse than Cornell. And there are a couple of close calls that can go either way. That means that the Big Red’s chances of grabbing a 13-seed look good; they would need 13 teams to be placed below them.

Cornell’s RPI is 65, better than Belmont, Austin Peay, Portland State, American, UMBC, San Diego, Winthrop and Mount Saint Mary’s, all of whom are in.

The Coppin State-Morgan State winner, the Jackson State-Mississippi Valley State winner, the Boise State-New Mexico State winner and the Cal State Fullerton-UC Irvine winner (all decided in the next few hours) should also be seeded below Cornell, as will the winner of Texas-Arlington and Northwestern State, who play tomorrow at 1.

That’s 13. Siena (67) and George Mason (62) are both close to Cornell and could concievably be ranked lower as well. The Big Red have an advantage with their perfect mark in the last 10 games, but a disadvantage in that the committee, every single year, overvalues conference tournaments. Even so, if I were a betting man, I would be pretty sure Cornell will hold on to the 13.