In case you were worried that Penn Athletics was only focusing on marketing the men’s basketball team, the women’s basketball team is also receiving the wisdom of Nelligan Sports Marketing.

Against Drexel Dec. 19, the team will attempt to set an all-time attendance record for a home game as part of the yearly “Pack the House” Challenge. Part of the campaign also includes getting school groups to come to the Palestra — a necessity, since the game is during winter break.

Of all the women’s basketball games I’ve been to, the most spectators I’ve ever seen is about 200. So there’s certainly a lot of seats to be filled in the Palestra. Also it’s interesting that both the women’s and men’s games against Drexel this year are part of NCAA-wide gimmicks. The men’s team will play at Drexel for the first time ever, and it’ll be at 10 a.m. as part of ESPN’s 14-hour hoops marathon.

Here are two other Random Ivy notes:

1) Ivysport.com, which for the most part is a site that sells Ivy League apparel, has an “infopedia” on the Ivy League. Most of you probably already know the vast majority of what’s on this site, but in case you ever want to find out which Ivy League school doesn’t have a Latin motto (Cornell), or you want to see a good timeline of Ivy League history, this is the site for you.

2) Pumped up for college basketball after The Line?  Well here’s a reason to like every single basketball team in America.  Penn’s reason:

Glenn Miller has himself a deep rotation. Darren Smith and Tommy McMahon missed last season. Zach Rosen leads the recruiting class that’s pretty awesome. Harrison Gaines has an awesome rich man name. And the Quakers have four returning starters. Flat out.

• We start off with a preview of tomorrow’s matchup with Lafayette out in bumfu- excuse me, Easton, Pa. Sports Editor David Gurian-Peck also profiles Neil Goldsmith of Lafayette, who has a brother on the Quakers. And here’s a brief rundown of the weekend around the conference.
• The Harvard Crimson previews the weekend, too, and previews their game against Brown. The Herald chimes in, too.
• The only other Ivy-Ivy game this week is Yale-Cornell. The Yale Daily News previews it here and here, the Cornell Daily Sun here and the Ithaca Journal here and here.
• For a quick basketball note, Yale had a commitment reported today.
• Penn and Harvard have a big match in women’s soccer this weekend. Here is the Crimson’s preview and here is the DP’s.

I know it’s a few days late, but I just found this post on the New York Times college sports blog. According to Princeton head coach Roger Hughes, Ivy League football is similar to the NFL because of the recruiting restrictions placed by the League.

The post also brings up the oft-cited issue of banning the Ivy League regular season champion — or for that matter any Ivy team — from the Football Championship Subdivision Playoffs.

While I certainly argree with the overturning the ban, I don’t know if I can agree with the NFL comparison. Maybe if the Ivy League had limited scholarships instead of the limited lower academic slots, then the comparison to the salary cap would be better suited. Furthermore, the salary cap isn’t that much of a hinderance to the top teams in the NFL. In fact, salary caps help cut ownership costs, which obviously is not a hinderance to NFL owners like the limited lower academic slots are to Ivy football coaches.

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?

Update: Lindy’s Sports also picked Penn to finish second behind Cornell.  But they give stats of returning players, so you might want to check that out.

Penn still hasn’t released its 2008-09 men’s basketball schedule yet, but national sports magazines have already started their Ivy League predictions.

Athlon Sports just released its 2008-09 college basketball preview edition, and the magazine has selected Penn to come in second in the Ivy League. Cornell is picked to win it again, although it does mention Adam Gore as a key contributor; clearly that’s not going to be the case now that he’s out at least four months with an ACL injury.

Sophomore Tyler Bernadini was the only Penn selection on the All-Ivy First Team. Cornell led with two selections, Juniors Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale, who was named Preseason Player of the Year.

Penn’s entry states that “the concern is that the strength of the team is in the younger classes, similar to what Cornell had going into last season.”  It also calls Coach Glen Miller’s five freshmen the “league’s best” incoming class. And finally, it mentions the return of Darren Smith and Tommy McMahon from injuries.

After the jump, the entire predicted order of finish and All-Ivy First Team.

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Building on David’s last post, so far six Ivy League teams have released their Men’s Basketball schedules. These are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton and Yale, leaving Harvard and of course Penn as the two that have yet to disclose their schedules. To further add to David’s post, the February 7th and March 6th Penn games against Cornell are confirmed, as are the two Princeton games. However there’s a big change. Normally, the Tigers visit the Palestra on a Tuesday in mid February, and Penn visits Jadwin on the Tuesday of Spring Break. But according to the Princeton site, it’s reversed. Princeton hosts Penn Feb. 17th, and travels to Philadelphia March 10.

Looking at the non-conference opponents for the other schools, you can say there are three levels of competition. At the bottom are Princeton and Dartmouth. Princeton is clearly in rebuilding mode, as the non-Ivy team with the best record the Tigers will face is 19-12 UNC Greensboro. In fact, UNC Greensboro is the only Tiger non-conference opponent that had an over-.500 record last year. Furthermore, the Tigers also play D-II school Concordia (N.Y.). Maybe they’ll lose to the Clippers just like they did to D-III Carneige Mellon in 2005. (They do face two major conference schools. But South Carolina went 14-18 last year and replace coach David Odom, and Rutgers went 11-20.)

Likewise, while Dartmouth does face a major conference school (Providence), the Friars went 15-16. Instead, its best opponents are Colgate and Marist who both went 18-14 last year. And the Big Green also play a non-Division-I school, facing D-III Plymouth St. They’ll also participate in the Golden Bear Classic hosted by Cal Berkeley, facing Cal (16-15), and the winner/loser of Air Force (16-14) vs. University of Portland (9-22), who should not to be confused with 23-9 Portland St.

In the middle tier of non-conference scheduling, we have Brown and Columbia, who face tough mid major teams, and middling high major schools. The Bears play two 2008 tournament teams in George Mason (23-10) and American (21-11), as well as ACC team Virginia (15-15). The Lions also get the Eagles of American and a Big Six conference opponent (Seton Hall, 17-15).

Although Penn does have probably the hardest non-conference game of any Ancient Eight team, two other Ivy schools  have tough games before starting league play. Stanford (26-7), who made the Sweet Sixteen a year ago, plays at (yes at) Yale. The Bulldogs also travel to Alabama (17-16), and Oregon St. (6-25), where they’ll take on former Brown coach Craig Robinson (no not this Craig Robinson).

But Cornell takes the cake. The Big Red probably has the toughest stretch of any Ivy team, traveling to Indiana (25-7), Syracuse (19-13) and Minnesota (20-13) in a seven day span. They also will play in the NIT Preseason Tip-Off, whose top five seeds are Purdue (24-8), Oklahoma (22-11), Arizona (19-14), Boston College (14-17) and Davidson (26-6). (All but BC made the tournament last year.) Finally, as I already wrote, Cornell visits the Palestra… to face St. Joseph’s (21-13), a 2008 tournament team.

So where would you say Penn’s non-conference slate of UNC (32-2), Penn St. (15-16), Albany (15-15), Navy (16-14), Lafayette (15-15) and of course the Big 5 schools rank? I’d say probably second to Cornell’s.

UPDATE: Here is Harvard’s schedule. The Crimson’s hardest game is probably a trip to Boston College. Penn now is the only team that has yet to release its schedule.