Soft Pretzel Logic

Something I thought about while perusing a few other newspapers' blogs...

Tonight on your way home from work or class, or tomorrow morning on your way out, take four quarters and a dime with you. Go to the newsstand, or the nearest newsbox, or the Wawa, or the guy at the top of the platform in City Hall station, and buy the Inquirer and the Daily News.

It really doesn't cost all that much, and it will give you something to do.

When you're done reading, you can tear it up and make confetti to throw after the game's first basket, but if anyone asks I didn't tell you to do that.

(I do have a decent idea of who's reading this thing, though, and I know a lot of you already do that.)

And for heaven's sake, don't throw it on the floor.

Another day, another bracket, and this time Drexel's in the field. The Dragons will be helped a whole lot if Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State and Kansas State keep losing.

Drexel gets a 12-seed and gets shipped to Spokane to play BYU in the East Rutherford regional. Winner gets No. 5 Nevada or No. 12 Vermont.

I don't have time to do all the analysis, but it so happens that No. 13 Penn is sent to Spokane as well to play No. 4 UNLV. It's in the San Jose regional, so the Quakers might be out west for quite a while, but I guarantee you that if that happened, the happiest people on the planet would be the people right here in Inquirer and Daily News World Headquarters. Especially the people who control the bags of money that don't quite exist in the basement.

(The second-happiest people would be the writers in Vegas and Reno, it looks like.)

Winner of Penn-UNLV gets Duke or VCU. You can be sure everyone else out there would want Duke-UNLV, but Penn-Duke would be interesting. Definitely more interesting than last year's game. Not saying that Penn could pull it off (against Duke or UNLV), but I genuinely don't know which of those games would be easier.

Villanova is still an 8-seed, and still paired with Stanford in Winston-Salem in the East Rutherford regional. And if 'Nova won that and upset Carolina, they could end up meeting Drexel in the Sweet 16. At the Meadowlands. If only it was at the Palestra.

Just saying. Now, back to the mines.

Two things:

1. A great story and photo slideshow about Drexel men's basketball team manager and fan hero Calvin Hicks.

2. Former Penn Relays chief clerk Herman Mancini died Sunday at age 94. He was the guy that got everyone in and out of the paddock on schedule. If you know anything about the Relays -- and believe me, they will be a big part of this blog when the time comes -- you know that he performed one of the most crucial jobs at Franklin Field.

I was lucky to spend tonight watching the premiere of The Palestra: Cathedral of Basketball, a movie about the famed arena that was written and produced by former Penn women's player Mikaelyn Austin.

Among the famous folks in attendance were four of the City Six coaches (Glen Miller, Fran Dunphy, Bruiser Flint and John Giannini), a bunch of former players, Dan Baker, Drexel AD Eric Zillmer, St. Joe's AD Don DiJulia and lots of other people who call the Palestra a second home.

The movie is just over an hour's worth of interviews with people who played and coached there, including Dunphy, Phil Martelli, Chuck Daly and Bill Raftery -- and I'm not sure those few do the whole thing justice. There's also a huge amount of archival footage of old Big 5 games (and of fans in the stands, which is also rather interesting to see if you weren't alive at the time the footage was shot).

For a lot of the people there, though, it was about memories. Count Bruiser as being very much among that group.

"There's nothing like being a player ... there's nothing like running out there, being a part of those doubleheaders, hearing your name called in a packed building," he said.

Now that he's a coach, Flint has the task of trying to teach his players just what playing in the Palestra is all about. He said it doesn't take much.

"Their first game they play in the building and they go against one of the other Philadelphia teams, they realize it's different from most games," he said.

The man who calls Flint's games on the radio, Dan Baker, knows plenty about the Big 5 -- he was its executive secretary from 1981 to 1996. He (and quite a few others) see the movie as a way of teaching people about the history of the building, and of Philadelphia college basketball.

"I thought it was a great film, capturing the essence of the best college basketball arena in the country," he said. "I hope that it gives them some sense of what we had here and can still have, to a degree -- and when two Big 5 teams play at the Palestra, I think we do have it."

It shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that there was a big Penn delegation there. It included Scott Kegler, Corky Calhoun, Vince Curran (who I have a feeling I'll be hearing from just for mentioning him on here), and Perry Bromwell. Bromwell is in a rather unique position, as he's now a Penn assistant after having played for the Quakers from 1982 to 1987.

"I think from a playing standpoint, you have a different kind of adrenaline to win and some pregame jitters and things like that," he said. But as a coach, he admitted that "sometimes, I'm trying to scream out reminders to the team on the court knowing that they really can't hear it."

Bromwell's boss, Glen Miller, came to Penn from Brown, and Miller's roots are in New England. But if you Penn fans out there had any doubts left -- which I suspect disappeared right around the time Mark Zoller went up to shoot that three in the closing seconds against Temple -- I got the impression that Miller really does get it.

"It brought goosebumps to my body," Miller said of the movie. "The Palestra's such a great place to coach, and to have the opportunity to be the head coach at the University of Pennsylvania -- when you think of guys like Chuck Daly who've come through here, and Rollie Massimino as an assistant, it's just a privilege to coach here."

Miller played in the Palestra in an NCAA Tournament while at Northeastern, but he said that he's really gotten to know the place and what it means this season.

"I don't think a lot of current players, younger coaches outside of the Philadelphia area know enough about the Palestra," he said. "Just having the experience of coaching here this year, it's far exceeded my my knowledge of the Palestra, having come here with Brown for seven years."

Of course, it's no surprise to hear that Miller's predecessor, Fran Dunphy, has a lot to say on the subject.

"I think that just some of the characteristics of the building and some of the nuances of the building were fantastic to watch," he said.

I asked him whether or not the Big 5 has changed since his playing days at La Salle.

"It's changed, but there's still -- like the other night when we played Penn at the Palestra, when we played St. Joe's at the Palestra, that's exactly what it used to be all the time," he said. "It was crazy, the games were hard-fought, sometimes they were really close and other times they just were a hammering of sorts. But always, when you get out of there, it's always the same feeling -- you've just gone through a phenomenal experience."

Another guy with quite eloquent views of the Palestra is Dick "Hoops" Weiss, the former Philadelphia Daily News writer now with the New York Daily News. He is interviewed quite a bit in the movie, and was on hand for the premiere last night.

"For those of us who grew up in it, I think it really captured the essence of our childhood, and I think it really allowed people to experience a little bit of what we experienced," Weiss said. "I don't think you can tell people about it unless they were there, I don't know if they ever realized how special it was."

Yes, Weiss is a journalist, but this movie seemed to touch him rather personally.

"When I looked at the film, I could recognize so many people that I knew growing up, so many guys that played here, that you just knew," he said. The Palestra "was the center of the basketball universe, at least on the East Coast."

Weiss, being among the truly top college hoops writers in the country, pretty well gets to go wherever he wants. But the Palestra is still among his top venues, up there with Allen Fieldhouse and Cameron Indoor stadium.

"I like the fact that coaches still feel the need to make a pilgrimage here," he said.

One such coach was Texas' Rick Barnes, who took the Longhorns to the Palestra for a practice before their game against Villanova last month.

"There's that huge picture of Wilt Chamberlain there with the two basketballs -- [Barnes] had [Kevin] Durant pose with the same wingspan just so that he could have a feel for that."

Weiss also praised the fans who come to the Palestra.

"I was in Columbus yesterday at Value City Arena, and it might as well be a rock concert because everything has to be visual every second of the day," he said. "Even though the Palestra had its incredible noise and incredible traditions, I think there was a reverence when the game started for the game itself."

