Soft Pretzel Logic

Geez.

Oh lord. Just saw on SportsCenter the Wisconsin-Indiana highlights, in which the Hoosiers upset the No. 2-ranked Badgers, 71-66.

The Indiana fans rushed the court.

Seriously. Indiana fans rushed the court at Assembly Hall.

That is one heck of a sign of how far that program has fallen.

The latest Inquirer sports poll asks who you think has the best chance of making the NCAA Tournament: Penn, Drexel, Villanova or St. Joe's. As of now, Villanova is winning the thing, with seven votes to Penn's four and Drexel's three. SJU has none.

Vote, would ya?

I realize I said in the previous post that regular-season games don't matter in conferences with post-season tournaments. Well, two games tonight could prove me wrong, and they both involve Big 5 teams.

Tonight in the Atlantic 10, the bottom four teams face off against each other. It's next-to-last-place Temple (1-5 in conference, 7-12 overall) at last-place Richmond (1-6, 5-15) and third-from-last La Salle (2-5, 9-12) at fourth-from-last UNC-Charlotte (2-5, 8-11). As the two worst teams in the conference don't go to the conference tournament, these games are a pretty big deal.

If La Salle wins, the Explorers will jump over Charlotte and get a bit of breathing room. If that happens and Temple wins, the Owls will also jump Charlotte by a half-game (one fewer loss), but won't pass La Salle (more wins overall). If Temple loses, it will fall into last place, but Richmond won't overtake either Charlotte or La Salle.

The Charlotte-La Salle winner could also jump over St. Bonvanture and Duquesne, which are stuck in a four-way tie for seventh place at 3-4, if they lose tonight. The Bonnies are 6-14 overall and the Dukes are 7-11 overall. And there's a good chance that both teams will go down, as St. Bonaventure goes to Fordham and Duquesne hosts Xavier.

If any of you readers follow soccer, you know about the idea of relegation: the bottom teams in many European leagues drop down to lower leagues for the next season. The analogy to American sports is a Major League Baseball team getting knocked down to Triple A. It's not uncommon to see fans (especially in England) really get up for games between teams in danger of relegation. In part for lack of anything else to do, and in part because of the money in European soccer. What we have in the A-10 isn't quite like that, but it's sort of close. And given the local involvement, it's at least worth paying attention to around here.

Great story by Mike Kern in this morning's Daily News about how the Ivy League is once again thinking about having a post-season conference tournament in basketball to determine the winner of its automatic bid. The athletic directors of the eight Ivy schools will meet tomorrow to discuss this and whatever else sports-related is on their minds.

No one asked me (yet), but I'm against it. I am now and I have been for a while and I am pretty sure I will be for a long time. And not just for the Ivy League.

Simply put, I don't think any conference should give its automatic bid to its tournament champion. The best team in each conference deserves the automatic bid, and that team is the one with the best record in regular season conference play. That means every conference from the ACC to the Big East to the Patriot League to the Sun Belt. Easy enough.

It's especially true for the non-BCS conferences, though. If you have a team that's better-than-good but maybe not good enough to be sure of an at-large bid, you want that team in the Tournament. That team has a better chance at a high seed and thus a chance to win a game and deliver the conference a big bag of cash. I'm thinking of Bucknell in the Patriot League over the last two years. The Bison got a 9-seed in last year's tournament but a team that had knocked it off would have been a 16-seed.

Air Force in the Mountain West and Nevada in the WAC are other good examples of very good teams in one-bid conferences where the other teams have trailed well behind in recent years.

Now I'm sure the BCS conference teams, especially those in the ACC and Big East, would complain loudly about how that would devalue their tradition-laden, big-money, national-TV-for-every-game tournaments. But even if it's close to impossible for the worst team in those conferences to knock off four teams in four days because the top teams are so good, it's not completely impossible. And I'm sure those conferences would hate nothing more than if that happened in a (relative) off year when they weren't guaranteed five or six bids each.

Remember, it wasn't so long ago that the Big Ten and Pac-10 didn't have conference tournaments, and they didn't really suffer for it. If anything, their regular seasons were more valuable, and those lasted four months instead of four days. Ivy League regular-season games have more value in them than regular-season games in any other conference because of the lack of a tournament.

It might be a speck of dust on the national conscience relative to the major conferences, but Penn-Princeton has a far bigger effect on the Tournament field (most years, at least) than Rutgers-Seton Hall or Northwestern-Minnesota.

Heck, Duke-Carolina doesn't really affect the tournament field either most years, because both teams are probably going to go (unless Matt Doherty is coaching Carolina). People watch that game because it's a great rivalry and the teams are really good, but they don't watch because a Tournament berth is on the line.

Penn AD Steve Bilsky makes a lot of very good points about scheduling an Ivy tournament around classes, midterms, and other logistical problems. But that's not the real reason to scrap the idea. Same goes for figuring out where to hold the thing. The real reason to not have a tournament is that it makes the other teams in the conference have teams and programs that are good enough to genuinely merit winning the title and going to the NCAA Tournament. As Bilsky said in the paper, Penn and Princeton have done the work and been rewarded, and the other teams have not:

"If, over the last 40 years, we'd won 10 [titles], Princeton won 10 and every other team split the other 20, so everyone had a taste of it, I don't think we'd be having this discussion. I kind of sense that [some believe] the only way to break this roadblock is to do something different. I don't think that's a reason to do it at all."

Say what you will about the Ivy League not changing much over time, but on this count I think they've got it right.

No newsstand today because actual work calls. I built up a widget to display the latest college sports headlines on Philly.com that you can see on the right side of the blog, but beyond that you're on your own. Sorry.

I thought pretty hard about giving LOTD to Luke Harangody instead, but Carter edged it by being a Philly-area guy.

Heck, I've got the time, so why not split it -- even though Harangody is now down to 30th in the individual offensive rankings. The offensive rebounds are what really convinced me.

Got an email from a Villanova fan explaining the lettuce thing. Apparently it was a promotion for a supermarket in which a young woman had "to toss heads of iceberg lettuce 10-15 feet into a shopping cart." The prize was a gift certificate to said supermarket. According to the email, the value of the gift certificate went up with each throw. Well, as you can imagine, every head of lettuce that hit the edge of the cart blew up, and apparently some of the ones that landed in the cart did too.

"Everyone in the house could tell this was a dumb idea from the beginning," the emailer wrote.

I have to say, I think it was fantastic.

In honor of that famed former Philadelphia paper, the Bulletin, an afternoon edition of Newsstand.

Villanova lost to Pitt, 65-59. In the Inquirer, Shannon Ryan writes about how the Wildcats' fans left the building. David Aldridge write an eloquent column about Pitt coach Jamie Dixon's sister, Maggie, who died last year at age 28 and would have an amazing story even if Army hadn't won the Patriot League last season. In the Daily News, Dana Pennett O'Neill reports on something truly extraordinary: an actual atmosphere at the Wachovia Center.

Drexel got Frank Elegar back last night, and he scored 16 points as the Dragons beat Northeastern, 67-41. Huskies coach Bill Coen called the Dragons' defense the best in the CAA.

Down a division, Cheyney State has suspended its athletic director but won't say why.

In High and Inside, Chuck Bausman says that "college basketball has never been more important" to the Philly area, but advises that we should "sit back and enjoy the college kids and keep [our] expectations realistic." That might be a first, but it's certainly a welcome one.

The Temple student paper does some investigating and finds something has been missing at Owls games of late: the two ancillary mascots, T-Bird and Baby Owl.

The new College HoopsCast is finally ready for your enjoyment, by clicking here or by downloading the latest episode in iTunes.

This week, Mike and I break down Villanova's loss to Pittsburgh and Drexel's loss to Virginia Commonwealth. As I mentioned yesterday, we held the show an extra day so we could include the 'Nova-Pitt result.

Then we consider whether St. Joe's can win the A-10 -- and whether Temple will even make the A-10 Tournament?

And we close out with a special feature. This past Thursday at the Big 5 Hall of Fame induction ceremony, I interviewed two of the members of the class of 2007: Jen Zenszer and Diana Caramanico. I also spoke with two close friends of the third inductee, the late John McAdams: former Big 5 Executive Secretary Dan Baker and veteran AP college basketball writer Jack Scheuer.

I hate to sound like I'm shouting into the wind, but I really want to hear from some Villanova fans. Specifically, I want to know more about that lettuce that ended up on the court during the media timeout. I only watched the Pitt game on TV and they mentioned that there was some promotion where people had to throw lettuce into a shopping basket or something, and the heads (I assume it was iceberg lettuce heads for aerodynamics' sake?) that hit the edge exploded all over the floor.

So someone please email me or post a comment. Even better if you shot some cell phone video or something.

There were 18,000-plus of you at the game. Surely someone could help.

The College HoopsCast didn't come out today because Mike and I decided to wait until tomorrow morning so we could analyze Pitt-Villanova. It'll be ready tomorrow afternoon.

Now that the Barbaro stuff has settled a little bit, I have time to take a few minutes to read some of the mail I've received (yes, I have fan mail, and I'm very happy about it).

I've been going back and forth with Penn fan Will Weiss about the future of the Big 5. I'm going to condense what he wrote a little bit because his original email was really, really long, but here are the main parts. Oh, and if you want your thoughts on here, please feel free to post a comment or send me an email.

Will wrote:

I am curious as to what you think is the future of the Big 5. I think you can look at the Penn-Temple game and say, that's what Big 5 basketball is all about. The media coverage was incredible, and if only for a night, it was amazing to have the Big 5, and more selfishly Penn in the local spotlight.

Although the atmosphere was at its best, it's hard to ignore the 2,000 plus tickets that went unsold for the game. Then again, it was a cold Wednesday night and this weekend's battle is entirely sold-out. Perhaps more uplifting is the fact that the St Joe's game is sold-out without the additional storyline. It is simply the Big 5 at its best, on a Saturday at the Palestra.

When I try to look into the future I see mixed signals. The rise of big-money conference basketball has undoubtedly hurt the Big 5, although it has made it even more unique. I wonder if 'Nova even "needs" the Big 5.

My reply is this: I do think the Big 5 survives, and I think the number one reason for that is Jay Wright. Whether or not Villanova 'needs' it, Wright really does appreciate the history and tradition. And with Penn and Drexel being at the levels that they are, it allows him to say that his team plays a good non-conference schedule instead of the absolute creampuff stuff you see at Syracuse, UConn and Pitt.

As I'm sure you know well, Syracuse and UConn don't cross state lines until February unless there's a big bag of money down the highway, and it's not like there are that many great teams to play in their own states. Boeheim can claim that the games at the Garden are against good teams, which they are, but 'Nova gets out of its gym and plays genuine road games in genuine road atmospheres.

I'm also very much in favor of including Drexel officially in the Big 5. I understand that teams don't necessarily have the scheduling space to fit Drexel in. Given how large the A-10 and Big East are now, that is clear. But it is certainly worth remembering in the years to come that only La Salle couldn't fit Drexel in this season, not Temple or 'Nova. John Chaney's Owls wouldn't play Drexel, but Fran Dunphy is willing to do it, so hopefully that will stand.

At the very least, there are two easy things to do to include Drexel even if the round-robin can't be expanded. They deserve a flag in the Palestra rafters, and their players should be considered for what the Big 5 calls the "All-City Team." As the point was made to me recently, include Drexel and call it the All-City team or exclude them and call it the All-Big 5 team.

Above all, though, the Big Ten has 11 teams and the Atlantic 10 has 14. So there is no good reason why the Big 5 can't have six.

Will's reply and my response to the reply after the jump.

It's going to be light on posting for a while because I have to work on Philly.com's coverage of the death of Barbaro. But I need to get out there that I got it wrong in my post on the "traitor" rollout last week. I talked to Jason Ginsburg, the head of Penn's Red and Blue Crew, and he said that the rollout in question was indeed aimed at Fran Dunphy, not those of his former players who where rooting for Temple. He said he wanted to play off the Miller beer "man law" theme, but that it wasn't intended to be anything other than a joke.

I said I'd post if I was wrong in my theory, and I was, so there you have it.

