Harrison Gaines stood out on the court from day one.

While the rest of the team wears Nike Air Huarache Elite II, The freshman point guard has worn a different show almost the entire season so far – his pair of personalized Zoom Kobe II’s

“I asked [coach Glen] Miller before the season, ‘if I bought the shoe and personalized it would I be able to wear it?” Gaines said. “He said ‘fine, as long as it’s the Penn colors.’”

He personalized the pair on NikeId.com, and has worn them since.

But why these shoes when you have a perfectly good pair waiting for you in the locker room?

“People like Jordans because it’s Jordan, I like Kobe’s because it’s Kobe,” the Victorville, Calif., native said. “That’s probably the main reason [I like them] because it’s what Kobe wears.”

With the personalization, NikeID lets you put a nickname on the shoe. Ever since his cousin gave him the nickname “Goo” when he was little, he’s gone by that, and that’s what his Nike’s say.

“He said that I moved the defense like goo,” Gaines said. “It’s real corny, but it stuck.”

As has been the recent tradition, Penn will wear black shoes (which I believe are these, or something similar) during the Ivy League slate, so Gaines will have to retire his shoes until next season.

Non-conference play is finally over, and it sure wasn’t pretty. What arguably killed the Quakers the most, or at least the most glaring statistical weakness, was three-point shooting. Last season during non-conference play, Penn shot 35 percent from three-land, improving slightly to 38 percent during Ivy League action. This season, the Quakers have converted an icy 28 percent of their three-point shots. But what’s even more telling about Penn’s shooting as a team centers on one player’s dramatically reduced production from behind the arc: Brian Grandieri.

Grandieri, who netted 16 of 30 three-point shot attempts last season during non-conference play, has hit only 9 of 33 from downtown so far this season. Why this sudden drop-off? Last year, with the help of Ibrahim Jaaber, the Quakers were able to penetrate defenses much more easily and kick the ball out for open looks.

This season, with the injury to Darren Smith and subsequent absence of a reliable point guard, the Quakers haven’t yet found their slasher. Penn has showed positive signs recently with its inside play, and the team has rebounded every bit as well as it did last year. But its inability to penetrate has yielded remarkably lower assist totals this season, which also leads to colder three-point shooting.

Grandieri didn’t forget how to shoot the three; he just hasn’t gotten the good feeds that he was used to in years past. Now, as the Quakers head into conference play, someone needs to step up on the perimeter and break down defenses in order to get Penn’s three-point threats open looks at the basket.

One option might be Harrison Gaines, whose deft ball-handling skills and quickness could prove to be a major asset against the slower and less athletic teams in the Ivy League. If the Quakers can continue their improvement in the paint and add some semblance of a perimeter game, they might just be able to squeak back into the Tournament.

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.

Freshman point guard Harrison Gaines is unlikely to see action tonight against La Salle. He is still feeling the effects of re-tweaking his hamstring last week.

Junior Kevin Egee has been seeing more time in Gaines’ absence. Egee played 13 minutes against NJIT last Saturday (Gaines played 24), but he led the team with 30 against Miami when Gaines was on the bench.

Senior guard Michael Kach is good to go, according to Penn’s game notes, as is junior forward Brennan Votel, who dressed for NJIT but didn’t get in the game. Kach had been out with a back problem and Votel with a hamstring injury.

Elsewhere in the Big 5, both Villanova and St. Joe’s could be getting personnel boosts in the near future, the Inquirer reports.

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. — Miami coach Frank Haith started sophomore Dwayne Collins over junior Jimmy Graham last night against Penn, and the decision paid off when Collins terrorized the Quakers inside while Graham still had seven points in 23 minutes. Haith had an interesting explanation for the move:

“It wasn’t anything bad that Jimmy did. What we looked at was [that] … officiating at the beginning of the game is when it’s the tightest. And I think Jimmy always gets two fouls, so he sits for 17, 18 minutes, and he comes back in the second half and he gets his third foul. So he ends up playing like 11 minutes for the game. We want to get him more minutes. We want him on the court more. I’m not proving my theory like an Einstein, but [tonight] he got his first foul in the second half. His aggressive nature hurts him to start games sometimes.”

Penn injury report: Harrison Gaines (hamstring), Michael Kach (back) and Brennan Votel (hamstring) likely won’t return for Saturday’s game against N.J.I.T.

Good thing Votel wasn’t going to get in the game, because his mind might not have been on basketball. A troupe of eye-catching females made its way behind the junior during a first-half media timeout, and Votel found some time to chat it up with them on the bench before play resumed. Good to see at least some positives in an otherwise bad night for the Quakers.