The last word goes to Austin, who's been working on the movie for a few years now. I confess that I've known her since her playing days at Penn, and I've been following the production process since the very beginning. I sort of can't believe that it's actually done now, but I can only imagine the number of hours Austin put into it.

"It's like having your kid, seeing him grow up and drop-kicking him through the goalposts of life all at once," she said. "When I started this thing, it was like this [small], and it became so much more."

The people who turned out to honor her last night can certainly attest to that.

Ooh boy, Bracketology has gone daily for the rest of the season.

Villanova's an 8-seed, and gets Stanford again in Winston Salem as part of the East Rutherford regional. The winner gets North Carolina, and all I can say is if that game comes to pass watch out for those traveling calls.

Penn gets up to a 13-seed, and on the S-curve (Insider subscription required) is the lowest of them. Nevada is the top 4-seed, and though they're really, really good you still have to prefer the Wolf Pack to some of the other teams the Quakers could get. Including another 4-seed, the very athletic Virginia Tech Hokies.

Drexel jumps up to being the first team out. Joe Lunardi writes in his column that "few teams will be discussed quite as much as Drexel these next two weeks." Get to that game against VCU, and win it, and that discussion will be even longer.

A note about the blog this week. I have actual job work to do for the rest of the week, so there won't be any more Newwstand posts for a while. The Philly.com college sports headlines will still be in the right rail here on the blog, and there's a pretty good list of other media outlets in the links list. I figure you all can do it yourselves from there. I also think I might hold Crunchy Numbers until Wednesday of next week so that I can do a seaon-recapping edition that will include Penn's last regular-season game at Princeton.

I'll be writing about mock brackets and other stuff that comes to mind, but the Newsstand compilations really take a while, so I hope you won't mind that.

Now, back to the show.

The new show is up. This week, we ponder where St. Joe's and Temple are going in this last week before the A-10 Tournament; look ahead at two big games for Villanova; preview Drexel's trip to the CAA Tournament; and discuss whether the Ivy League ought to have a tournament of its own: Here's a hint: we agree that it shouldn't.

On the national scene, we discuss who the top team in the country is. I'm a bit skeptical of Ohio State, but Mike has them at the top of his ballot, and he makes a good case.

Mondays always start with Dick Jerardi's weekend wrapup, including what I think is the right team at the top of his Top 15: UCLA.

Jerardi also gets a scoop from Dave Mallon, formerly of St. Joe's: he was detained in London trying to get to a basketball team in England to sign a contract but didn't have his work permit papers in order. After being stuck in a detention area for 12 hours, he flew back to Philly for the St. Joe's-Temple game.

On the women's side, Temple fell at GW and finished second in the A-10. There's certainly no shame in that, because the Colonials are ranked eighth in this week's poll.

Over the weekend, Penn beat Harvard and Dartmouth, Villanova beat Rutgers, Temple beat Charlotte, Drexel beat Towson to clinch fourth place in the CAA, St. Joe's lost (badly) at Richmond, and La Salle pretty well blew its shot at the A-10 Tournament by losing to George Washington.

National news after the jump.

On other things, including producing the College HoopsCast. Back later.

But yeah, it was a St. Joe's blowout, and I'm not sure Kris has to apologize for anything, because St. Joe's is good and shot 12-20 from the field in the second half, and Temple shot 44.6 percent from the field, scored 72 points, got 13 offensive rebounds and cut a 30-point Temple lead to 16, which is not the worst thing in the world.

And Pat Calathes did this, including a career high in points:

I'll be back at some point, maybe over the weekend, more likely Monday. Do yourself a favor and get out of your house/workplace/dorm/whatever for a little while so you can sit at home Saturday and Sunday and watch lots of college basketball on TV. Take a walk, or go to Reading Terminal Market or the Liberty Bell or the Phillies store at Citizens Bank Park or something.

If you're going to Boston this weekend and you see me, say hi. I gather there are actual readers out there, and that some of them are hitting the road for the Penn game, but I haven't heard from many of them yet.

And one other thing: Go here, click on the Tony Kornheiser Show podcast, get today's episode, jump to about 50 minutes in and listen to Tony talk with John Feinstein about college basketball. Their discussion includes trashing Princeton and giving props to the CAA.

Alright, so here's what I saw and heard atmosphere-wise tonight:

No rollouts from the Temple students, which kind of surprised me. St. Joe's had a bunch, of course. Variations on a few themes.

14:59 1st half: “Hawks welcome Temple fans ... BOTH of You”
Reply from the rather sizeable Temple student section: “You can’t count”

10:40 1st half: “Sticks & Goons May Break Our Bones, But Temple Will Never Beat Us”

1:56 1st half: “What’s So FRAN-TASTIC About Losing?”

1:08 1st half: “Remember When Football Had the Worst Team at Temple?”
Various replies from the Temple students of “You don’t even have a football team.”

19:24 2nd half: “Philly’s 3 Biggest Jokes: Temple Bball, Temple Football, TEMPLE”

17:07 2nd half: The St. Joe's students sing “We’ve lost that loving feeling...”
I'll be honest, it seemed like they were getting rather bored at this point. Then again, the Hawks were up by 20 points at the time and would rather soon go up by 30.

14:35 2nd half: “March is NOT Christmas Season”

11:00 2nd half: “Temple Bball + Temple Football = EMPTY SEATS”

7:44 2nd half: “What’s Worse - Being a GOON or Losing to La Salle?”

7:22 2nd half: “This is our house” from SJU students. No reply from Temple stunts, a few of whom were seen leaving the seating bowl at the time.

3:16 2nd half: Obviously... "THE HAWK WILL NEVER DIE"
I can't say I've ever seen the use of the underline in that one before. I guess, despite their apparent boredom, this one did mean something.

2:19 2nd half: The SJU fans start chanting "We want Artur," for last-man-on-the-bench Artur Surov.

0:57 2nd half: They finally get him -- but wait! The sub is supposed to happen between a pair of Garrett Williamson free throws, and Surov is coming in for the shooter. So St. Joe's P.A. man Brian Startare has to say "Replacing... in just a minute..." and then announces that Temple's Anthony Ivory is coming in. Surov finally comes in after the second free throw, and gets an ovation from the St. Joe's students that are left in the place.

I must admit I'm a bit disappointed in the rollouts. I mean, the Goon thing was two years ago now, and everyone else has moved on (and Temple has changed coaches, too). And as for the football and attendance smack... Yes, but St. Joe's doesn't have a football team. No, the Eagles don't count.

Then again, at least the rollouts were there. This letter-writer to the Daily News thinks they don't exist anymore. Which loses you a bit of cred in arguing that Drexel should be in the Big 5, even if you don't have any connection to the place.

As much as I'm at the Palestra tonight to watch Temple-St. Joe's, the biggest reason why I wanted to come to the game was to talk to the Bracketologist himself, Joe Lunardi.

In addition to writing the single most important column anywhere on ESPN.com (with apologies to his editor, Andy Glockner, whose Drive to 65 is also worth reading if you follow a multiple-bid conference), Lunardi is the color analyst for Hawks games on the radio.

And he reads this blog, which is even cooler.

So I made sure to get to the Palestra early enough to talk to Lunardi about the local teams and their chances of making it to the Big Dance. Excerpts of my interview with him are after the jump.

I'm at the game, but not liveblogging it. It's on CSTV and I thought it was on CN8, and posted so earlier, but it's not on CN8. Still, if you have CSTV, watch it.

