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Jonathan Tannenwald, Penn Club member and Ivy League sports experts. |
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Exclusive Penn Basketball Q&A with expert Jonathan Tannenwald
Jonathan Tannenwald is a 2006 graduate of the College and an active member of the Penn Club. He currently writes the Soft Pretzel Logic blog for Philly.com covering College Hoops.
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1. How are things shaping up in the Ivy League this year?
The top team in the Ivy League this year without question is two-time defending champion Cornell. Thanks to an undefeated conference record and non-conference wins at St. John's and Alabama, the Big Red are ranked No. 22 in the current ESPN/USA Today Coaches poll.
Cornell's coach, Steve Donahue, was an assistant at Penn under Fran Dunphy from 1990 to 2000. He is a native of Springfield, Delaware County, in the Philadelphia suburbs. Cornell's top players include point guard Louis Dale, 6-foot-7 sharpshooter Ryan Wittman and seven-foot center Jeff Foote.
Harvard, the only school in the Ivy League that has never made the NCAA Tournament, was expected to contend for the title this year. The Crimson are led by high-scoring guard Jeremy Lin, and head coach Tommy Amaker has brought in a number of impressive athletes in his two recruiting classes thus far.
After beating William & Mary and Boston College in its non-conference schedule, there was talk that Harvard and Cornell could both win NCAA Tournament bids. The Ivy League has never sent two teams to the NCAA Tournament in the same season.
But the Crimson lost at Cornell last weekend, and were upset by Princeton at home this past Friday. Harvard is now two games back of the Big Red, which matters because the Ivy League does not have an end-of-season conference tournament. The Ancient Eight is the only conference in Division I that gives its NCAA Tournament bid to its regular-season champion.
Cornell goes to Boston later this month, but the Crimson need the Big Red to lose another game to have a shot at the title.
The team that may now be in the best position to knock off Cornell is Princeton. The Tigers are also undefeated in conference play thus far, and won impressively at Saint Joseph's in January. Princeton has struggled the last few seasons, but seems to have finally returned to prominence.
Princeton hosts Cornell this coming Saturday. If the Tigers play as well as they did at Harvard, an upset is not out of the question.
2. What can you tell us about Penn's Coaches this season?
Penn's head coach is Jerome Allen, a former star Quakers guard who led the team to its last NCAA Tournament win in 1994. Allen is one of the most famous players in program history, and is also a Philadelphia native who came to Penn from Episcopal Academy.
Allen became the coach this past December when Glen Miller was fired after three and a half seasons of struggle and controversy.
Miller took the helm after the 2005-06 season, when Fran Dunphy replaced John Chaney at Temple. Having inherited a roster full of seniors, Miller led Penn to the Ivy League title with ease in his first campaign.
After that, though, the program fell on hard times. Penn went 8-6 in Ivy League play in Miller's second season, and 6-8 last year - including a disastrous 1-6 in conference games at the Palestra.
Penn also lost all of its Big 5 games in those seasons. That streak has continued, and is now at 13 games - the longest losing streak in City Series history.
The Quakers' struggles under Miller were due in no small part to injuries suffered by top players, including shooting guard Tyler Bernardini.
But the situation was not helped by Miller's personality, which grated on some people. Miller was also perceived to not have embraced the Philadelphia basketball community as strongly as his predecessors.
After Penn started this season 0-7, Miller was fired at the beginning of the fall exam break. Allen's tenure started with blowout losses at Davidson and Duke, but the coaching change clearly brought a new spirit to the players. Their hard work was rewarded with tough wins at Brown and Dartmouth on the first two weekends of conference play.
3. Who are the players to watch on this year's team?
Penn's best player is guard Zack Rosen. The 6-1 native of Colonia, N.J., is the team's best scorer and passer. He is the team's leader on and off the floor, and has fully embraced that responsibility.
As such, Rosen is almost always the main target of opponents' defenses. Although he is able to put the team on his back when necessary, Rosen has badly needed a second player to step up on offense and spread the opposition out on the floor.
Over the last few games, 6-foot-6 forward Dan Monckton has finally emerged as that player. The native of Glenview, Ill., scored 11 points against Yale and Brown and a season-high 19 points against Harvard. Monckton is currently leading the team in field goal percentage.
4. What are your predictions for the Penn v. Princeton game this year?
Princeton is the better team and should win the game. Having said that, if there's a big turnout of Penn fans at the Palestra, that could give Penn's players a boost.
Perhaps the biggest consequence of Penn's struggles over the last few seasons has been the historically low attendances at the Palestra. There were barely 1,000 fans at Glen Miller's last home game as head coach, and the once-boisterous student section has been barren for much of the last two seasons.
By contrast, this season I've seen sellout crowds and packed student sections at Columbia and Harvard, two schools who have historically been apathetic towards their basketball programs. In past years when I've covered games in New York and Boston, Penn fans have outnumbered the home supporters.
5. What are you most looking forward to during this year's game?
I am excited about this game. I'm always excited for Penn-Princeton games, especially at the Palestra. Despite both teams' struggles in recent years, this game remains the Ivy League's most famous rivalry. Rosen and Princeton guard Douglas Davis, a Philadelphia native, are the kind of players who can help bring the game back to the prominence it once enjoyed.
Penn fans might want to pay attention to what is going on at Princeton right now. The Tigers fell on very hard times in the three-year coaching tenure of Joe Scott, from 2004 to 2007. Scott was succeeded by former Tigers star Sydney Johnson, who has brought new life to his alma mater.
The Quakers' decline under Glen Miller was in some ways similar and in some ways different. Most notably, Scott alienated his senior class rather quickly, while Miller won the Ivy League in his first season.
But as with Scott, Miller's tenure did not last four years. Like Johnson, Allen was a star player in the 1990's who returned to his alma mater to lead it back to prominence.
Princeton's rise under Johnson has been faster than anyone expected. If Allen can maintain the good feelings he has brought to the program (and land some good recruits), Penn could rise from the ashes in similar fashion.
And if that happens, perhaps the fans will come back to the Palestra too.
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