It's Monday, so start with Dick Jerardi's weekend wrap in the Daily News.

It's also Big Monday, and the Bill Raftery Show comes to the Wachovia Center tonight as 'Nova hosts No. 9 Pitt. In the Daily News, Dana Pennett O'Neill profiles the basketball bloodlines of Panthers guard and Friends Central grad Mike Cook. In the Inquirer, Shannon Ryan writes that the Wildcats will try to do unto Aaron Gray as they have unto two other big men this season, Roy Hibbert and Kevin Durant.

At the other end of Broad Street, and speaking of Philly-Pittsburgh games, Temple's Dionte Christmas suffered a laceration on his left hand at Duquesne on Saturday. That's his non-shooting hand, but it required 17 stitches. He's questionable for the game at Richmond on Wednesday.

The Penn student paper reports that a football game took place at the Palestra on Saturday, while a columnist says that the worst is over for Penn.

National news after the jump.

Can we please end the argument about whether the Pac-10 is the best conference in the country?

As in, now?

Latta's that good, and she's only 5-foot-6, by the way. Half an inch or so taller than I am. Not that the comparison's any valid, because I'm truly awful at actually playing basketball (which I was going to admit sooner or later). Seriously, though, Latta and the Tar Heels are worth your attention.

Here's an interesting stat from last night's Penn-St. Joe's game that wasn't in the box score: both teams recorded 67 possessions. You might remember that in last week's Crunchy Numbers, I noted that Penn averaged 69.8 possessions per game and St. Joe's averaged 62.2 possessions per game (or, to be truer to the definition, per 40 minutes).

The halfway point between those two numbers is 66. I thought watching the game that Penn was playing at a pace slower than what it usually does, which turned out to be the case. But the Quakers were able to get St. Joe's to at least play somewhat faster than normal.

By the way, the formula for computing the number of possessions in the game is this: Field goal attempts minus offensive rebounds plus turnovers plus 0.475 times the number of free throw attempts.

It makes sense, in that a second-chance basket comes on the same possession as the first shot, and a possession with no shot resulted in a turnover. As for the 0.475, I understand that a bunch of people researched it for a while and settled on that number. I'm certainly not going to bother arguing.

Some articles to read or to print out for your commute in tomorrow morning:

This column by Bob Ford on Drexel's struggles to get attention.

This column by John Feinstein about Fran Dunphy's return to the Palestra which blows the cover on the weekly media pickup basketball game. Wednesday at noon, if you didn't know.

This long piece on Pitt center Aaron Gray, whose Panthers come to the Wachovia Center to face Villanova on Big Monday.

This story that I can't help thinking wouldn't have been written had Notre Dame not beaten Villanova.

This recap of North Carolina's rout of Arizona and this column about the lack of joy in Mudville, known to the rest of us as Tuscon.

This piece about a missed dunk by Kansas' Julian Wright against Colorado. UPDATE: Watch it here.

Last night, I was courtside at the Palestra to bring you live commentary of the Big 5 Hall of Fame Game between Penn and Saint Joseph's. After the jump, you'll find my running commentary of the scene at a sold-out Palestra as the night unfolded. It wasn't so much a play-by-play, though there was definitely some of that. Instead, it was more about the atmosphere, like the rollouts and the chants the student sections come up with.

A few quick things about other games today before Penn-St. Joe's tips off:

Villanova lost at Notre Dame, 66-63, after leading 25-21 at the half. Scottie Reynolds led the Wildcats with 19 points on 5-of-14 shooting (eight free throws did the rest), but Shane Clark and Mike Nardi both fouled out. Colin Falls led the Irish with 23 points on 6-of-11 shooting, including 3-of-7 from three and eight free throws of his own.

Minus Frank Elegar, Drexel lost to VCU at the DAC, 75-68. B.A. Walker of VCU was the game's high scorer with 24 points on 7-of-11 shooting, including 6-of-8 from three. Bashir Mason led Drexel with 19 points on 6-of-11 shooting, including 2-of-4 from three. Drexel's 16 turnovers proved costly, as did shooting only 6-of-19 from three as a team. But VCU's very good, no doubt about it. It was easy to see why they're 20th in the country in offensive efficiency, as their offense had a pretty easy time of controlling the flow of the game.

La Salle lost at home to Fordham, 62-54, thanks largely to 20 points from Rams guard Marcus Stout. It also didn't help that the Explorers shot only 20-of-16 from the field and a frigid 1-of-11 from three.

And out west, North Carolina beat the stuffing out of Arizona, 92-64. The Wildcats made only one of 23 three-point attempts and turned the ball over 20 times, while the Tar Heels shot 51.3 percent from the field and recorded 18 steals. Six UNC players finished in double figures in scoring and point guard Tywon Lawson dished out eight assists.

Now back to tonight's game.

Greetings from courtside at the Palestra, where warmups are underway for tonight's Penn-St. Joe's Big 5 Hall of Fame Game.

Those of you who attend St. Joe's games regularly, especially their games at the Palestra, know that their students usually arrive a good few hours before tipoff. I wanted to interview the very first student Hawks fans to arrive, so I got to the Palestra a few minutes after 4 p.m.

There weren't any around yet. I was stunned.

Finally, at 4:48 p.m., the first St. Joe's student fan, Matt Wilson (right), arrived. He helps organize the student section, distributing the red-and-white pom-poms that you see sitting on the bleachers before most of the students arrive.

"It’s a Big 5 tradition," he said of Hawks fans arriving early. "We love to come here and show up in big numbers and make sure we’re represented by our school. We have a lot of pride for our basketball team."

Wilson also wasn't afraid to talk a little trash about Penn fans, who are famous for not showing up in large numbers until right before tip-off -- if that.

"We take a lot of pride because the game’s on [their] campus and they can’t even show up before we do," he said. "We’re not far away, but at least we can show up early and help our team out before the game even starts."

A few minutes after that, three more St. Joe's students arrived. One of them, David (leftmost of the three at left -- he didn't want to give his last name), said that there's a very practical reason for getting to games so early.

"We need to because we know everyone else is coming behind us," he said. "It’s more out of necessity than anything else."

David added that he thinks the players feed off the energy the fans generate by getting to games early.

"It’s important for us because the players see that we’re here early and they see that we care, that we’re here to support them," he said. "If they see a whole section full of Penn fans and no St. Joe’s fans, they can’t feel good about that."

At 5:02 p.m., the first Penn student fans -- a group of three -- arrived. By that time, I counted 13 St. Joe's students who had come in by the main entrance (the one on the side of the tennis courts). Which wasn't nearly the kind of margin that I was expecting, and I've talked to a few other people here who were similarly surprised.

David Anderson (in the middle in the photo at right) chose to spoke for the first Penn arrivals. He called it a "very big deal" that he and his friends were arriving so early.

"We made sure we talked about when the first fans would be here," he said. "We talked about it with our friends and made sure that we were going to be here before they were."

Anderson is well aware of his fellow Penn fans' reputation for arriving late -- and the taunts that have often resulted from the St. Joe's fans in years past.

"We thought that it was important that Penn had a good crowd here first, because in the past, they’ve shown up like two minutes before tipoff," he said. "Last year was pretty embarrassing and we don’t want that to happen again."

With that mission accomplished, I headed inside, because I was getting pretty cold. In the lobby, I ran into the St. Joe's student who had all the rollouts, Dan McDevitt (at left with rollouts in hand). So of course I had to talk to him, and try to pry some information out of him on what the rollouts said.

"This year we really just kept with the traditional St. Joe’s ones that we usually do, and we played off the Fran Dunphy leaving for Temple aspect," he said.

But he admitted that not having Dunphy on the Penn bench would make this night rather unusual.

"It’s weird because I like Fran Dunphy," McDevitt said. "He’s a good guy, he’s a real nice guy. We did a rollout last year when he hit the [300] mark for wins. We were at the Temple game and it was weird to see him behind the Temple bench."

McDevitt was carrying five rollouts. I'll let you know what they say as the night, shall we say, unfolds.

Harvard senior Brian Cusworth is a 7-foot center, and is one of the best big men the Ivy League has seen in a long time who hasn't worn a Princeton jersey. There's a rule at that famed bastion of academia that you can only attend the place as an undergrad for eight semesters or less, and it's biting Cusworth rather harshly in the rear end right now.

After suffering a preseason injury in his sophomore year, Cusworth decided to stay in classes, so that semester was used. But he withdrew from the second semester, so he had one semester of eligibility remaining in the 2006-07 academic year. Though the Crimson's biggest Ivy League games (including both against Penn) take place in the second semester, Cusworth had to play the first semester because of the aforementioned rule.

Harvard is one of those odd schools that has its exams after Winter Break, so Cusworth's career will end tomorrow night. But on this evening, against rival-in-everything Yale, Cusworth turned in a performance that must have had the full attention of the NBA scouts who've been watching him.

Yes, that's right. NBA scouts have been watching a Harvard basketball player. It wouldn't make any sense to me either if I hadn't seen him myself in years past. Though Yale won tonight, Cusworth had a monster game. And for what it's worth, the Ancient Eight might not be as bad as everyone thinks -- it's 16th in conference RPI at the moment, with Penn-St. Joe's tomorrow the next to last non-conference game of the season for Ivy teams.

Besides, I don't know of any good storylines in Mercer-Stetson or Portland State-Sacramento State.

I promise that Philadelphia's teams will be far more relevant and far more discussed in the morning. I'll be at Penn-St. Joe's tomorrow night, and I'll be getting there pretty early, so if you see me, do say hello.

Since there are no games being played locally next Wednesday, here's something to do. At 7 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble on Rittenhouse Square, Penn Band assistant director Kushol Gupta will hold a discussion and book signing for the new book Images of America: The University of Pennsylvania Band. It's another in that series of historical books on life in Pennsylvania with the sepia-toned covers and black-and-beige trim that you've surely seen at bookstores all over the region.

I skimmed through it while in the store today, and it has a lot of interesting pictures. Those of you with an interest in Penn football, especially in its old heyday, will probably like the book quite a bit.

(Yes, I know there aren't many of you out there, but it's sort of like sending a canary into a mine to see if there's anything worth going in there for.)

Whoa.

Drexel forward Frank Elegar, the team's interior linchpin, has been suspended for tomorrow's showdown with Virginia Commonwealth at the DAC on account of the intentional foul he committed at Delaware last Saturday. The CAA didn't render its decision until today, meaning he was able to play against UNC-Wilmington.

The CAA's press release called the foul, committed against Sam McMahon, a "flagrant act."

The game tomorrow will be on CN8 by the way. It's going to be a very good game, even if you don't care about either team that much. It might even be worth waiting a few hours more than you otherwise would to get to the Palestra. Because I know the St. Joe's fans love showing up really, really early for the Penn game.

In the Inquirer, Frank Fitzpatrick goes feature-length to look at whether former "little ragamuffin" Drexel should be allowed in the Big 5. There are some interesting reader comments on the story too.

In the Daily News, Bill Fleischmann spotlights Bashir Mason. Behind the Insider paywall on ESPN.com, Joe Lunardi offers some unsolicited advice for the BracketBusters matchups. He proposes that the Dragons be sent to Creighton. Ouch.

The Big 5 inducted its 2007 Hall of Fame class last night -- former La Salle star Jen Zenszer, former Penn star Diana Caramanico, and the late former Palestra public address announcer John McAdams. In the Inquirer, Mel Greenberg salutes McAdams' famous greeting that began every game he called. In the Daily News, Bob Cooney reminds us that McAdams was not a member of the HOF until last night, even if everyone thought he already was. And of course I'm one of those who thinks he should have been inducted before he died.

In the Penn student paper, a columnist focuses on Diana Caramanico, who's now the girls' coach at Penn Charter. I wonder how she felt getting blown out at her alma mater, Germantown Academy. Caramanico is married to a former Penn men's player of some renown, Geoff Owens. Geoff's grandfather is of even more renown -- Paul Owens was the architect of those great Phillies teams of the late 70's and 80's.