I'll post all the rollouts and other good stuff after the game.

And third, I got rid of Typekey-based commenting because people were having trouble registering for it. It should be easier to comment now, but again, please take your stocks, drugs and porn elsewhere. Thanks. Alright, let's do this.

There wasn't much movement since last week. That's in large part because La Salle, Temple and St. Joe's only played once since then; of course, the latter two play tonight and that will have a big effect. Villanova lost twice, which is why they fell a bit, but they lost to very good teams, and the worse loss rankings-wise was on the road, so there's not much damage. Penn moved the most because it won twice. Drexel won twice, but it's high enough in the rankings that its previous losses leave it without that much room to move up. Pretty simple. So let's get to odds and ends, after the jump as always.

In which I don't wear fedoras but don't quite do this either.

Big win for Drexel last night, getting revenge over William and Mary and turning the DAC into a hornet's nest. Bob Ford watches the knife hovering over Drexel's head as Selection Sunday looms.

Big game tonight at the Palestra between St. Joe's and Temple. For yet another year, Hawks fans are starting to believe their team can make a run in the A-10 Tournament.

The Penn student paper considers the psychology of free throws, and a columnist writes that Brian Grandieri has discovered the lost art of the mid-range jump shot.

The Villanova student paper trusts in Dante Cunningham as the Wildcats get ready for their final three games of the regular season.

SI.com's Seth Davis investigates the possibility of an Ivy League basketball tournament, even though he agrees with me that it's a terrible idea.

Out in Bethlehem, Bucknell got a win over Lehigh to keep up the chase against Holy Cross in the Patriot League.

On the football side, Marc Narducci talks to Camden native and former Tennessee lineman Turk McBride ahead of the NFL scouting combine.

National news after the jump.

You might remember that the very first Line of the Day went to a player from Virginia Military Institute. I decided after that because VMI's offense is so crazy, that I wouldn't have any Keydets win the award for the rest of the season because it would be too easy to give it to them every time.

That does not, however, exempt players who play against VMI from winning the award. So while allowing myself a rare indulgence in a sport not called college basketball, I was rather surprised to come across the performance of Liberty's Alex McLean:

So that's 16 made two-point baskets, no three-point attempts whatsoever, eight free throws and 17 rebounds for a guy who's 6-foot-8. Then again, the Keydets didn't play anyone over 6-foot-7... but still, that's a heck of a game.

I am struggling mightily to avoid saying that the spirit was with him. Oops.

The basketball gods have had us dance around it for the last few weeks, and here it is: No. 14 Penn vs. No. 3 Georgetown in Winston-Salem as part of the St. Louis regional. I've written already about how good and how efficient Georgetown is, so no need to repeat it. Suffice to say that for as much fun as it would be for Penn fans to go against John Thompson III again, there's no way the Quakers are winning this matchup.

It also shows just how badly Penn needs to win out. Joe Lunardi writes that the Hoyas could move up to a 2-seed if they keep winning, but if they do, one of Kansas, Ohio State, Texas A&M and (most likely) Pittsburgh would fall a notch. As good as Georgetown is, those other teams would be even harder to beat. The other 3-seeds are Memphis, Washington State and Southern Illinois, which wouldn't be too much easier.

The 4-seeds, however, are Boston College, Nevada, Butler and Air Force. BC would probably do unto Penn as it did in 2005 (i.e., win by 20 on athleticism alone), but Penn could take the other three teams.

To give you a more statistical idea, Southern Illinois' actual RPI number (as opposed to rank) is 0.6476. Air Force's is 0.6258, Nevada's is 0.6177, BC's is 0.6072 and Butler's is .6065. That is a huge difference.

The winner would get either Sean Singletary's Virginia or Winthrop, who Dick Jerardi says will win their first-round game no matter who it plays.

Villanova stays at an 8-seed against No. 9 Maryland in New Orleans. That would be quite a scene on Bourbon Street. It would also be a game Villanova should win, because I doubt the high-speed Terrapins (13th-highest tempo in Division I) would be able to deal with the Wildcats' defense.

But Maryland's defense is very good -- the fourth-most efficient in the country, in fact. So this would probably be a pretty low-scoring game, something with which the Wildcats are more than experienced enough to handle. The winner would get No. 1 Florida, giving Villanova a shot at revenge against the team that knocked them out last season.

Drexel falls from being the ninth team out of the field to being the tenth team out, which is not a pleasant thought. Their need to get to the finals of the CAA Tournament goes up each day as other bubble teams win.

I missed Dick Jerardi's usual midweek column in Newsstand this morning. Thank you, RSS reader.

There really isn't anything locally. So let's see what's up around the country.

Tom Izzo was "pumping his fists and stomping his feet" trying to inspire his team to victory over No. 1 Wisconson.

Notre Dame beat DePaul, as Irish guard Collin Falls atoned for his mistakes committed in the game between these two earlier in the season.

UConn men's coach Jim Calhoun says this year's Huskies are stuck in "the worst offensive struggle that I can remember."

Rick Barnes is now 12-2 against Bobby Knight after Texas' 80-51 blowout of Texas Tech.

Kentucky snapped a three-game losing streak by not blowing it in the clutch for 70-63 win over LSU.

And North Carolina has a chance for revenge over N.C. State tonight in Chapel Hill

Specifically, my belief that if you have to pick one of the No. 1 seeds to not make the Final Four (which you do, because it always happens), Wisconsin is the team to not pick.

The Badgers, who sit atop this week's AP Top 25 poll, went to East Lansing tonight and were upended by Michigan State, 64-55. I say "upended" instead of "upset" because the Spartans aren't that bad -- at least not bad enough that their students should consider the result justification for storming the court, which they did.

Anyway, the man of the hour is Spartans guard Drew Neitzel for doing this:

One other thing, Syracuse folks: if you have the Orange beating Villanova to a bid, you'd better have all the teams that beat both on their home courts also in the Field of 65.

Those teams would be Pittsburgh and Drexel.

You were saying?

Make it two posts in two days out of the Syracuse Post-Standard around the assertion that the Orange belong in the NCAA Tournament and Villanova does not. Now don't get me wrong, I've met one of the Syracuse writers and consider him to be a really nice guy and a very good writer and reporter. I almost never look outside the Post-Standard for Syracuse news because they cover the Orange so well. But I think they have this one wrong, and here's why.

Using the ESPN-style Team A vs. Team B comparison, here goes. I'll even use RPI instead of Pomeroy numbers because that's what the Selection Committee and the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leaders do. Results are listed in chronological order, though it is very tempting to list them in ascending numerical order.

Team A

-- Road/neutral non-conference wins: 234
-- Road/neutral non-conference losses: 36
-- Home non-conference wins: 295, 91, 185, 198, 137, 65, 267, 164, 66, 290
-- Home non-conference losses: 81, 50
-- Road conference wins: 28, 192, 163
-- Road conference losses: 129, 52, 97
-- Home conference wins: 19, 165, 55, 129, 97
-- Home conference losses: 4, 49

-- RPI: 64
-- Strength of schedule: 55
-- Non-conference strength of schedule: 125

Team B

-- Road/neutral non-conference wins: 109, 82, 266, 91, 83, 274
-- Road/neutral non-conference losses: 44
-- Home non-conference wins: 204, 200, 151, 47, 85
-- Home non-conference losses: 50
-- Road conference wins: 17, 68, 135
-- Road conference losses: 48, 64, 49, 28
-- Home conference wins: 49, 52, 165
-- Home conference losses: 4, 17, 55

-- RPI: 19
-- Strength of schedule: 4
-- Non-conference strength of schedule: 33

In my opinion, Team A is better in three categories: road/neutral non-conference losses, home conference losses and home conference wins. The teams are even in home non-conference wins (Team A has twice as many, but has three that are worse than any of Team B's). But in the other eight categories, I think Team B is far superior.