It was a great night of promotions at the Hurricanes’ BankUnited Center. Instead of the Palestra-style protocol of throwing items into the stands, Miami instead dropped trinkets in tiny parachutes onto the crowd from the rafters. (Sadly, none were aimed at the media section.) Also, any fan could get a free shave or haircut right above Section 108. Spiffy.

Click here for excerpts of the Penn press conference, courtesy the Inquirer.

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.

Scoring or passing? Talent or experience? When it comes to point guards, Glen Miller seems to be valuing the latter in each case, which is how Harrison Gaines has ended up with a reduced role in Penn’s last two games. Aron Cohen dished five assists in 25 minutes Thursday; Gaines had four fouls — chalk up at least one to frustration — in 15 minutes.

It seemed like Gaines had secured the spot before stepping on campus — and he essentially had. Before the season, Miller and his staff were telling anyone who would listen that Gaines was going to start and that he would wow them all. But Miller acknowledged after the Elon game that the dynamics at the position have changed. Gaines has lost that favor, at least for the time being.

“We were high on Harrison,” Miller said. “But he’s a young point guard … He’s learning, he’s getting to see a lot from the bench, and Aron’s done a good job of organizing us in practice, getting us into [our] offense, and on the defensive end he’s done some good things too … Right now Aron has more experience and that experience has come to the forefront.”

Putting both of them on the floor wouldn’t make much sense because it would require keeping a better scorer — Mike Kach, for example — on the bench. So who should the every-day point guard be come Feb. 1? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Thursday’s game had the feel of a bad dinner party. Not as many people showed up as you would have liked, and everyone couldn’t wait to get out of dodge once it was over.

The most-beleagured-award goes to Elon, though. The team drove from Chattanooga to Philadelphia after losing the night of the 18th; after losing to Penn, the team packed up for a bus ride that night to Charlotteville to play Virginia tomorrow afternoon. Three games in five days and 1,600 travel miles, according to the Elon athletic department. And still no road wins this year. Next time people get down on Penn basketball, remind them that the Quakers program is good enough that it can avoid anything near that scheduling hell (thanks to the Big 5, Drexel, preseason tournaments in Philadelphia and eager-to-play schools sprinkled throughout Jersey). Give some holiday thanks for that.

Phoenix coach Ernie Nestor said he made the decision to bus the entire trip because of “economics.” No kidding.

Not that the Quakers were riding on easy street, either. Miller praised his team for getting by during finals on miniscule doses of sleep and practice and still coming ready to play against Elon. Brian Grandieri called the last two weeks “miserable” and did his best to expedite the postgame proceedings. When Tyler Bernardini began to respond to the final question with an anecdote from his high school days, Grandieri slapped his leg, laughed, and gave the freshman a wrap-this-thing-up look. Bernardini obliged, and the Quakers were mercifully out the door, free to enjoy their first winning streak of the season.

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.

Harvard once again one-upped the rest of the Ivy League — just like it did on early decision — by revamping and expanding its financial aid program. (Yale did its best to play catchup.) At some point, will Harvard’s advantages in this department (a roughly $36 billion endowment) give it an edge over the rest of the conference when it comes to convincing recruits to leave scholarships on the table? Or will it force everyone to up their commitment and thereby help the League? I lean toward the latter. Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

A few more thoughts from the Monmouth game: Overall, it was probably the best basketball the Quakers have played outside of the first half against North Carolina. There were downers; they still struggled to get the ball into the post without turning it over, and point guard play was erratic. But they hit 50% from the floor and didn’t turn the ball over nearly as much in the second half, which should be encouraging.

My one prediction for winter break is that we’ll see a few more players grab time in the frontcourt, like freshman Conor Turley did. Glen Miller said after the game that Penn had to adjust and spread the floor in the second half, because in one-on-one situations down low Monmouth was getting the better of every play. The main culprits there were Jack Eggleston and Justin Reilly.

He also said he was pleased that his team didn’t seem to be as reliant on the three-pointer as it was earlier this year, and he suggested that he would like to see the Quakers take fewer threes in the future, too.

The biggest question mark of the night was Harrison Gaines’ lack of minutes, and I don’t really have an explanation there.

Kevin Egee wasn’t with the team at Monmouth, and seperately, I spotted Remy Cofield on crutches outside Franklin Field today, so there’s two more items to keep an eye on in the coming days.

Monmouth-Penn also gets the award for ’smallest media contingent ever’ — two DP reporters, myself included, and one from the Ashbury Park Press in the Hawks’ weight room. Aaawkward.