I was at the ceremony last night and I would describe it as small but elegant, with Don Tollefson emceeing and Dan Baker accepting on behalf of McAdams. There really isn't much more to say about it than that on here; apologies to those of you were expecting more. But be sure to tune into Monday's College HoopsCast, because I'll have exclusive interviews with Zenszer, Caramanico, Baker and another special guest.

On the football side of things, Bernard Fernandez of the Daily News reports from the Senior Bowl on the good-looking NFL future for Penn State linebacker Paul Posluszny. But the Eagles probably won't draft him.

A very busy day today, but something ought to be on schedule. So here's the latest table of where the City Six stand in the major statistical rankings. Last week's rankings are in parentheses:

I'm not going to go so far as to say I confused myself trying to interpret the changes, but there are certainly some interesting conclusions to draw. Drexel's up reasonably in Pomeroy and Sagarin and down big in RPI, which reflects the fact that the Dragons beat two bad teams at home and one mediocre-to-bad team on the road. RPI only counts who you played, while the other two factor in where the game was and Pomeroy also includes an element of margin of victory.

Penn's the opposite -- up in RPI, down in Pomeroy and Sagarin. The Quakers aren't helped by the fact that last night's close win over Temple was a home game... and more importantly, they aren't helped by the fact that the wins over Temple and La Salle were by a combined five three points.

But the best number of the week by far belongs to St. Joe's -- a 26-place jump in the RPI. That came almost entirely from the Xavier win, as last night's reasonable (RPI-wise) loss at No. 68 GW didn't hurt too much. What's more interesting about the Hawks, though, is that they have been consistently creeping closer to a win over Penn in Ken Pomeroy's prediction machine. Penn's margin of victory was somewhere around six points earlier in the season, and it's now down to one. The Quakers' chance of winning the game is down to 55 percent after being in the 60s earlier.

Odds and ends after the jump.

I've been thinking all morning about that "traitor" rollout at last night's Temple-Penn game that the papers referred to this morning. For those of you who weren't there, it read:

"Man Law: Don't be a traitor.
Miller... Good call."

(UPDATE: Thanks to Inquirer photographer Ron Cortes, who found a picture of the rollout among the many he took that didn't make it into this slideshow. The security guard is blocking the word "Man.")

Both Jim Salisbury and Rich Hofmann interpreted it as being aimed at Dunphy, with Hofmann doing so in a more direct manner. I disagree.

Between the story in yesterday's Daily News and other people I've talked to, I'm pretty sure that message was aimed at the former Penn players who were rooting for Temple last night. I was planning on writing about this anyway, but given the rollout stuff, I figured that would be a good place to start.

I wanted to try to get into a bit more depth about what was going on with the former Penn players, so I turned to Quakers radio analyst Vince Curran. Vince wouldn't name the players in question, though he did say that there were more than a few. And of course he knows them, because he knows just about everyone who ever put on a Penn jersey in Dunphy's tenure.

Curran said that he feels the whole thing has been overblown somewhat. His reaction and the rest of the story after the jump.

The national news is thrown out this morning, because after last night's action it really doesn't matter.

As I walked home last night from the Palestra, I kept repeating to myself the indisputable fact that Philadelphia is a football town. But when I woke up this morning, I saw something that I really didn't think was possible anymore: college basketball on the back page of the Daily News. A great job by Yong Kim to get a shot of Dion Dacons' foul on Mark Zoller that led to the winning free throws.

On the inside pages, Mike Kern says "it really doesn't get much better" in his recap, accompanies by a Yong Kim shot of Dionte Christmas with his jersey pulled over his head. Rich Hofmann breaks out the history books in his column, going back to the 1960s to detail Fran Dunphy's first trip to the Palestra.

Three (!) stories in the Inquirer, led by Mike Jensen's recap. You have to feel bad for Fran's mother, Josephine, who told Mike before the game that she was "going to have a heart attack." I saw her after the game and can attest to the fact that this thankfully did not happen, but I'm sure it wasn't easy for her.

Jim Salisbury's column takes another shot at the 2,619 people who didn't show up last night while describing the range of emotions in the building. Finally, Kevin Tatum puts some spit-shine on the evening by talking to the Palestra's famed custodian, Dan Harrell, who arrived at Penn in the same year that Dunphy did.

The Penn student paper declares last night's win to be an exorcism by pulling out a headline not seen since 1993. And maybe it was because the current senior class had never beaten Temple before. And Dunphy takes Mark Zoller's remark about playing against one's father as a compliment.

The Delco Times recounts a game that wasn't hyperbole.

Of course, there were other games last night. In D.C., St. Joe's lost to GW. The Inquirer's Ray Parrillo puts the Hawks' 20 turnovers in neon. St. Joe's blew a 14-point lead, which Phil Martelli called a "damn shame" in the Daily News.

La Salle beat another young team, Richmond, thanks to 18 points from Darnell Harris. In the Inquirer, Marc Narducci notes that Harris got the rest of the night off with 1:48 to go and now stands four points shy of 1,000 for his career. In the Daily News, Bob Cooney doesn't care how ugly the game was.

Drexel won at UNC-Wilmington for the first time, setting up an enormous game against Virginia Commonwealth on Saturday at the DAC.

Temple's women lost at home to Rutgers, which used a 21-6 run midway through the second half to seal the win.

And finally, Philadelphia U. coach Herb Magee tied Clarence "Big House" Gaines for the all-time Division II wins record at 828 with a 63-56 victory at Holy Family.

If you're a Temple fan, you likely trudged home in a stunned silence, your spirits having fallen into the ground and beneath the tracks on the El and the Broad Street line.

If you're a Penn fan, the joy likely carried you home on the winter breeze, floating up Locust Walk and into the air from the top of the bridge over 38th Street.

What an astonishing night of basketball this was, Penn edging out Temple on three Mark Zoller free throws with 1.4 seconds remaining for a 76-74 victory. It was somehow fitting that Zoller would be the man to stand at the line, forced to deliver the win by himself with the entire arena's eyes squarely focused on him. For it is Zoller who has the deepest ties to the Big 5 of any Penn player, as a St. Joe's prep grad who grew up watching these games from the stands.

Before the game, and in its early minutes, the man with the most wins in Penn basketball history was showered with kindness. There were three standing ovations: when he walked out onto the floor before the game, when he was introduced during the starting lineups, and when a rollout was unfurled which read, "Thank you, Fran Dunphy: 17 years, 310 wins, 10 Ivy titles."

But from there, as Dunphy and Big 5 tradition demanded, it was all about basketball.

It was Zoller who said a few days ago that facing Fran Dunphy would be like "playing your father." So of course, it was Zoller who followed a path blazed by men ranging from Oedipus Rex to Luke Skywalker. No, he didn't literally kill Dunphy; he simply delivered another crushing Temple loss to go with five others this month.

For Penn, it was a character-building win unlike almost any other the current crop of players have experienced, rivaled only by the 18-point comeback to beat Princeton in 2005. It is well established at this point that under Dunphy, Penn lost a number of games in the final few minutes, and often in ways that defied probability, if not belief. This time, though, the tables were turned.

Above all, the 6,103 fans -- not to mention the media and the staffs of both schools -- were treated to a night that reminded all of us what the Big 5 is at its best. This was pulsating, emotional basketball played by two teams and coached by two coaches that knew each other inside and out. It thrust the City Series back into a local spotlight that often refuses to give college basketball the time of day, and gave everyone a night to remember for a long, long time.

The best news of the day is that this week's Bracketology has arrived, which means I can actually analyze something instead of just posting stories all day.

Joe Lunardi apparently has a nasty headache from having spent so much time breaking down the ACC, but the rest of us should be in a good mood because Villanova, Penn and Drexel are all in this week's field. Joe, I'll give you some Advil or something at the Big 5 Hall of Fame dinner tomorrow night if your headache hasn't cleared yet.

As I started scrolling through the bracket, the first thing I saw was that Notre Dame was in the field. This made me immediately demand to my computer monitor that Villanova be included too, lest something get thrown in the trash can. They are, and Wildcats should be pretty happy what they see.

Lunardi has 'Nova as a 9-seed against Tennessee in Winston-Salem. There'll be a lot of Volunteers fans in the house for that one, because it's only about 4 1/2 hours from Knoxville, but the winner gets a glamor game against North Carolina. Yep, that team which knocked Villanova out two years ago in the Sweet 16 thanks to what may or may not have been a traveling call on Allan Ray. But the winner of that pod goes to East Rutherford, N.J., and what a scene that would be if 'Nova pulled off the upset.

The Volunteers have a very good guard in Chris Lofton and the nation's coolest coach in Bruce Pearl. I'm already salivating over the prospect of Pearl in his blindingly orange blazer squaring off with Jay Wright's finely-tailored four-piece. But as for the game itself, the Volunteers are a full 18 places behind Villanova in the Pomeroy ratings and are 189th in effective field goal percentage. They're worse at defending two-point shots than three-point shots, which should suit Villanova's ffrontcourt just fine. Tennessee's offensive efficiency is 53rd in the country, but Villanova's is 30th. So that should be a very good game.

Penn gets a 13-seed in frigid Buffalo against Clemson. The Tigers are impressing a lot of people with their 18-2 record, and they're 24th in defensive efficiency, but that's a bit deceiving. Clemson's defense is 205th in 2-point FG percentage given up and 119th in 3-point percentage given up. We all know Penn can score a lot of points. And because Clemson hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament since 1998, the Quakers will have an experience advantage on the big stage. Plus, you have to like Penn's odds against any team nicknamed Tigers.

The winner of that game gets the winner of a game that is a mid-major fan's dream: No. 5 Nevada against No. 12 VCU, the first-place in the CAA right now and thus projected to take the CAA's automatic bid. Both those teams are very good, but not outstanding -- 64 and 66 in Pomeroy. Penn's at 90, but given how they did against Drexel, they won't be afraid of either of those teams.

Drexel is a wonderful example of just how good the CAA is this year. Though the Dragons have two losses in conference, they get a higher seed than VCU -- an 11, against No. 6 Boston College in Columbus. Which is somewhat funny, because two years ago Penn played BC in Cleveland. The winner gets Marquette or Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, the projected winners of the Southland. In part because of a win over Kent State, the Islanders have a decent Pomeroy of 104.

But Marquette is very, very good: 29th in Pomeroy and the 13th-best defensive efficiency in the country. Then again, Drexel is 22nd in defensive efficiency. In other words, that could be a tight, physical, low-scoring game -- and any Philly team has plenty of experience with those.

I think that's it from me for the day. See you at the Palestra tonight.

I set up a TypeKey-based commenting system for the blog, which should make it easier for you to post comments and actually see them show up. Just create a TypeKey account, which you can do by clicking the Comments link. And I hope you do that, because I want to hear from you.

But I'll pass on your advertisements for drugs, cheap stocks and non-college basketball websites, if you don't mind.

A few notable things that have come across since I finished Newsstand:

St. Joe's will play in the 2008 Maui Invitational. Start saving now.

A preview of tonight's Penn-Temple game from the great Ivy League (and Patriot League) site Basketball U., which wonders "if the Dunphy Exiles will be sporting cherry and white tonight and sitting behind the visiting bench to show their displeasure with their alma mater for forcing Dunphy to take a higher-profile job for double his old salary." Unfortunately, you have to pay to read the site's stories, but there's some good stuff in in there.

Penn fans will also have to go to the wallet for a new feature on the athletic department's website: streaming video of games. Live home men's and women's hoops and wrestling, and apparently some archived footage too. $10 for the rest of the season.

Over the Mason-Dixon line, George Washington coach Carl Hobbs says he doesn't get the RPI. His Colonials face St. Joe's tonight. And Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow got a contract extension through 2013.

One of these days this thing will actually come out in the morning...

It was Villanova over Providence, 82-73, in "the place where good, bad and indifferent Villanova teams went to die," according to Dana Pennett O'Neil of the Daily News. In the Inquirer, Shannon Ryan writes that Curtis Sumpter was on the floor earlier than expeceted and that the 'Cats got 26 points off 22 Friars turnovers. The Providence Journal pays tribute.