That team is Villanova. It should be pretty clear, especially once you factor in that three of those Orange non-conference home games were in the BCA Classic at the beginning of the season. And the Wildcats actually play non-conference road/neutral games outside of their home state, something that Syracuse proudly does not do.

This is why, ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, I feel confident that you will find the Wildcats fully deserving of a spot in the NCAA Tournament ahead of the Syracuse Orange. I'm not saying that the Orange shouldn't be there, I'm simply trying to prove that as of just after 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on February 20, 2007, Villanova fully merits a place in the Field of 65.

I yield back the balance of my time in this debate, which I'm sure you all appreciate more than anything else I've written on the blog thus far.

Okay, I will agree that Villanova's offense is in a bit of a funk. Not sure that it's pulling a Punxsutawney Phil and hibernating, as Dana Pennett O'Neil writes in the Daily News, but it's definitely not doing so much these days.

(Dana gets immense bonus points for the Punxsutawney Phil reference, though I'm tempted to revoke a few of them because I've now had to type the word Punxsutawney three times.)

In the Inquirer, Shannon Ryan makes an equally important point: Villanova was whistled (hint about what I thought of the refs) for 27 fouls, including four each for Scottie Reynolds, Curtis Sumpter and Dante Cunningham.

Going back to the ground floor of the building, Steve King profiles Penn's Ibrahim Jaaber's transition from two-guard to point guard.

Up Broad Street, Temple has some new assistant football coaches, including running backs coach Kevin Gilbride. That would be the son of Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride.

And finally, a story in the Inquirer about the Drexel lacrosse team. I've never heard of the guy who wrote it, though.

Yes, I have questions about Villanova now. But they aren't the same ones some of the rest of you might be posing. My questions are these:

1. Why is it so shameful to lose to two Top 20 teams in three days, with the second game played 1/3 of the way across the country?

2. How can a team's schedule be weak when its worst road loss RPI-wise is at No. 64, and its worst home loss RPI wise is to No. 56?

3. Why shouldn't we believe (I first wrote assume, but I shouldn't use a word that strong) that Villanova will beat Rutgers, UConn and Syracuse? That would leave the Wildcats heading to the Garden at 8-6 in conference play, which could be equal to or better than as many as three of the teams currently above the Wildcats in the standings.

4. Why would it not count in Villanova's favor that it has the second-best non-conference strength of schedule and the second-best overall strength of schedule in the Big East, and the sixth-best strength of schedule in all of Division I?

5. If Villanova does win out in the regular season, what is wrong with the fact that seven of the eight losses will have come to teams with not-unreasonable shots at the NCAA Tournament, and yes I include Drexel in that at the moment?

Call me an optimist, but I'm not joining in all the howling about how Villanova's in trouble. You shouldn't, either.

Bracketology has gone to Mondays and Wednesdays in the run-in to the end of the regular season, so there's new fodder to chew over today.

Drexel's still out, and I don't see a full rundown so I can't tell you whether they're still ninth out or whether they've fallen lower. Penn's in as a 14 with an interesting matchup against Southern Illinois in Columbus within the San Antonio regional. The Salukis are 23-5 and ranked 31st in Pomeroy, and their worst loss is at No. 88 Evansville.

Now, having said that, although SIU is 29th in defensive efficiency, they're 265th in steal percentage and 221st in three-point percentage given up. They're also 124th in offensive efficiency at a tempo of 60.2 possessions per game, which is both far slower and far less efficient than Penn (64th in the latter). They are also -- and this is huge -- 321st in free throw rate given up.

I'm not saying Penn could win this game, but if the Quakers get stuck with a 14 this wouldn't be the worst matchup. The other 3-seeds are Memphis (very athletic, as usual, which always kills Penn), Washington State (flat out really good), and Georgetown. I can't help thinking that Hoyas coach John Thompson III would want no part of a matchup with a team that he was 3-5 against while at Princeton.

The winner of Penn-SIU gets No. 6 Duke or No. 11 Oklahoma State, teams with which Penn fans should be quite familiar.

Villanova got the dreaded 8-seed against Texas Tech in Sacramento as part of the San Jose regional. That's a very winnable game for the Wildcats, as the Red Raiders are 166th in defensive efficiency, 241st in offensive rebounding percentage given up, 154th in 3-point percentage given up and 256th in 2-point percentage given up. It would also be a ton of fun to see Jay Wright coach against Bobby Knight.

The other 9-seeds, by the way, are Arizona, Notre Dame and Alabama. As Villanova played the latter of those two in the regular season, those matchups aren't possible, and Arizona would be questionable because the teams played each other in the second round last year.

The winner of 'Nova-Texas Tech games gets No. 1 UCLA. That game would surely be low-scoring, but I bet the Wildcats could give the Bruins a real serious run.

I'll write that post about why 'Nova is so much more deserving to be in the tournament than Syracuse later.

This week's show is now ready for your listening pleasure.

Mike and I start by looking back at the weekend, with a tough loss for Villanova and a big win for Drexel. Then, with Temple's Dionte Christmas and Penn's Mark Zoller lighting up the scoreboard, we try to pick an All-City team. And finally, we look ahead to the big games locally and nationally this coming week.

In the national segment, Inquirer women's basketball writer Mel Greenberg makes a special guest appearance to talk about the women's game. Mel and I talk about the favorites to win the national championship, the best player in the women's game and the state of two local teams on the national stage: Rutgers and Temple.

Have a listen, and feel free to let me know what you think by emailing me or posting a comment.

Leading off and playing... oh wait, that's next month. Anyway, start with Dick Jerardi's weekend wrapup, which tells you about Villanova-Georgetown and Drexel-Creighton, among other things.

Villanova plays the early Big Monday game tonight at Marquette. I'm still completely convinced that the Wildcats are in the field of 65, but enough people aren't that the Daily News' Dana Pennett O'Neil asked around to see what the team thinks. The Inquirer's Shannon Ryan reports that "must-win" is "a don't-say term" on the Main Line, so Curtis Sumpter said something else.

Penn notched two impressive wins this weekend, over Columbia on Friday and Cornell on Saturday. A columnist was not asleep on press row and says the Quakers won with defense, which might also serve them well next month.

The Delco times declares this a "satisfying" season locally, even if it's not as spectacular as the last few have been.

... but I'm really busy, which is why there hasn't been a Newsstand yet. Stay tuned.

So I said in the last post that Drexel had the biggest win of the weekend. Turns out I had no idea what I was talking about.

Because the biggest win of the weekend was had by a Drexel team, but it wasn't basketball. It was lacrosse.

The Dragons went down to No. 1 Virginia this afternoon and upset the Cavaliers, 11-10, with two goals in the final ten seconds of the game.

I mean, that's not impossible in lacrosse, because the teams have timeouts. But it's still close to unbelievable. And the same guy scored both goals -- David Ambler, an Abington native. The second goal came with three seconds remaining, so technically he scored twice in seven seconds.

Wow.

It was Virginia's first home loss in 19 games, the Cavaliers' first home-opener loss in seven years, Drexel's first win over Virginia (after losing 15-7 at home last year), and the Dragons' first ever win over a No. 1-ranked team in any sport in school history.

UVa has three guys from the Philly area, by the way: Jon Borror (Media, Pa. / Haverford School), Ken Clausen (Downington, Pa. / The Hill School), and Foster Gilbert (Radnor, Pa. / Haverford School).

Nice to know that Sean Singletary and Jason Cain have some company, if not from the city itself.

More to come on this, hopefully.

How often do you see a team post more free throw attempts, more offensive rebounds, more total rebounds, more steals and fewer turnovers and still lose? Not to nention holding one of the nation's best post men to only four field goal attempts, even if he was hampered by foul trouble?

Well, that's what Villanova did yesterday, falling to the Hoyas, 58-55. It was a great game, full of drama and lead changes, and I don't think it will do any harm to the Wildcats' NCAA Tournament hopes. Georgetown's very good, but Villanova proved it could match them step for step until the very last few.

And it was in those last few that the game was won. Specifically, Jeff Green's faked three, after which he took a few steps inside the line and calmly drained what ended up being the game-winning jumper. So the first line of the day goes to him:

The second line of the day goes to the team that got the most impressive win of the day. I have to be honest, I have no idea what to think of Drexel now. Beating Creighton on the road was a huge deal, but there's still a ton of work to do to get to the NCAA Tournament because of that loss at William and Mary. A run to the semifinals of the CAA Tournament, if not farther, is a must, I think.

Nonetheless, last night's win was a big deal. So the man who hit the shot that gave the Dragons the lead for good gets a Line of the Day:

St. Joe's also got a win, though not as important, at St. Bonaventure. Nonetheless, freshman point guard Jawan Carter had a huge game, especially given that he did the following in only 20 minutes on the floor:

The news was not as good for Temple and La Salle. The Owls lost at George Washington, which isn't too surprising because the Colonials are pretty good (at least as the A-10 goes). But there was yet another 30-plus-point scorer in cherry and white, and this time it wasn't Dionte Christmas:

As their remaining games are against George Washington, UMass and Xavier, I thought last night's game at St. Louis was the game La Salle had to have to make it to the A-10 Tournament. But it wasn't to be, as the Billikens pulled out a 59-55 win. The main reason for that was a 20-point second half from Kevin Lisch:

Let's close with a winning effort for a local team. Penn solidified its standing in first place and dealt a serious blow to Cornell's Ivy League title hopes with a 83-71 over the Big Red at a raucous Palestra last night. It was back and forth for all 40 minutes, and the game wasn't at all as close as the final score would indicate. But when it came time to decide the thing, it won't surprise you to see who stepped up for the Quakers:

More to say about all of this in this week's College HoopsCast. It might be held until Tuesday for Villanova-Marquette, and I'll let you know if it is. Enjoy the rest of your day.

It's a big day on the local college hoops scene, as Villanova hosts Georgetown and Ivy leader Penn has a chance to knock joint second-place Cornell out of the title race. If you can't get into the Wachovia Center this afternoon, it might be worth heading to the Palestra tonight for what should be one of the better Ivy League games this season. Then again, Big Red coach Steve Donahue -- a longtime former assistant of Fran Dunphy -- is 0-17 against the Quakers.

Mike Jensen gets the day started in the Inquirer with the Weekend Tip-Off. Let him know if you've seen ESPNU anywhere; I have it, but I'm pretty sure I don't count for the purpose of the exercise.

Here are the Inquirer and Daily News recaps of Penn's 73-54 win over Columbia last night. The Quakers shot an astonishing 12-of-12 from 2-point range in the second half. I'm not sure I've ever seen a team not miss a shot from inside the arc in a half. Media, Pa., native Brian Grandieri led Penn with 17 points on 8-for-8 shooting, including a bunch of 10-to-15-foot baseline jumpers that just floored backcourt mate Ibrahim Jaaber as well as Lions coach Joe Jones (read the stories to get the quotes).

The Hoyas come to the Wachovia Center today on a serious roll, led by 7-2 center Roy Hibbert. 'Nova shut him down last time, but Georgetown is playing much better now than they were when they last faced the Wildcats, so it will be real interesting to see what happens this time.

Pro scout Jim Clibanoff ponders hot Carolina freshman Brandan Wright, and likes what he sees but still has a lot of questions.

And finally, a column from yesterday's Daily News by Rich Hofmann about cheating in sports. I can only say "Amen" to the last line.

I'll be at both games today, so say hello if you see me.

No newsstand today, sorry. I'll have plenty to say over the weekend.

Okay, I take that back -- one story. Penn Charter grad Sean Singletary is coming back for his senior year at Virginia, and he had this to say about it:

"I really don't put too much consideration into [turning pro] at all," Singletary said. "I came here to graduate and become a man through college and through experience. I haven't done that yet, and I realize it's going to take me another year to fully grow."

Throw in a couple eggs, some flour, sugar, a little yeast, and maybe some cinnamon and a few raisins for dramatic effect, stick it in the oven for a while, and you get something resembling my thoughts on the data:

-- Over the last three weeks, St. Joe's' RPI has gone from 84 to 94 and back to 84 again. Might have something to do with the fact that last night marked the Hawks' first two-game winning streak since Jan. 10.

-- Villanova also went 2-0 in the last week, but didn't move much because they can't go too much higher until they start running into the really big teams. It's worth noting that the Wildcats have the third-highest Pomeroy rating in the Big East, but are in seventh place in the conference standings.

-- With Temple, I think the lack of movement relative to last Thursday results only from the fact that I haven't checked the numbers for a week. I would think that yesterday morning they were much higher on Monday, after the UMass win, than they were this morning after the loss at La Salle. And no, I am not going to start doing this twice a week.

-- Drexel and La Salle also went 1-1 since last week's Crunchy Numbers. The fact that Drexel didn't move in the RPI between last Thursday and today is a testament to how strong the CAA is this season. For as good as the win at Hofstra was, last night's loss at William and Mary really stunk (the Tribe are 166th in Pomeroy and 171st in RPI), and I expected the Dragons to be knocked down for it. The fact that La Salle didn't move much in any of the ratings shows, for better or worse, how far down the ratings the Explorers are.

Odds and ends after the jump.

I guess I'll start with the good news: wins for La Salle, St. Joe's and Villanova.

The Explorers needed the win more, Mike Jensen writes in the Inquirer, and got it, 77-72, over visiting Temple. In the Daily News, Bob Cooney reports on how pleased John Giannini was that his team didn't blow a lead this time. La Salle still needs another win and some help from St. Bonaventure to get to Atlantic City, but now it's at least more possible than it was at this time yesterday.

St. Joe's beat George Washington to take over fourth place in the A-10. In the Daily News, Mike Kern relays a quote from Phil Martelli that should be plastered all over the city. When asked whether his players follow the conference standings, he said, "Don't they go to ESPN or Philly.com to see?" You can't get better advertising than that, folks. In the Inquirer, Ray Parrillo notes that the Hawks did something they couldn't do a few weeks ago in D.C. -- fight off a late Colonials rally.

Villanova embarrassed Cincinnati last night at the Pavilion, 64-48. I watched the whole game on TV and it was obvious that the Bearcats really are that bad. In the Inquirer, Shannon Ryan says the Main Line hadn't had this much fun since 50 Cent came to Midnight Madness. In the Daily News, Dana Pennett O'Neill writes that 'Nova held Cincy scoreless for a stretch of 11 minutes, 33 seconds in the first half.