A big night tonight at the Palestra, as Fran Dunphy works from the visitors' bench for the first time in his career as a head coach. In the Inquirer, Kevin Tatum hears from Penn guard Ibrahim Jaaber, who says anyone who doesn't feel the emotions of the night is "telling a story." In the Daily News, Mike Kern hears from Penn radio analyst and former Quakers player Vince Curran about the Penn alums who've been rooting for Temple and haven't quite adopted Glen Miller yet.

The Penn student paper spotlights high-scoring Dionte Christmas, while a columnist calls for Dunphy to receive "an ovation and nothing more" from the fans. Philly.com citizen blogger and Temple student Kris Gochenour plays the stereotype about Penn fans while admitting that he actually doesn't mind the school that much. He also does something I can't do in the name of objectivity, which is take a shot at the fact that the game isn't anywhere close to sold out.

Elsewhere in the Inquirer, Ray Parrillo profiles former St. Anthony's High pitcher Ahmad Nivins. The rest of us know Nivins as the starting center for St. Joe's -- and Phil Martelli calls him one of the "five best players" in the A-10. Elsewhere in the Daily News, Dick Jerardi writes about the strength of the Missouri Valley Conference, and the weakness of Billy Packer. And Jay Wright is ignoring those Sixers rumors that came up yesterday.

National news after the jump.

I just got a note from the Penn athletic department that there are around 3,000 tickets still left for tomorrow night's Penn-Temple game.

That, folks, is a lot. Up to you whether you do anything about it, of course, but... that is definitely a lot of tickets.

Andy Katz provided more information on his ESPN.com blog this morning about the proposed Thanksgiving-weekend tournament at the Palestra. In the midst of a conversation with Phil Martelli about the parity in the A-10, Katz got Martelli to confirm that this thing is (EDIT: is, I say!) going to happen, and that the Hawks will play in it, but not this coming fall. The listed teams are Penn, Drexel, Virginia, Rutgers, Loyola (Md.) and Boston University. I suspect that the field is not yet complete, and I can't help thinking that another big-name team would be nice to have. Given the existing Big East and ACC involvement, I'm thinking Big Ten or Pac-10.

More to come on this, I'm sure.

(Including better copy editing.)

This is one of those classic blogosphere stories. I got it from the Syracuse Post-Standard, whose Syracuse hoops blogger got it from the New York Post, whose top-notch NBA writer Peter Vescey got it from who knows where.

Vescey reported and then refuted a rumor that the real reason Larry Brown has been hanging out at Villanova of late -- ESPNU's cameras caught him courtside at the Notre Dame game -- is that he wants Jay Wright to replace Mo Cheeks as Sixers head coach at the end of the season.

Personally, I have no doubt that Wright would do quite well in the NBA, for the simple reason that he already dresses the part on a regular basis. But Vescey reported that Sixers sources told him there's no truth to the rumor, and that Brown has in fact "been to other college practices around town as well" since moving back to Philadelphia.

So maybe he wants Fran Dunphy instead? Or Phil Martelli? How about Bruiser Flint?

Villanova heads to Providence tonight to play basketball in the hockey arena that is the Dunkin' Donuts Center. You can watch the game on Channel 17 at 7:30 p.m. We thank the Big East for its television contract.

No jokes about coffee or donuts in the Inquirer or Daily News this morning, but there are profiles of the Wildcats' starting guards. Shannon Ryan takes Scottie Reynolds, "court-savvy" but trying to replicate the "energy and swagger" of a certain Kyle Lowry. Hmm. Dana Pennett O'Neill takes Mike Nardi, who isn't as hard on himself anymore as he used to be. The Providence Journal also highlights the backcourt, but in a more general fashion.

Elsewhere in what some call The Daily News -- now the People Paper of people in the Philadelphia suburbs -- Chuck Bausman goes High and Inside to praise CN8 for airing tomorrow night's Penn-Temple game instead of "Backstage with Barry Nolan." I actually like Barry Nolan, although for a show that doesn't air on CN8. Having said that, my cable doesn't come from CN8's parent company, so I won't be able to tape the game. But I will be there, which is even better.

Speaking of that game, the Temple student paper has its previews this morning. The lead story takes a historical perspective. There are certainly some familiar themes. Penn's Mark Zoller says facing Fran Dunphy will be like "playing your father." And a columnist says the game "has all the ingredients for the front page of a tabloid." I'll be shocked if it makes the back page of one.

National news after the jump.

Mundweiler is the first LOTD winner with a name so long that I had to remove it from the table in order to get all the stats on one line. But he makes up for that because the game was officiated by one of Philadelphia's best-known refs, Joe DeMayo.

I meant to respond a few days ago to a comment left by a commenter named "Jay Bilas." Well first of all, Mr. Bilas, thanks for taking some time away from your busy schedule, as perpetually jammed with BCS schools as it is, to swing by the blog.

Anyway, you asked:

"Jonathan, if you had the No. 1 pick in the Draft, like a certain Philadelphia team very well might, would you take Oden or Durant? Or somebody else?"

I certainly should have bothered to answer the question before Durant's clunker against Villanova. But I suspect I would have said Oden anyway. There's still a legitimate chance that Durant ends the year as the better college player. But, as a friend said to me at the beginning of last week, seven feet is seven feet. So I suspect that Oden will be the top pick on those ground alone.

I'm always happy to take comments and emails for the blog, by the way. Email me by clicking on my name in the author box or just post a comment after the post of your choice.

The new College HoopsCast is finally ready. This week, Mike and I take a long look at the Villanova-Texas and St. Joe's-Xavier games. Then we look the week ahead locally, headlined by Temple at Penn and Virginia Commonwealth at Drexel. Our national segment this week is on the Pac-10, which might well be the best conference in the country. And we profile Arizona's Mustafa Shakur, a Philly native who is doing very well out in Tuscon.

By the way, there are two pretty good games on national TV tonight. On ESPN2 at 7, the top-ranked Duke women play at No. 4 Tennessee. Then at 9 on ESPN, Oklahoma goes to Oklahoma State for the Bedlam game. Yes, the Sooners are having an off year, but the atmosphere for that game is always worth watching -- especially in Stillwater.

We don't stop for snow or ice, but we do stop for meetings...

It's Monday, so start with Dick Jerardi's weekend wrap in the Daily News. It includes looks at Villanova-Texas, Drexel-Delaware, and the fact that Duke has won 25 of its last 28 games against N.C. State. Jerardi's top 15 starts with UCLA, puts the team that beat UCLA at No. 5, and puts winless Iona (0-18) at the bottom.

St. Joe's got a very impressive 82-74 win over Xavier, thanks to 20 points from freshman guard Jawan Carter. According to Dick Jerardi Bob Cooney (Serves me right for assuming!), Hawks coach Phil Martelli is usually good at prognosticating, but he "didn't see this coming." In the Inquirer, Ray Parrillo says Carter will have a more enjoyable time watching film this week. The Hawks are good, folks. The A-10 (and a certain Big 5 team coming down the pike in a few days) would be well advised to realize this before learning the hard way.

La Salle lost at Saint Bonaventure. I'll be generous this time and say that this is not a good result. The Daily News correspondent at the game says the lights went out on the Explorers both literally and figuratively. At least the Bonnies beat Saint Louis at home this season. Then again, so did Temple.

The Penn student paper reports on Quakers men's soccer goalkeeper Dan Cepero, who was drafted by Red Bull New York of MLS last week. Apparently, he's a history major, but he had to do some Wharton-esque marketing to get himself noticed by the pros.The Drexel student paper has a nice feature on the school's biggest fan, Calvin Hicks. You'll recognize him once you see the photo.

National news after the jump.

Just two stories today to give you the Texas view of Villanova's win yesterday over the Longhorns:

Texas falls to Villanova 76-69 by Mark Rosener of the Austin American-Statesman

For once, Durant is merely ordinary by Joseph Duarte, The Houston Chronicle

As far as I can tell, none of the other main Texas newspapers sent writers. You can find all the Philadelphia Inquirer stories about yesterday's games here.

You have to give Villanova a lot of credit for beating Texas today without Curtis Sumpter playing at all. The Wildcats held star Longhorns freshman to 12 points on 4-of-15 shooting, including a paltry 1-for-8 from three-point range. One of those was a semi-desperate bomb from about four feet beyond the NBA line towards the end of the game.

Credit is certainly due to Villanova's excellent defense today, which held the Longhorns as a whole to only 35.5 percent shooting from the field and 11 of 33 from three-point range. But the Wildcats weren't really better: only 38.2 percent from the field and 7 of 23 from beyond the arc.

The only criticism I have of the Wildcats has to do with freshman guard Scottie Reynolds. Yes, he's supremely talented, and he led all scorers with 26 points. 12 of those came from the free throw line; Reynolds missed only once from the stripe. Nonetheless, a lot of those free throws resulted from drives to the basket where the shot didn't fall. Texas played a pretty compact zone defense, but Reynolds was unfazed no matter how many defenders were in the paint. Villanova's offense worked well when those drives resulted in a kickout pass for a three-pointer, but quite a few of his runners and layups really never seemed like going in the basket.

I remarked to a friend I watched the game with that it resembled a Big 5 game more than a game played between two BCS conference schools, even if only the visitors had a BCS conference football team -- a fact which the Texas fans I sat near were all too happy to point out rather often. Credit to the Villanova fans, though, for making it clear that they really didn't care.

Credit also to the Villanova student sections for not rushing the court. They did so somewhat controversially after beating Connecticut last year, and you might recall that a few students were injured along the way. But this time, the fans stayed in their seats. Then again, the Longhorns aren't anywhere close to being the top team in the country. It wouldn't surprise me if both of Villanova's opponents this week, No. 20 Notre Dame and No. 21 Texas, find themselves out of the Top 25 when the new poll comes out Monday.

Speaking of Monday, that's when the next College HoopsCast comes out. Mike Jensen and I will have plenty to say about this game and all the other ones this weekend, so be sure to check Philly.com on Monday afternoon. You can also download the show on iTunes, which will deliver the file to your desktop automatically as soon as it comes out.

Before I start this post, let me say that after writing the post on stats I was hoping to not have to write that many more long pieces based entirely on what I think instead of something I saw happen. Then I heard on Thursday that John McAdams is being inducted into the Big 5 Hall of Fame this year, and that standard went out the window. So I hope you'll allow me to share my memories of John with however many of you readers there are out there.

And I invite you to share your memories, either by posting a comment or emailing me. If you choose to email me, let me know whether you're okay with my posting your thoughts on the blog.

---

Friday is generally the dead day of the college basketball week. A lot of teams play a midweek game and a weekend game, or maybe a Monday night game, but only a few conferences play with any regularity on the final day of the work week. The league in which Penn plays is one of them. As a result, in recent years, my Friday nights from mid-January to mid-March have been taken up by college basketball.

For the first three years that I watched them, Penn games at the Palestra had a very particular soundtrack -- and it wasn't the pep band. It was John McAdams' crystal-clear voice, at once forceful enough to cut through the crowd noise and restrained enough to never sound like he was shouting. It was he who, in 1986, coined the phrase that singularly defined Philadelphia college basketball for the years in which he owned the best seat in the house:

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the University of Pennsylvania Palestra, college basketball's most historic gym."

I can still hear it now. The way the word "good" silenced the crowd, the inflection in his voice on the word "historic." I suspect those of you who've been going to games for a long time can as well. He used it at every game he called in the building no matter who was playing.

From 1981 to 2005, that voice did as much to give the Palestra its character as the banners in the rafters and the museum on the concourse did.

I am sure that everyone has their own memories of moments that involved John. There are the obvious ones, like when someone scored a dramatic basket and John drew out the name for just an extra half-second:

"Villanova basket scored by number twenty, Jason... Fraser."

"Saint Joseph's basket scored by number fourteen, Jameer ... Nelson."

But there was one John McAdams moment that stood out to me above all the rest. It was the 2005 edition of the Holy War. Mostly St. Joe's fans in the house, though my seat on the upper level press row was closer to the Villanova section. It was a few days after the Eagles had lost the Super Bowl, and with ESPN2 in the house just about everyone was using the game to take their minds off football for a few minutes.