There's the good, now for the bad: Drexel pretty well killed its at-large bid chances by losing last night at William and Mary, 60-47. Beating Creighton might not be enough now, much less making a run in the CAA Tournament.

In the student section, the Villanova paper looks at teams on the NCAA Tournament bubble, and a columnist breaks down the 10 kinds of people you see on Jumbotrons.

National news after the jump.

So I emailed Joe Lunardi right after posting the Bracketology piece to ask about Drexel, and got a reply in all of 20 minutes or so. Talk about service. Apparently, there was supposed to be a Bracketology on Monday, but some server issues prevented it from being posted.

"Drexel was 8th 'out' on Monday and 9th 'out' today," Lunardi wrote. "Regardless, it's impossible not to have ODU higher than Drexel at this point given their season sweep of the Dragons and a higher place in the conference standings. Hope that helps."

It certainly does.

Oh my goodness.

Down in Washington, the D.C. Sports Bog just published an extraordinary exposé on the life of the man whose stats I quote so often on here, Ken Pomeroy.

Forget about the fact that the Bog's author, Dan Steinberg, refers to me directly in his post. The stuff on Pomeroy is pretty astonishing.

First, that he lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Which you could sort of pick up already based on the games he says he goes to in his blog, but I never realized that was exactly where he lived.

Second, that he grew up in the D.C. area, which doesn't much matter to anyone reading this blog. But one Washington-related thing with him of very real consequence is that he thinks very, very highly of Georgetown. The Hoyas have the No. 2 raw offensive efficiency in the country and the No. 1 adjusted efficiency, which has some kind of formula built in based on strength of opposition that I don't quite get (I use the raw stats in Crunchy Numbers in part for that reason).

The Bog reports that Pomeroy has a particular affection (on this Valentine's Day, naturally) for Georgetown center Roy Hibbert, who is No. 8 in offensive rating and No. 2 in effective field goal percentage (despite the fact that he plays almost entirely in the paint).

The most important about Pomeroy's Georgetown obsession, though, is that the Hoyas come to the Wachovia Center on Saturday to play Villanova. I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that if the Wildcats win -- which is a very real possibility because they already beat Georgetown in D.C. this season -- 'Nova had better get some serious respect.

And there's one other thing about Ken Pomeroy that you need to know: in his day job, he's meteorologist for the National Weather Service (this was first reported by the Raleigh News and Observer's ACC Now blog).

That's something we could really use some of around here right now.

This week's bracket dovetails nicely with a story in this morning's Inquirer that I forgot to mention: why the A-10 is almost surely a one-bid conference this season, with Xavier having the only shot at an at-large slot.

It so happens that the Musketeers get the auto bid in this week's field. If you care enough, they have an 11-seed in the East (Meadowlands) regional and a game against Arizona in Lexington.

As for the local delegation, Villanova gets the dreaded 8-seed and a date with Stanford in Chicago as part of the Midwest (St. Louis) regional. Joe Lunardi really likes the Wildcats, writing that "this is the week Villanova turns its RPI into gold." A win over Georgetown on Saturday would move them even higher.

A game against the Cardinal shouldn't be too much of a challenge for the Wildcats, as Stanford is 163rd nationally in offensive efficiency, 178th in 3-point percentage and 174th in 2-point percentage. But they're good on defense: Though they're 86th in defensive efficiency, they're also 57th in 3-point defense and 30th in 2-point defense.

The winner of that game gets Wisconsin. The Badgers are really (really) good, but 'Nova-Wisconsin would be an outstanding game. It would play to Villanova's preferred style, too, because Wisconsin is 285th in Division I in the ratio of threes to all field goal attempts.

Penn is back in the field as a 14-seed and has to head out to Sacramento to play Washington State, also in the St. Louis regional. Any 3-seed would be a huge challenge for the Quakers, but the Cougars are fourth-best in the country in the ratio of assists to field goals allowed, which is one of the focal points of Penn's offense. Overall, Wazzu is 12th in defensive efficiency and 21st in effective field goal percentage allowed, but only 86th in offensive efficiency -- nine spots lower than Penn.

I'm rather surprised by what Lunardi did to Drexel this week. Not because the Dragons are excluded, but because they fell from being the fourth team out to being the first team in the "considered" category, which translates to being the ninth team out. If you have an ESPN.com Insider subscription, click here to read the full Rundown. I thought that the Hofstra win would move Drexel closer to being in the field, but apparently it hasn't. And Joe certainly knows what he's doing, so I have to take his word for it.

I wasn't really planning to write any more stuff about last night's Penn-Princeton game, because it's just not all that big a deal anymore -- even if it led the sportscasts on local TV last night.

But then the coaches and players opened their mouths after the game. So that idea got run over by the snowplow that might have gone down my street at some point though I haven't got any evidence of it.

(A warning that this post is kind of long, but I think it says something about the importance of coaching in college basketball. I split the post to take up less space on the page, but I hope you read the whole thing.)

Whether you care about Princeton or not, I'd like you to consider the following from Tigers coach Joe Scott. He said the following in his press conference, responding to a question about what his goals are for the rest of the season now that his team is 1-6 in the Ivy League:

“Our goals are the same every game. I just told our guys, we're building a program where our guys know why and how, why we play the way we play, how we play, and we make ourselves play that way every single game. When you do that, when you become successful, you know why and how. You keep doing it over and over again. It's called habits.

“That's what we're building. There's no time frame on, you know, when those things are going to occur. It's not about the end result. We're building something. It's about us getting to that point. It's about developing young guys who are willing to do that and do it all the time. So that's what our goal is, get better at what we do. Know what we do, get better at what we do and be crazed about getting better at what we do, and let's get as many guys that we can doing it at the same time.

“That's our goal. So I'm very happy with the effort of our team and how our effort paid. I'm unhappy that the ball doesn't go in the hoop, but I know we compete. We just have to get better at the things we need to do to make the end result different, and I think that's a learning process. And our younger guys are learning it and we'll get better at it, I know that.”

A lot of that refers to the famous Princeton offense, with its rigid system of ball movement, backdoor cuts and three-pointers. But if the head coach of the team you root for said what Scott said -- no matter what team that is -- wouldn't you be pretty concerned?

One of the four is worse than the other three...

In a game where there was no love lost, there was very little attractive basketball in Penn's 48-35 win over Princeton. The Tigers came in wanting to take it slow, and as with any good relationship, the Quakers obliged. But when it got late, Penn finally asserted itself. While I wouldn't say they took advantage of Princeton's offensive ineptitude, the Quakers consummated the victory when Ibrahim Jaaber stole a Justin Conway pass and took it to the other end for a slam dunk. That put the home fans in a very good mood, and I'll leave it at that.

The Penn student paper called the game "Ugly with a capital 'U'," but also says that the Quakers were "smothering Princeton's offense" all night. A columnist tries to spread the love among the coaching staffs. The Princeton student paper only sent one writer, and he noted that defense usually wins. As opposed to some other kind of cliché.

A Trenton Times columnist says the romance is gone from this once-great rivalry, while the Bucks County Courier Times leads with a rollout about Anna Nicole Smith.

Elsewhere in the region, Villanova welcomes Cincinnati to the Main Line tonight, and Mike Nardi says the Wildcats' offense "is fine" despite the team's recent lack of scoring.

(Get your mind out of the gutter. Not least because the snow's pretty dirty at this point.)

Villanova's women lost at home to Notre Dame last night. The Irish were the latest team to come to the Pavilion "seeking revenge for all the years of frustration [the] Wildcats have caused them." 'Nova coach Harry Parretta actually said that "their guards just took advantage of us."

On Hawk Hill, it's the second time around tonight for St. Joe's and GW.

And Dick Jerardi talks to former La Salle women's coach John Miller, who you might recall left in the wake of the Gary Neal-Mike Cleaves scandal. Yeah, the one about... oh never mind, that's really enough.

National news after the jump.

Man, I'm writing way too much Penn-related stuff. Someone from one of the other schools please email me and give me something else to write about.

Thing is, though, there was something in this morning's Penn student paper that just begs to be ridiculed. For yet another year, the Daily Pennsylvanian and Daily Princetonian exchanged dueling trash talk columns penned by the sections' top sports editors.

They are sort of funny, in a very Ivy League holier-than-thou way. But by just about any reasonable Philly standard, they are about as weak as you can get for trash talk.

For starters, both sides start out by conceding that the other one's better. At Penn, Andrew Scurria tries to help Princeton out of its apparent self-loathing by offering to "extend to you a friendly hand." Later, in writing about the Tigers' 1-5 record in Ivy League play, he says, "we hate to see you doing this to yourselves."

At Princeton, the triple-byline of Karl Micka-Foos, Ashley Wolf and Trent Magruder write in their first sentence that "you guys are probably gonna beat us tonight."

(And in so doing, they lost the battle over which side has the better writing skills. Which I would have never expected from Princeton.)

"We lost to Dartmouth Saturday night," they write. "Yeah, that Dartmouth."

What the hell kind of a rivalry is this, playing nice with each other?

Good morning to all of you who came to the blog by way of the box that ran alongside Kevin Tatum's Penn-Princeton preview in this morning's paper. If you're looking for the College HoopsCast, click here, but since it's snowing out, why not stick around for a while and read about the rest of what's going on in college sports?

Let's start with the advance for that showdown between the Quakers and the Tigers, the latter of which comes to the Palestra tonight with a stellar 1-5 record in Ivy League play. It's Glen Miller's first Penn-Princeton game. Miller is quoted as saying he liked the Big 5 atmosphere a lot and looks for "more of the same" tonight. The weather being what it is (and Penn students being as late-arriving as they are), I have my doubts.

The Penn student paper, in an attempt to accuse Princeton of having a culture of losing (take my word for it, as this happens with other teams frequently), interviews Tigers freshman guard Marcus Schroeder. He says that prior to this season, "I really hadn't lost that much my whole life." But have some sympathy for him, because other than Princeton, "no Division-I program even seemed to want him."

In the Princeton student paper, forward Luke Owings (who went to the rival high school of Penn's Steve Danley) says that "we're not really changing anything between this game and the last ones." Those last games went like this and this; I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

At the other end of the floor, there's praise for the Penn bench and a column on the importance of free throws by a guy who does not "profess to be an expert." I thought that disqualified you from research in the Ivy League.

Temple won the women's Big 5 last night by beating La Salle, 68-55. It was the Owls' 14th straight City Series win, and gave Dawn Staley her fourth Big 5 title in seven years at the helm on North Broad Street. The Temple student paper gives props to Kamesha Hairston, who led the way with 17 points and 16 rebounds.

And a football story: ESPN.com reports that an epidemic of football is breaking out at Rutgers, with symptons including a big increase in the sale of hooded sweatshirts at the bookstore.

National news after the jump.

This latest College HoopsCast is now available for your listening pleasure.

On this week's show, Mike and I start off talking about big wins for Villanova, Temple and Drexel.

Then we look ahead to three big local rivalry games this week, starting with Penn-Princeton. Quite a few Penn fans asked me over the weekend to do something about this game, and Mike and I discuss why the Tigers aren't the power they used to be.

We also consider a couple real big games on Wednesday night in the Atlantic 10. St. Joe's and George Washington battle for a first-round bye in the Atlantic 10, while La Salle has a must-win game at home against city rivals Temple.

In the national segment, you might recall that a few weeks ago Mike and I gave some props to the Pac-10 as the nation's best conference. Well, the ACC is making a serious run at that title right now, so we discuss which one's better. And is it possible that Duke might not make the NCAA Tournament?

All that and more on this week's show.

As with every Monday, start with Dick Jerardi's College Hoops Wrap. Then give props to Community College of Philadelphia for being in his Top 15.

Temple got a win that was different from its previous three, Mike Kern reports in the Daily News, but was also familiar -- a high-scoring blowout. There are now 10 teams within two games of first place in the A-10.

Villanova's also in the middle of a big jam in the Big East.

And Joe Lunardi writes that "one of these years I'm going to spend the night" in the Palestra's upper press box.

National news after the jump.

Line of the Day goes to Dionte Christmas, who answered Minutemen guard James Life's trash talk with the following:

That's a pretty effective way of shutting the other guy up if you ask me.

But here's something to shout about: the combined attendance for the five Division I games that took place in Philadelphia over the weekend (Penn vs. Dartmouth and Harvard, St. Joe's-La Salle, Delaware-Drexel and UMass-Temple) was 28,994 fans.

It's a great sign that college basketball is alive and well in this town.

I might as well just admit it: Kyle Whelliston has one of the coolest jobs in college basketball. He travels all over the country going to nothing but mid-major schools, and writes about them for ESPN.com and his own website, midmajority.com.

For his 75th game of the season, Whelliston was at Harvard-Penn on Saturday night at the Palestra. He would hunt me down and hit me with something for saying that he was quite sought after by many of the other media in the house, so I'll spare that. But he was gracious enough to talk to me for a few minutes about Philadelphia's two players in mid-majordom, Penn and Drexel.

"I think Penn is going to win the league pretty easily," he said. "I think Yale is up there based on luck."

(He said this before Yale lost at Cornell, also on Saturday, putting Penn back in first place in the Ivy League.)

Whelliston also covered the Delaware-Drexel game, and was a bit concerned by what he saw from the Dragons.

"They've sort of lapsed back into having trouble shooting the ball," he said of Drexel."They couldn't really take care of Delaware the way they should have. They have some problems with their offense that are going to be exploited over the next month, month and a half."

Whelliston went to Drexel for grad school, so I wasn't at all surprised to hear that he was at the DAC. But don't you think for a second that he's biased towards anyone. He likes all the mid-majors just the same, except Gonzaga, which isn't one anymore anyway.

(Or is it? Stay tuned.)

Whelliston does maintain a soft spot for Philadelphia, though. The first game of his now-famous 100-game first season was at the DAC, and the second was because that's where the whole Mid-Majority thing got started two years ago.

But what to make of that conference in which half the Philly teams participate, the A-10? Whelliston excludes it because of what he calls on his blog "high-major manifest destiny" (scroll down a long ways, but it's there).

Given that above post was written back in December, and that the the A-10 is not having the best of seasons (Phil Martelli's opinions notwithstanding), I decided to ask his opinion of the conference now. It hasn't changed.

"You've got to pick a side, and I've always said that it's sort of a half-and-half league," he said. "You've got these city teams and you've got these country teams, and the conference itself is very upwardly mobile and trying to grow a lot. Then you have St. Bonaventure and places like that. So I haven't really been covering it."

By the way, the real reason why Whelliston was in town Saturday had nothing to do with the basketball. He was actually here to see Simon Kirke, the famous drummer for Bad Company, play with the Penn band.

"That rock show was so awesome," Whelliston said of the halftime performance. "I actually flew up here a day early so I could attend that rock show."