The second half was about to start, and the two student sections were getting back into full throat

"A set of keys has been turned into the scorer's table," he said. "Please check your pockets or purse."

Is there any other arena of any major consequence in the country where that would happen? Seriously. The Big 5 game of the year, a full house in the building, a national TV broadcast. And the public address announcer was telling people that if they were missing a set of keys, they should come to the scorer's table to pick them up.

I can't imagine it happening anywhere other than the Palestra, and I can't imagine anyone other than John McAdams making the announcement. At the very least, I can't imagine any other voice piercing the din in the stands in the way that his did.

The campaign to get McAdams into the Big 5 Hall of Fame while he was still alive was long and hard. Penn athletic director Steve Bilsky, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1988, told me that the Hall has always been "primarily for former players, and then secondarily for coaches." There are a few exceptions, mainly for athletic department staff, media members and referees. But there aren't too many. You can see the full list here.

Of course, Bilsky had no doubt that "John McAdams is clearly deserving... it's a question of in what year we would bring in another special category."

Legend has it that former Penn player Vince Curran was the main advocate for McAdams' induction. I'm sure he and many others wished that Bilsky's question could have been answered before McAdams passed away in 2005. It is a great shame that McAdams missed all the celebrations of the Big 5's 50th anniversary season, as well as the NCAA Tournament games at the Wachovia Center last March.

But at least Curran will be present at the Hall of Fame game between Penn and Saint Joseph's on Jan. 27, and he won't be too far from McAdams' old seat as the color analyst for Penn games on WXPN.

I have nothing but the highest respect for Rich Kahn, the man who replaced McAdams. Rich is of equally high quality and character as John, and is just as down-to-earth and friendly.

Nonetheless, I still miss that voice. The one that was sure that I'd make it as a professional journalist some day, even with the media industry in the state that it's in. I got to know John somewhat well in the three years after I met him. Not as well as many of his other friends, of course, but well enough that he knew my name and my work. He was always full of stories about Big 5 history, and always had just the right perspective when a current event was worth comparing to a past event.

I suspect that a lot of people involved in Big 5 basketball still miss John as well, which will make it all the more poignant when he is remembered next Thursday at the Big 5 Hall of Fame Dinner and at the Quakers-Hawks game two days later.

The most difficult thing of all to believe is that it's been a year and a half since he left us. But I have no doubt that whenever there's a Big 5 game going on, John McAdams still has the best seat in the house.

UPDATE: It turns out that, buried among some old tapes of interviews I've done, I have a recording of the missing car keys announcement. Click here to listen to it.

Consider the difference between the first half and the second half:

I tried to warn you. Honestly. I knew this game would be close and just about nothing that happened last night surprised me. That includes Darnell Harris. Okay, maybe I didn't think he'd shoot that well in the first half, but it shouldn't be news to anyone that he can hit threes if left open.

I've had good things to say about Rodney Green on here and on the podcast already, but last night was the first time I got to see him in person and I like him even more now. Yeah, he's skinny, but I guarantee you that outside of the La Salle student section, no one in the A-10 is going to treat him as a freshman. Well, the league office might if it gives him the Rookie of the Year award.

The Explorers had another good night on the offensive glass, pulling down 14 offensive boards compared to 21 defensive boards for Penn. That's a 40 percent offensive rebounding rate. Interestingly, La Salle got five offensive rebounds in the first half and nine in the second half, even though it played better in the first half than the second. But as the guy sitting behind me said last night, in order to get offensive rebounds you have to miss shots, and the Explorers didn't do that as much in the first half as they did in the second.

If you're a Penn fan, you have to be pleased at how seniors Mark Zoller and Ibrahim Jaaber stepped up in the second half. Both scored 16 points after intermission, with Jaaber adding two steals and seven assists and Zoller pulling down seven rebounds.

Their biggest contributions, though, came in the final minute and change. After Zoller's two free tthrows with 1:03 remaining, the St. Joe's Prep grad stole a pass from Kimmani Barrett that was intended for Mike St. John. I am fairly sure that the above photo is of that play, as Zoller had to corral the loose ball after knocking it away.

After Zoller got over the halfcourt line, Penn coach Glen Miller called timeout. On the ensuing play, the Quakers ran the shot clock down to five seconds, at which point Jaaber hit a runner in the lane that pushed Penn's lead to five points with 11 seconds remaining. That, ladies and gentlemen, is leadership.

I guess in the end one thing did surprise me. This was the second time this season that Penn has played a Big 5 game that became an offensive shootout instead of a defensive slugfest. And it's not just a Penn thing. The average score of this season's Big 5 games has been 83.8 points for the winners and 72.8 points for the losers. The lowest scoring game was Villanova's 64-51 win at La Salle, which is much more what we're used to.

This is something I'll keep an eye on for the rest of the season. Granted, a big part of the low-scoring nature of Big 5 games is that teams miss a lot of shots, even if the number of attempts isn't that low.

Nonetheless, I can't help thinking that it wasn't so long ago that the Big 5's game of the year ended 53-52, and that everyone thought it was a classic.

Photo by Barbara L. Johnston of the Inquirer. You can see a slideshow of her shots from the game here.

(EDIT: It was Kimmani Barrett who threw the errant pass, not Kenny Tribbett, who plays for Drexel. Thanks to this guy for the correction)

Penn beat La Salle in a barnburner, 93-92, at Tom Gola Arena. In the Inquirer, Ray Parrillo pays attention to Quakers coach Glen Miller, even if his players might not have been doing so in the first half. In the Daily News, Bob Cooney gives props to the Penn seniors Ibrahim Jaaber and Mark Zoller, who carried the load as the Quakers rallied in the second half. The Penn student paper notes that after hitting 6 of 8 three-point shots in the first half, Darnell Harris was defended in the second half by a freshman with a torn labrum.

Elsewhere in the Daily News, Dana Pennett O'Neil profiles Kevin Durant, as Jay Wright worries that more people will come to see Durant than Villanova. All together now: Durant is averaging 34 points and 13.5 rebounds per game in Big 12 play.

Dick Jerardi blows the lid off plans for a Thanksgiving-weekend tournament at the Palestra, with one Philly team a year to be included. It will be a sort of round robin like that Las Vegas tournament this season that had Kansas and Florida starting at home then playing two games -- including the one against each other -- in Vegas.

This year's Big 5 Hall of Fame class will have three members: the late John McAdams, Diana Caramanico and Jen Zenser. McAdams was the legendary public address at the Palestra for 24 years until he died in 2005; Caramanico is the all-time leading scorer in Penn women's history; and Zenser is one of the top players in La Salle women's history. Much more to come on this later.

Joe Lunardi adds his props for the Palestra.

Xavier beat visiting UMass, thanks to 8-for-18 three-point shooting and a 15-of-22 night from the line. The Minutemen, by contrast, were only 2-of-4 from the stripe.

USC beat Arizona, leading the Los Angeles Times to call for defibrillators at the Galen Center.

Duke beat Wake Forest, as Episcopal grad Gerald Henderson went 2-for-4 on slam dunks.

A story out of Louisville on a topic that is making its way around the country: the use of male practice players in women's basketball. Back in December, one of the contributors to Mel Greenberg's women's blog wrote from experience that she has no problem with it. Asking the players sounds like a fine idea to me.

Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt wanted to be a journalist and has a few opinions on the state of sportswriting.

A football story: Georgia Congressman Jack Kingston (R), an Athens native (though he doesn't represent that district) voted against a resolution congratulating Florida for winning the national championship. The resolution passed, 414-1. A resolution congratulating Boise State passed unanimously, 415-0.

A soccer story: Penn's starting goalkeeper was drafted by Red Bull New York of Major League Soccer. I confess that I got a phone call about this from Penn's athletic department yesterday but didn't have time to post about it. Nonetheless, it made the paper this morning. Chalfont, Pa., native Mark Totten, who attended James Madison, was drafted by Chicago.

Finally, one non-sports story: Art Buchwald, the veteran humor columnist, died yesterday. I read his stuff on a regular basis growing up. When I told Dan Rubin this, he was rather surprised. This is his final column.

One more post before I go to sleep -- and, just so you know, things will come rather late on Fridays because Friday and Saturday are my two days off the Philly.com desk each week. So until I pull together Newsstand and my reflections on the Penn-La Salle game, I only have this to say:

Do not ever assume anything about Big 5 games. Before, during, and occasionally even after them. Many, many times tonight I heard Penn and La Salle fans acting like the game was over. This one took 39 minutes and 53 seconds to truly be resolved, and if you've watched this stuff long enough you know full well how much more likely a close game is than a blowout.

Even if both teams top 90 points, which makes less sense than just about anything else that happened tonight.

... before I call it a night and head for the Penn-La Salle game:

Texas-Villanova is very, very close to being sold out. Or at least, that's the impression I got this morning when I found out the hard way where the remaining tickets are.

Back tomorrow.

Before I start, I am honored to be able to say I've hit the Blinq-Attytood exacta. Not bad for the first week.

So let's see if Joe Lunardi still reads me after I give my thoughts on his Bracketology column for the week, because he paints a pretty bleak picture for the local teams. Granted, it came out before the Villanova-Notre Dame game, but the Wildcats aren't in this week's bracket. Beating the Irish should do the trick at least for now. Beating Texas will do even more. Yeah, 'Nova could lose a ton of games the rest of the way, but I have a hard time believing that will happen.

The two City Six representatives this week are Penn and Drexel. The Dragons get an at-large bid, as Lunardi projects that Virginia Commonwealth will win the CAA. But Drexel gets a higher seed -- a 10, compared to VCU's 12 -- which shows the power of those wins against Villanova and Syracuse, though Lunardi claims that the Dragons actually belong at an 11-seed on his S-Curve.

The matchup is against No. 7 Marquette in Chicago as part of the Midwest (St. Louis) regional. I'd certainly take that game if I was a Drexel fan, as the Golden Eagles' offense ranks below 150 in a whopping nine categories. Given the Dragons' strong defense, that's a very winnable matchup. From there, it's either No. 2 Kansas or No. 15 Cal State-Fullerton... and we all know Kansas' recent history in the tournament, right?

Across Market Street, the news is pretty bleak for No. 13 Penn -- a game against high-flying No. 4 Virginia Tech in Buffalo as part of the West (San Jose) regional. It's bad enough to have to deal with the miserable weather in upstate New York in March. The real problem will be dealing with the Hokies' defense, which is ranked in the top 65 in eight categories.

If Penn pulls that one out, they'd face the winner of a 5-12 game between Notre Dame and Massachussetts. Given the teams' current form (and UMass' big men), I'd give the Quakers a better chance against the Irish than the Minutemen -- but I'd give UMass a very good chance of advancing.

Obviously, Villanova is in the best shape. The Notre Dame win was the Wildcats' second over a Pomeroy Top 20 team, but unless the Irish start winning conference games on the road that stat won't last much longer. The Oklahoma win will also look good as the Sooners beat lesser Big 12 teams. Although DePaul is ranked higher in Pomeroy (38) than Drexel, I think Nova's loss to the Blue Demons will look worse than the loss to Drexel in the end, because DePaul hasn't played any other of the power teams in the Big East yet.

Drexel's body of work is looking pretty good too. Yes, the Rider loss is bad. But if Villanova and Syracuse (20 Pomeroy / 36 RPI) keep winning, that will only enhance the Dragons' chances of getting an at-large bid. If Penn keeps winning, it will make that loss to the Quakers increasingly palatable. Right now, I think Drexel does deserve an at-large spot. It sure would help, though, if the Dragons could beat take at least two of their three forthcoming games with the other CAA teams at the top of the pack -- VCU, Old Dominion and Hofstra.

Despite Penn's strong non-conference strength of schedule, Drexel is currently the only chance the Quakers have at finishing the season with a quality win. But it would definitely be in the Quakers' interest to run the table the rest of the way -- especially in the Ivy League. That would be the best way to avoid anything resembling last year's situation, where two conference losses stuck Penn with a 15 seed and a date with Texas in Dallas. 14-0 in the league would look very, very good to the selection committee; 13-1 wouldn't be the worst thing, but better safe than sorry.

(EDIT: Yes, that's a change from the original version, because I got some better RPI information a friend who deals with this stuff more often than I do. But that's the joy of having a blog.)

St. Joe's is very interesting. Though the Hawks don't have a quality win as of now, they have a lot of chances coming to get one -- two games each against Xavier and GW, and a home finale with UMass. I'm far from convinced that St. Joe's can win the A-10, but if they do and they beat one of the bigger teams in the conference, they might get a decent seed.

You might think that Temple's less-than-stellar record would put them in a similar place in the rankings, but it doesn't. That's in part because the Owls played at Duke and Villanova, but they do have a RPI Top 100 win over Long Beach State. Given the, uh, lack of quality in the Big West, that might remain the case for the rest of the season if LBSU keeps winning.

Finally, as I said yesterday, La Salle's situation is quite clear. But I'm going to stick my neck out in one respect. Pomeroy is currently projecting that La Salle will win at St. Bonaventure by three points, and that there's a 60-percent chance that La Salle will win in general. I'll predict that La Salle will win, and by more than that.

After the jump, some other tidbits.

A long one today, just to warn you. First, Villanova thumped Notre Dame, 102-87. The Inquirer's Shannon Ryan leads with a loud 19 points and nine rebounds for Dante Cunningham, who is "not one of the most expressive players in college basketball." In the Daily News, Dana Pennett O'Neil asks Dr. Jekyll to meet the Sixers and Mr. Hyde to meet the Harlem Globetrotters, and compares the Wildcats to all four. The South Bend Tribune takes a shot at the Irish defense. The Chicago Tribune leads with Irish guard Tory Jackson's busted lip as a metaphor for the game, which apparently took place in Philadelphia.

I'll highlight a career high 27 points for 'Nova freshman point guard Scottie Reynolds. Reynolds was 8-12 from the field, 2-3 from three-point range and 9-10 from the free throw line. 'Nova as a whole shot 56.7 percent from the field, which for my money should win a game just about every time.

Temple won an A-10 game for the first time this season, 85-79 over Saint Louis. Mark Tyndale tells Mike Kern in the Daily News the Owls have had longer and harder practices. What an idea. In the Inquirer, Mike Jensen highlights big scoring nights for Tyndale, Dionte Christmas (22 points each) and Dustin Salisbery (25 points).

St. Joe's lost at Fordham in OT, 56-55. In the Inquirer, Ray Parillo writes about the Hawks' "warts," as Phil Martelli calls them, and reports that the Fordham students rushed the court when the game ended. In the Daily News, Dick Jerardi said St. Joe's should blame itself for allowing its car to be stolen.

Drexel beat Northeastern at the DAC, 67-41. Kevin Tatum of the Inquirer notes that the Dragons held the Huskies scoreless for the first 5:30 of the second half. Bill Fleischmann of the Daily News says Drexel needed the win despite its 12-4 record.

Previewing tonight's Penn-La Salle game at Tom Gola Arena, a columnist in the Penn student paper answers a question posed by a headline in the sports section earlier this week. I bet the editors who wrote the headline were real happy about that. Nonetheless, I'll agree that Penn's stretch of three Big 5 games in a week will define the team as much as, if not more than their Ivy sweep of Cornell and Columbia did.

Boston College center Sean Williams and forward Akida McLain, both juniors, were dismissed from the team last night for violating team rules. It's not the first time they've been in trouble.

On SI.com, Seth Davis talks to NBA scouts about the top prospects this year, while Grant Wahl admits he got it wrong about Oregon.

Elsewhere in the Pac-10, Arizona isn't shooting well of late. The Wildcats play at USC tonight and at UCLA on Saturday, so now would be a good time to do something about that.

Oklahoma fans have it good -- they only need their team to make six three-pointers in a half to get free food. I find that a lot easier than the 100 points Abner's requires to give out free cheesesteaks to fans of Penn, Drexel and St. Joe's.

Another Big East team learns not to play the Connecticut women in the first game after a Huskies loss, prompting an extraordinary headline in the Hartford Courant.

A football story: Hawaii QB Colt Brennan is staying for his senior season, which is great news. It gives ESPN another year of excuses to fly crews to Honolulu, and gives the rest of us reason to stay up late watching him rack up mammoth amounts of passing yards. And another: Between Mike Shula's $4 million buyout and Nick Saban's new 4-year, $32-million contract, Alabama could be spending $355,158 a month on the pair before giving a cent to assistant coaches.

A local one: Penn's football schedule is out, and the Quakers will play Georgetown for the first time since 1937.

And one more, of a much more somber nature: 19-year-old South Florida running back Keeley Dorsey died yesterday after collapsing during a team workout.

Is that enough for the day?

I admit that Goldwire's lack of rebounds compared to some other lines I came across made me hesitant. But the 9-for-10 from the free throw line helped, as did the fact that 12 of his 14 shots came from behind the arc -- and he missed the two that didn't.

Not that I expect to be frequently quoting 18th-century philosophers, but I still remember quite well reading John Locke's famous treatise for which this post is named in a political science class. And there are plenty of stranger cultural references out there on blogs within walking distance of Philly.com's offices.

Tomorrow, I will roll out the first full-featured Crunchy Numbers post. It will include the Pomeroy, Sagarin and RPI ratings for each of the City Six, and any other stats about the teams I find interesting.

Now, I have a lot of friends around college basketball who make a huge deal out of stats and drawing conclusions from them. I agree that some of them are very good things to know. Offensive and defensive efficiency, tempo and ratio of three-pointers to field goals come to mind right away.

But stats aren't everything to me. I still think there's such a thing as clutch, and that a small, cramped gym with raucous students can get in a player's head and make him miss a shot he'd make in a 20,000-seat arena with skyboxes and a few jumbotrons.

I believe that a great player will step up when his team is faltering late on the road and hit a big shot to silence the home crowd, no matter what his usual offensive efficiency is. Randy Foye did it against Penn last season after the Quakers mounted a huge second-half run to cut 'Nova's lead from 21 points to four. With just over a minute to play, Foye pulled a crossover dribble and nailed a 13-foot jumper without flinching in the least. That's something that I don't think a page of stats can accurately represent.

Here's another example. La Salle's best RPI win this season is against No. 234 Texas Pan-American. But I'm impressed that the Explorers' last five losses have been by two, six, three, eight and two points. So while Penn should rightly be favored to beat the Explorers tomorrow night, I wouldn't go assuming that it will be all that easy.

I'm sure everyone I know west of the Schuylkill will call me an idiot for saying that, but it took a while for the Quakers to get going Friday night against a Cornell team only four spots higher in the Pomeroy rankings than La Salle.

At least college basketball hasn't yet become like baseball, where entire franchise organizations run themselves off numbers instead of what you see with your own eyes. I mean, I appreciate a guy with a high OPS as much as anyone, but I love the fact that Phillies GM Pat Gillick flies all over the place to see players the team is scouting in person. Buster Olney wrote a great piece on his ESPN.com blog about Gillick today, and how he's creating a lineup of "players who score high in intangibles among scouts."

I think you can see how that translates to college basketball. Though it will feed the hype machine even more, Kevin Durant is a great example. He got tons of praise from the ESPN2 crew last night not just for his 37 points, but for how and when they came. Fighting in traffic for a putback layup. Moving across the court off the ball to fire a jumper straight in off an inbounds pass. A three to tie the game at 91 with 1:01 to go in the second overtime, and a layup-and-one to give Texas the lead with 12 seconds to play in the third OT.

That's the stuff that defines a great college player to me.

Photo of Randy Foye driving against BC's Sean Marshall in the 2006 NCAA Tournament taken by Yong Kim of the Daily News.

After UConn-Pitt, I wanted to give LOTD to Aaron Gray. 22 points, 19 rebounds and well over a third of the Panthers' field goal attempts on the evening (16 of 45). But because there were still many games to go, I spent a while trying to find someone whose stats bettered Gray’s.

Slowly but surely, Texas' Kevin Durant started making the case, because he did so much to keep the Longhorns in that wild game against Oklahoma State. Then, a friend of mine gave me just the answer I was looking for: give Durant enough overtimes and he’d probably get it.

Well, he got three overtimes to try, and it still wasn’t enough. But Gray doesn’t win LOTD either. The prize goes to Oklahoma State’s Mario Boggan. Yes, both Durant and Boggan scored 37 points, and Durant took four more shots. But Boggan wins it for two reasons: he pulled down 20 rebounds, including 10 on the offensive end, and he hit the game-winning three with five seconds to play in the third overtime. On top of that, it was his only made three of the game. That's him taking the shot in the photo.

How long did this game go? Well, it started at a few minutes after 9 p.m. and ended a few minutes before midnight. But here’s a more interesting measure, at least as my sporting tastes go.

ESPN2 was supposed to start showing the Australian Open tennis at 11 p.m. At that time, Andy Roddick (if you haven’t heard of him, he’s American and the 6th seed in the tournament) had just about completed the first set of his match against France’s Marc Gicquel, a 6-3 Roddick win. When the tennis finally came on the air, Roddick had won the second set 7-6 in a tiebreaker and had a 2-1 lead in the third set. That takes a while, especially when you’re playing outdoors on a hard court in the middle of summer in Melbourne.

But this is a college basketball blog, not a tennis blog, so back to your regularly scheduled programming.

A lot of good stuff, starting locally as always. La Salle beat the New Jersey Institute of Technology last night, 78-59, at Tom Gola Arena. It was another big night for Explorers freshman Rodney Green, who scored 18 points and pulled down five rebounds. Bob Cooney in the Daily News writes that on an uneventful night, the Explorers got a spark from sophomore guard Brad Cohen, a walk-on who got himself a basket with 1.1 seconds to play. Kevin Tatum in the Inquirer notes that NJIT coach Jim Casciano has deep Philly roots -- he was raised in Montgomery County, played at Drexel and coached alongside Rollie Massimino at Villanova.

Speaking of the 'Cats, they host Notre Dame at the Pavilion tonight at 7 p.m. In the Inquirer, Shannon Ryan profiles Irish guard and South Jersey native Russell Carter, who ranks third in the Big East in scoring. In the Daily News, Dick Jerardi focuses on Rob Kurz, a Penn Charter grad who's been through more than his share of problems on the way to a starting spot. The South Bend Tribune calls the Pavilion "a 6,500-seat zoo sure to be the loudest and most difficult place the Irish play this season."

By the way, Notre Dame has the fourth best offensive efficiency in the country, and Irish bench player Luke Harangody is the second-most efficient player in the country.

There are three other games tonight: St. Louis at Temple, St. Joe's at Fordham and Northeastern at Drexel. The first two of those tip at 7 and the Drexel game tips at 7:30.

In his weekly column, Jerardi looks at Wisconsin's Alando Tucker and goings-on in the A-10, among other things. Though I must admit, I like seeing a post player be smart enough to stand his ground and take a charge instead of continuing to move his feet.

One of the things Jerardi notes is the strength of the Pac-10, where Washington is 10-1 out of conference and 1-5 in it. Joe Lunardi says that "realistically," the Huskies are out of the running for an NCAA Tournament bid.

The Inquirer joins the Greg Oden Watch.

Nationally, there is a report out of Dallas that the Texas-Oklahoma State game did in fact finish. The Cowboys won in triple overtime, 105-103. I watched the whole thing, and it was truly gripping stuff. I'll have more to say on the game later.

Pitt beat UConn at the Peterson Events Center, 63-54. The key stretch was a seven-minute, 46-second stretch of the second half in which the Huskies were held without a field goal. Pitt's Aaron Gray had a huge night, with 22 points and 19 rebounds -- one short of Dick Vitale's predicted 20 -- despite injuring his wrist in a pregame shootaround.

Virginia beat Maryland with 25 points from Penn Charter grad Sean Singletary, and the John Paul Jones arena's student section talked trash at the Terrapins.

A football story: Arkansas quarterback Mitch Mustain has been given permission to transfer, in part because Razorbacks offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn took the Tulsa job. Malzahn was Mustain's coach in high school. I can hear the wailing in Fayettville from here.

Finally, there's been a quarantine of the horses used by the Rhode Island equestrian team due to fears of an equine virus that is spreading across the country.

I was just alerted to a new poll at ESPN.com asking voters to rank the best atmospheres in college basketball. They include the Palestra, though its advocates among ESPN's roster of columnists are divided between calling it Penn's home and the home of the Big 5.

The Palestra's advocates at the Worldwide Leader, if you're interested, are Fran Fraschilla, Jay Bilas and Kyle Whelliston. Those who found five better venues (in their opinions) are Andy Katz, Pat Forde, Doug Gottlieb and Mark Schlabach.

Now, I don't think it's my place to explicitly tell you to vote for the Palestra. But I think I can get away with saying that it's always better to vote for something than to not vote.

One of the many blogs I read each day is the D.C. Sports Bog by Dan Steinberg. I read it in part because I've met the author before and in part because it's a well-written and quite funny take on sports in the next metropolitan area over the Mason-Dixon Line from here.

Well, I was pretty taken aback just now when I read the headline "Washington Post: The CAA Does Not Exist." Apparently, in the Post's weekly bracket projection that came out this past Saturday, no CAA team was included. As in, there wasn't even one given an automatic bid.

But there was one caveat. Steinberg couldn't confirm that this actually happened. I can: it's right here.

I must politely disagree with that bracket. Okay, maybe not quite politely, but I'll try. First of all, I suspect the CAA will indeed get its automatic bid. But there's little doubt in my mind that the CAA should be a multiple-bid conference this year. How can you deny that to a conference with the following characteristics:

-- Four teams in the Pomeroy Top 100 (Old Dominion, Virginia Commonwealth, George Mason and Drexel, in that order);

-- Five teams in the RPI Top 100 (Drexel, Hofstra, VCU, ODU and Mason, in that order);

-- Five teams in the Sagarin Top 100 (VCU, Drexel, ODU, Hofstra and Mason, in that order);

-- And five teams in the top 100 in the non-conference strength of schedule rankings (Northeastern, Drexel, George Mason, UNC-Wilmington and Hofstra, in that order). By contrast, there are only two such teams in the Big East, one each in the ACC and Big Ten and three in the SEC.

On this week's College HoopsCast, Mike Jensen asserted that it's "quite possible" that the CAA could get three bids this year. I also think the CAA is quite strong -- maybe not three bids strong, but certainly two.

Oh, and that Post article calls Villanova a "typical middling Big East team" and seeds it as a 12, and seeds Penn as a 16 in what is "not the finest year for the Ivy."

I feel like I'm going to run out of space if I try to counter those assertions, so I'll let you see for yourself why I see things differently.

Credit where it's due: Inquirer photographer Charles Fox took the picture of Drexel coach Bruiser Flint giving an opinion to the refs during the Hofstra game last week.

It didn't dawn on me until just as I was falling asleep Saturday night that I was starting this blog amid the embers of the Eagles' elimination from the playoffs. And while I tried hard to stay optimistic -- I happen to think the Birds did much better this season than anyone could possibly have thought they would, which should get me a good bit of hate mail -- it was hard to avoid the cloud of sad resignation that came over the city on Sunday.

Or maybe that was just the gray weather.

But it sure was hard to avoid that sense of disappointment in reading the papers this morning. The Daily News started a two-day feature titled "Winter of Our Discontent," headlined by a John Smallwood column in which he laments the sad state of the Flyers and 76ers. You would think, from the way he writes, that there's nothing going on between now and the day Phillies pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater. The Inquirer is slightly more optimistic, as its headline on an exclusive interview with Chase Utley reads "Where Hope Remains Alive."

Look, I get the fact that this a pro sports town, that it pretty much always has been and probably always will be. But you just can't overlook the college basketball scene. Not when you have six Division I teams to watch. Not when three of them are in the national spotlight in some form or another this season. Not when two of them have a crop of promising young guards to rival any freshman class the Big 5 has seen in decades.

And certainly not when on any given night, any one of them can give any of its opponents a good fight no matter the other team's caliber. I've watched every one of the City Six teams this season except La Salle (which I'll see Thursday), and I haven't seen a single game this season in which those teams haven't given everything they have to try to win.

But what makes Big 5 basketball -- and indeed college basketball nationwide -- such a great thing for me is that I think college basketball is the most optimistic sport on the American landscape.

Baseball perpetually disappoints the overwhelming majority of its fans. Even Yankees fans have claimed to suffer over the last few years. So many teams come close but don't win the World Series. Of course, that makes it all the more satisfying when a perpetual loser does win it all, but that only happens every 86 years or so.

Football can be exciting, of course, and it does have the most parity. But there's so much anger in the sport, from hard tackles to fans who insist on nothing less than a Super Bowl no matter whether their team has the talent to win it or not. College football is also a great thing, but unlike college basketball, we like it more when the big teams are at their best. I rooted for Boise State as much as any mid-major basketball fan did, but it was more important to me that the right teams made it to the national championship game.

The NBA is so cut-and-dried. It's too predictable and it's too hard for teams to get rid of their salary cap burdens. Until the playoffs it can also be pretty bad basketball, and it's often played in front of half-empty arenas where the fans are more interested in their business clients than the action on the court. The NHL has almost completed its fall from the national spotlight, and Major League Soccer can't command enough attention when its tickets cost the same amount of money as a pay-per-view English Premier League game.

But college basketball is a different thing. It's the only American sport where fans actively want to watch a game in an arena that doesn't have skyboxes, flashy lights and big jumbotrons. Creaky bleachers and low lighting are good things (unless you're a photographer, I guess). So are old brick exteriors and arched steel beams supporting ceilings with windows that let natural light spill all over the floor during day games.

Most important, though, are the fans. Especially around here. Sure, they expect their team to win. But even when that's the case, they'll celebrate anyway. Big 5 fans are known nationwide for how vocally they support their teams, even on the road.

St. Joe's takes hundreds of fans to Madison Square Garden each year. Drexel did the same for last season's Preseason NIT. Villanova has had massive traveling support for its NCAA Tournament games in Nashville, Syracuse and Minnesota the last two seasons -- not to mention at the Wachovia Center for last year's first two rounds. Penn draws well in any big city it plays in because its undergraduates and alumni come from all over the country. And while La Salle and Temple might be down at the moment, even the most hardened fan knows that both schools have the right coaches in place to bring those programs back to prominence -- especially at Temple, where we all remember how the Owls packed McGonigle Hall in their prime.

I don't mean to be a cheerleader in writing this. I just want to point out to the pessimists out there that if their spirits need a lift -- though I'm not referring to Will Bunch specifically -- college basketball might just be able to provide it for them.

(And if you've read this far, yes, Todd Zolecki does mention Penn and Drexel in his Utley story. But I think my point still stands.)

Edit: Will Bunch's identical twin, Attytood, is on the Oden case as well. Mike Jensen and I discussed Oden in the inaugural College HoopsCast that we did last week. You can listen to it by clicking here. If you right-click that link it will let you download the MP3 of the show.

Gonzaga lost a West Coast Conference game for the first time in almost two years, 80-75 at St. Mary's. If this keeps up, Kyle Whelliston might have to start talking about the 'Zags again, which worries the Mid-Majority greatly.

Kansas beat Missouri, but only by three points -- 80-77. Of course, this being one of the country's great rivalries, you throw out Missouri's winless record in conference play before you start lining up at 6am five days in advance for tickets in the student section. Jayhawks freshman Sherron Collins scored a career-high 23 points, but was more notable for the pattern he shaved in his hair. I was wondering what that was.

Elsewhere in the Big 12, Oklahoma State hosts Texas tonight. The Dallas Morning News compares Longhorns star freshman Kevin Durant with Cowboys star senior Mario Boggan. It's Texas' last game before playing Villanova this weekend, by the way.

Marquette beat Louisville at Freedom Hall in the early Big Monday game, prompting the Louisville Courier-Journal to use the words "dirty" and "immature" in the same headline. Okay, so it was Pitino who called the Cardinals immature (multiple times, no less), but still.

Across the way in Lexington, the SEC's best team heads to South Carolina to face the SEC's worst team tonight. But Wildcats coach Tubby Smith isn't terribly happy with the way his team's playing at the moment. Nonetheless, Kentucky is winning with defense. What a surprise.

Folks in South Bend are shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- that Notre Dame is playing two freshman point guards, but the Irish are off to their best start since the 1978-79 season. Virginia Tech has expectations for once, now that it's ranked for the first time since 1996.

North Carolina's women beat UConn, where growing pains aren't allowed, in a really good game, 82-76. Tar Heels guard Ivory Latta had an off night, but that didn't matter because she hit The Big Shots -- a three with 1:01 remaining and two free throws with 39 seconds left. The game wasn't sold out, but literally every story I've read about it this morning describes Carmichael Auditorium as a sauna or something close to it. Geno Auriemma wonders why Michael Jordan hasn't bought a fan for the place.

Finally, the Penn student paper got the day off yesterday -- the more your tuition is, the less you go to class, but at least MLK Day is a holiday worth celebrating -- so this morning's edition details the Columbia student section's attempts to taunt the Quakers on Saturday night. Not that it did them any good.

(As a rule, I like getting email from people. Not drug companies or porn sellers or stockbrokers mind you... but actual people are fine. And in this case, it lets me know that I have readers, which is also a good thing.)

Anyway, for the second straight Line of the Day we have a tie. That's not a trend that I particularly want to continue, but I just can't figure out what to do with these. So, once again, I'll just divide them into Local and National winners.

The local LOTD (because it's oh so trendy for bloggers to use acronyms) goes to someone who doesn't play for a Philly team, but I have a pretty good feeling the name Gary Neal will ring a bell for you. Here's what he did for Towson against fellow Marylanders Loyola last night:

In case you're wondering, OR stands for offensive rebounds and TR stands for total rebounds.

The national LOTD goes to Joseph Harris of Coastal Carolina, who did unto Virginia Military Institute what VMI has done to many others this season:

Those of you who follow the stats out there, especially Ken Pomeroy's numbers, know that VMI has the highest number of possessions per 40 minutes in the country -- 91.7. In other words (or other numbers, I suppose), 2.2925 possessions per minute. I haven't seen the Keydets in person, so I can't really imagine how this is possible. And if I had seen them in person, I'm not sure I'd get it anyway. And it makes Harris' win in Line of the Day even more impressive. Four VMI players took more than 10 field goal attempts or more against Coastal Carolina -- 14 shots or Reggie Williams, 23 (plus 16 free throw attempts) for Chavis Holmes, 16 (plus 14 free throw attempts) for Fred Robinson, and a measly 11 shots (and no free throw attempts) for Matt Murrer.

Even better -- VMI actually played the team with the lowest tempo rating in Division I earlier this season. I'll give you three guesses... except for the Penn fans, who don't get any.

Yep, it's Princeton. Ranked 336th out of 336 Division I teams with a tempo of 53.3 possessions per 40 minutes, or 1.3325 possessions per minute. Interestingly, the teams met in the BCA Classic tournament in Columbus, Ohio at the beginning of this season. Princeton won, 73-68, and a good friend who knows these things informs me that there were 70 possessions in the game. Slow and steady wins the race indeed.

If you missed last week's show, you can you can drop this link in the "Subscribe to Podcast" window in iTunes or whatever other podcast software you use.

On this week's show, we look back at a tough weekend for the local teams -- as I said in Newsstand, everybody but Penn lost. On the bright side, though, we discuss Syracuse coming back into form and Mike highlights the depth of the Colonial Athletic Association. For our national feature, we discuss the ACC. It was a wild week on Tobacco Road, as Duke lost two conference games for the first time in a decade and North Carolina lost at Virginia Tech.

We also highlight Philly natives Gerald Henderson and Wayne Ellington, the Episcopal High natives now playing at UNC and Duke respectively. Mike was down there last month and he got to see both players in person.

And finally, we look ahead to the week's main local and national games. Unfortunately, I forgot to mention two this coming Saturday: Drexel goes to Delaware at noon and Temple hosts Rhode Island at 2 p.m. Apologies.

By the way, two other things about Virginia Tech that I didn't get to mention on the show. First, you have to put that win at Duke in the context of last year's game between the two teams at Cameron -- yes, the one where Sean Dockery hit a buzzer-beating three to win it and the Cameron Crazies rushed the court.

Second, the Hokies' win over Carolina wasn't the first time coach Seth Greenberg upset a top-ranked team coached by Roy Williams. In 1993, Greenberg's Long Beach State team went into Allen Fieldhouse and beat the Williams-coached Jayhawks. The man clearly knows something.

Welcome to Soft Pretzel Logic, Philly.com's new college sports blog. We all know that Philadelphia is one of the best college basketball towns in the country, and now there's a new place to come to get all the information and insight you could want about your favorite teams.

My goal on here is to try to bring some new perspective and depth to the local college sports scene. We all know that the Eagles and the other pro teams deservedly get so much of the space in the print pages of the Inquirer and Daily News every day. So I'll be looking to supplement the stories you see in the newspapers each morning, and to give you a few of my own opinions as well.

I guess you'd like to know a bit about me. I moved to Philadelphia in 2002, and started covering the local college basketball scene in 2003 for the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn's student newspaper. Since then, I've covered all of the City Six teams -- on both the men's and women's sides. I've been writing for Mel Greenberg's women's basketball weblog as well, covering the local scene and a bit of the WNBA.

Now before you accuse me of favoring a particular team over the others, let me get that out of the way by saying I'm not going to do it. All the Big 5 teams will get their fair share of coverage, and yes, Drexel will too (and deservedly so). If I'm a fan of anything, it's the idea of the Big 5 -- that all of the region's teams get along well enough to play each other and work together off the court for such great causes as Coaches vs. Cancer.

When I got to Philly, I hadn't even heard of the Palestra or the Big 5. I remember watching that famous St. Joe's-Temple double-overtime game in 2002 on TV, but I didn't really get what I was about to walk into. But from the moment I experienced my first Big 5 game, I was hooked -- and I've been truly fortunate to get to know a lot of the people involved in the City Series ever since.

So what kind of coverage will you get on here? A lot of stuff, hopefully. You'll get a wrap-up of the day's local and national college sports news, for starters. You'll get some statistical analysis on our local teams using the data put together by such gurus as Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarin. Of course, you'll get my take on ESPN's famed Bracketology column -- not least because I know Joe Lunardi reads this blog. And you'll be the first to know when new episodes of the the Inquirer's College HoopsCast, which I host with Mike Jensen of the Inquirer, hit the web each week.

Down the road, I hope to introduce you to some of the behind-the-scenes people who make the Big 5 the great tradition that it is. And if things go really well, I'll be liveblogging some of the big games and events in college sports over the next few months.

And finally, you might be wondering how this blog got its name. Well, if you've been to the Palestra, you know that soft pretzels are a staple foodstuff for almost any Big 5 fan. So consider "Soft Pretzel Logic" a little tribute to the gastronomic side of City Series basketball history.

You probably already know what happened over the weekend; if not, Dick Jerardi's Monday wrap-up column in the Daily News has all the pieces. Suffice to say it was pretty bad, and I don't just mean for the Eagles -- Villanova, Drexel, St. Joe's, Temple, La Salle, the Sixers, the Flyers and the Wings all lost. Jeez.

Only Penn won, sweeping Cornell and Columbia to go 2-0 in the Ivy League right out of the gate. But one of the school's student newspaper bloggers -- he must be an Eagles fan or something -- says the title race isn't over.

The Hawks fell to Rhode Island, who hadn't won at the Fieldhouse since 1999. Then again, St. Joe's didn't shoot 55 free throws this time.

Syracuse beat Villanova with a bunch of former Orange greats in the house -- including Roosevelt Bouie, Dave Bing, Derrick Coleman and Rony Seikaly, whose No. 4 jersey was retired.

Duke finally won an ACC game, beating Miami after showing up at the arena in "professional attire" instead of warmups.

Out west, Chauncey Billups -- excuse me, Aaron Brooks -- hit the game-winning shot with two seconds left as Oregon beat Arizona in Tuscon. Another big win for the Ducks, who've certainly proven their worthiness to me after some questions coming into conference play.

Stanford swept Washington and Washington State, but the students at Maples didn't rush the floor. Ray Ratto praises the young Cardinal in the San Francisco Chronicle, but says the "label shoppers" in the stands "probably should have rushed the court."

On the women's side, No. 7 Connecticut visits No. 2 North Carolina tonight; watch it at 7 p.m. on ESPN2. The game is sold out, but then again it isn't in the Dean Dome -- it's in Carmichael Auditorium, where the Tar Heels men played in the Jordan/Worthy era. A Hartford Courant writer wonders whether Geno Auriemma's right that this game really doesn't matter all that much. But I rather doubt that, given that the writer also says that losing three straight to Sylvia Hatchell "wouldn't be any worse" than losing three straight to Pat Summitt and Tennessee.

A football story: Florida held its championship celebration on campus and 50,000 people showed up.

And another: there's a big debate in Dallas going on about renovating the Cotton Bowl, and how well the famed stadium can compete with the new stadium that pro football team in town is building a few miles up the highway.

Finally, ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi answers readers' mail (Insider subscription required) and offers to come to a school to teach bracketology as an elective. Now, I happen to know for a fact that Joe's reading this blog, because he told me last week he would be doing so. And I can only say that Joe should offer that service to the local schools first before branching out!

UPDATE: Two more football stories that are worth of attention: Ohio State star wide receiver Ted Ginn and running back Antonio Pittman will head to the NFL Draft, but Louisville quarterback Brian Brohm is staying for his senior season.

I just got back from the St. Joe's-Temple game. Though the crowd was relatively sparse (and quiet, too), three faces in the crowd stood out: Brian Grandieri and Mark Zoller of Penn, and Curtis Sumpter of Villanova.

Zoller and Grandieri are Philly-area natives and have been following the Big 5 their entire lives, so it wasn't too surprising to see them. But I was impressed that Sumpter came, given how busy 'Nova's been and the fact that he's not from the Philadelphia area. It's nice to see that he appreciates the tradition.

I'll have more to say about this next week, but the Inquirer's weekly college basketball podcast is back for another season. It's myself and Mike Jensen, and we might have a few other guests along the way as well.

This week, we talk about the St. Joe's-Temple game, Villanova beating Georgetown, and Drexel's hot streak. We also focus on Ohio State star Greg Oden, whose Buckeyes played (and lost) that big game at Wisconsin last night.

Villanova beat Georgetown in D.C. last night. Dana Pennett O'Neil of the Daily News says that as Scottie Reynolds goes, "so go the Wildcats," and the freshman point guard went quite well in front of a bunch of his high school friends from nearby Herndon, Va. The Inquirer's Shannon Ryan says that Villanova did the hard work despite the hard hats that were passed out to the Georgetown student section. Ken Pomeroy writes for ESPN.com (Insider subscription required) that the 'Cats overcame one of the nation's most underrated shot-blockers, Hoyas center Roy Hibbert. The best? UConn's Hasheem Thabeet.

Drexel won its 10th straight, though the Daily News correspondent notes it "doesn't take much to beat James Madison."

Ray Parillo was at the BCS national championship game for the Inquirer and details a night of trouble in paradise. Mike Kern was there for the Daily News and wonders whether Ohio State coach Jim Tressel should have voted for Michigan after all. He also reports that there are "better jobs out there" than that held by SEC commish and BCS chairman Mike Slive, who doesn't see a playoff coming any time soon. But this story out of Atlanta says Slive says a plus-one system for the BCS title game would be a good idea.

Speaking of Villanova and Georgetown, ESPN.com's Pat Forde says Florida pulled off the best underdog performance in a national championship game since the '85 Villanova hoops team. "Urban Meyer undressed The Vest," he says, though there's no reference to taking Tressel to the cleaners. The Boston Globe's Bob Ryan 'fesses up to being wrong about whether the Gators deserved to be in the game, and notes that the first team to hold the championships in football and basketball at the same time is not named USC or Notre Dame. Washington Post columnist Mike Wise calls Tressel "an impulsive, macho Texas hold 'em player" who blew the game by going for it on fourth down in the first quarter.

A Florida fan calls the horde of Ohioans who flooded Glendale last night "the rudest fans I have ever met, and I don't mean that in a bad way."

At the same time as the football game, Kansas State was hosting Texas Tech in the second half of the Big Monday hoops doubleheader. A game notable for the matchup of coaches Bob Huggins and Bobby Knight, but more memorable this morning because Wildcats star frosh Bill Walker ruptured his ACL and is done for the year. Another injury casualty last night was Nevada star Nick Fazekas, who hurt his left ankle, though he returned to the bench later -- and the Wolf Pack beat Boise State anyway.

And finally, here's a way to find every college football venue in the country using Google Earth. It came from a Syracuse football blog, which I would think leads to some kind of one-liner about the Orange having some free time these days.

Okay, so this one came against James Madison, whose Pomeroy rank is 274 and whose RPI is a whopping 316 -- one spot below Iona, the only winless team in Division I.

Nonetheless, you have to give credit to Drexel for winning its 10th consecutive game tonight, a 65-54 road win over the Dukes. The real test, though, will come Thursday night at the DAC, when preseason CAA favorite Hofstra visits. Hofstra's 9-4 record, including a loss to St. Joe's at Madison Square Garden last month, has led some people to wonder whether the CAA will get the multiple NCAA Tournament bids some thought it would at the beginning of the season.

(By which I mean ESPN.com bracketologist Joe Lunardi, whose remarks to that effect are accessible only to those with an Insider subscription. If you have one, click here and scroll down a ways.)

Anyway, I think it might still happen, especially if Drexel makes the CAA tournament final but loses it. There are four CAA teams in the RPI Top 100: Drexel (18), Old Dominion (75), Hofstra (86) and Virginia Commonwealth (97, and surprising a lot of people). Pomeroy-wise, Drexel (63), ODU (71) and VCU (65) are in the top 100, but Hofstra (120) isn't.

So yeah, that Drexel-Hofstra game should be a good one. At least it's on CN8 if you can't get in the door.

Two things worth noting this evening that I think perfectly sum up the extraordinary range of events that take place in college sports.

On one end, you have the Division III men's basketball team at Cal Tech. The school ranked No. 4 in the U.S. News and World Report poll (and just down the highway from the No. 4 school in this week's AP poll) broke a losing streak of 207 games to NCAA opponents on Saturday.

On the other end, you have the Ohio State marching band, which delivered another impressive performance before the start of the big-money BCS national championship game. The so-called "Best Damn Band in the Land" performed its signature "Script Ohio" formation not once, but twice simultaneously -- one set of marchers facing each sideline. There were times when there were three lines of marchers moving side by side, and I swear there was barely a hand's length between the end of one guy's trombone and the adjacent guy's tuba.

Talk about a game of inches.

The latest Pomeroy ratings for the City Six teams.

22. Villanova
57. Drexel
86. Saint Joseph's
90. Penn
101. Temple
235. La Salle

Of note: Villanova is 11th in the nation in offensive efficency with a rating of 119.1, 3rd in the nation in free throw shooting (78.9 percent), and 26th in the offensive rebounding percentage it allows its opponents (28.8 percent).

Drexel is 21st in the country in defensive efficiency with a rating of 86.4.

Saint Joseph's is 30th in the country in defensive 3-point field goal ratio, i.e., the percentage of its opponents' shots that are three-pointers, at 28.2 percent.

Penn 14th in the country in its ratio of assists to field goals made at 67.4 percent.

La Salle is 17th in the country in offensive rebound percentage, the percentage of possible rebounds gathered by the offense, at 40.5 percent.

Temple is 31st in the country in the effective field goal percentage (three-pointers count double) it allows it opponents at 44.8 percent, and 32nd in the country in turnover percentage (turnovers per possession) at 18.7 percent.