For as well as St. Joe's is doing, it's clear that John Giannini is struggling through this season at La Salle. You can't blame him. He has a very young, raw team to work with. Two of his top three offensive players, Kimmani Barrett and Rodney Green, are freshmen, while the third, Darnell Harris, isn't at full health.

Nonetheless, it was rather sobering to hear Giannini talk after yesterday's game. I count nine times that he uttered a sentence about having "a lot of work to do." More often than not, the subject of the sentence was himself. He used the plural a few times, but he clearly was putting much of the blame for the way things have gone on himself.

"I just have a lot of work to do – this game proves it," he said. "I don’t want to get into history, but this is the first year of building. This is the first year of building, and we have a long way to go. We have a lot of work to do."

Giannini will readily concede the youth of his team to anyone who will listen, though I can't help thinking he must feel he's repeated himself more than enough times this season.

"All we’ve accomplished so far in terms of building is bring some kids in who can get some points and rebounds at this level," he said. "But it doesn’t mean they know how to pass, it doesn’t mean that they know how to defend, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need to bring in better guard play, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need more size. We just have some young players that could have good futures that have been able to come in here and consistently make us competitive on most nights. Obviously, this was not one of them."

But Giannini won't let the players put their heads down. He was asked if his players feel discouraged, and gave what I think is a really great answer:

"No. I’d say disappointed and frustrated," he said. "Discouraged means you stop trying. You wouldn’t be human, you wouldn’t be worth your salt if you weren’t disappointed and frustrated. Any team in that situation is disappointed and frustrated. But we’ll keep working – we’ve got a lot of work to do, short term and long term. We have a lot of work to do."

I'm not afraid to say that I think Giannini's the right guy to do the work for La Salle. I hope, despite the team's struggles this season, that I'm not the only one.

We all know how bad traffic to the Shore can be can be on summer weekends. But given the current logjam in the Atlantic 10, where five teams have six conference wins, there could be a lot of traffic on the road to a first-round bye in Atlantic City next month.

Three teams stand at 6-4: Duquesne, George Washington and St. Joe's. Right now, GW has fourth place on the better overall record tiebreak (15-7 to the Hawks' 14-10 and the Dukes' 10-11). That makes the Colonials' visit to Hawk Hill on Wednesday even bigger than a matchup between the two recent powers in the conference would already be.

Phil Martelli is well aware that his team is right in the mix for a top-four finish.

"We’re in the fray here," he said. "It’s not like this thing is over and done and we’re only talking about seeding -- We can still talk about getting to the top of the league.

"Now, we’re going to have a lot of circumstances to get there, but certainly, all of these games down the stretch, it changes on a daily basis," he continued. "And I think that’s a good thing, and I don’t think the league gets enough credit for that."

Martelli admitted, though, that his players have been as confused as many of the rest of us about what's going on the A-10 this season.

"Last week, we had a meeting when we were getting ready for our next game, against Dayton. I asked them who’s in first place in the Atlantic 10," he said. "There were 13, 14 guys in the room – eight different answers. They had no idea. So now we talk about, what does this mean. What does this mean to La Salle, to play us today? What does it mean to us? What’s going on in the Atlantic 10? What does Rhode Island losing to UMass mean?"

Martelli wasn't afraid to say how important it would be to his team to get a first-round bye, especially given how young the team is. More than just being an extra day of rest, the bye would give Martelli more time to get the scouting reports on the other teams into his players' heads.

"I’m not sure if we’re smart enough yet to do it [fast]," he said. "In that case, we’re too young – they’re not as in tune as I’d want them to be. With an older team, in the years where we had them, we’d go to the hotel and we had it cold.

"But with this team, I think having the opportunity to play three games in three days would be significant for this group," he continued. "It wouldn’t be a deal-breaker if we don’t, but it would be significant."

I'm working on some posts about yesterday's St. Joe's-La Salle game for later, but until then, I thought I'd post this exchange between Phil Martelli and reporters during the postgame press conference.

Near the beginning of his remarks, Martelli said that after the Villanova loss, "all the coaches that can email me, they’ve been emailing me."

"I had 47 ideas on how to run offense, and it’s hard to run offense if you can’t throw a pass from one to another," he said. "I’m sure that those people are very successful in whatever they do."

That quote inspired the following a few minutes later:

A reporter: Do you get more complaints after a Villanova game than other games, typically?

Martelli: No. The worst game would be if we play Penn here and it’s our home game. That’s the one I get more. But I haven’t gotten many of them. This was like a little flurry because it was Villanova, but the Penn game here, if we lose our home game – it’s our designated home game – that’s when they really lose their minds.”

A second reporter: Do you respond to any of them?

Martelli: No, I don’t respond to any of them. I got a suggestion that we should watch Herb Magee’s shooting tape because the guy suggested that in foul shooting the ball was rolling off their hand, and I just said, thank you for your suggestion.

A third reporter: Was that from Herb?

Martelli: It probably was from Herb. It probably was.

Much laughter ensued.

On Saturday, I was on hand along with a sellout growd for the Big 5 game between St. Joe's and La Salle. The game wasn't on TV, so I figured I'd try to do some liveblogging the way I did for the Penn-St. Joe's game a few weeks back. As with that post, it wasn't just game commentary. There was some some of that, but I focused on the atmosphere -- the rollouts, chants, and other fun stuff like that.

To read the coverage as it happened, click the link below. Then jump to the bottom of the page and read upwards.

I wish I could come up with a better subject for my 100th post on the blog, but I can't. I forgot two stories from this morning that I wanted to include in Newsstand.

First is a story on the rapid rise of Temple's Dionte Christmas in this morning's Daily News.

Second is a column about former Penn State basketball player John Amaechi, who you might have heard by now is revealing his homosexuality in a forthcoming book. I know it's a touchy subject with a lot of people, so I don't want to get too deep into it, but the author of the piece is at least one of the more prominent columnists in the country.

Dana Pennett O'Neil of the Daily News is doing a live chat about college hoops right now. Go talk to her.

Say what you will about the Daily News, but that sounds like a bargain to me.

College hoops gets the back page this morning as Dana Pennett O'Neil heads to Indianapolis to participate in a mock-bracket-making session with the U.S. Basketball Writers association. It's a truly fascinating piece and it is a reminder of just how much better the NCAA Tournament selection process is than the results that the BCS computers spit out.

In said mock bracket, only Penn and Villanova made it -- though as it was done over the weekend, Drexel hadn't beaten Hofstra yet. As the automatic bids were done as a matter of procedure and not a matter of debate, GW won the A-10 and Hofstra won the CAA whether anyone liked it or not. Villanova got a 6-seed in the St. Louis regional and was sent to Sacramento to play New Mexico State. Penn got a 13 in the East Rutherford regional and was sent to Spokane to play Southern Illinois.

The story gets real deep into why the teams were sent where they were: to avoid intra-conference matchups and to avoid more than two teams in a conference get seed protection, which isn't allowed. Funny how the Big East got two in a down year. But I disagree with the assertion that Penn "hadn't traveled far in recent years." I would have thought playing in Dallas last season took care of that.

Finally, O'Neil busts some myths, mainly that the committee counts the teams from each conference and that the RPI matters. But she does provide a list of factors that the committee uses.

Here's the full bracket they came up with (as a PDF).

I said it yesterday and I'll say it again: Drexel had to win last night's game and did so. Kevin Tatum reports the details from Long Island, where the Dragons snapped Hofstra's 28-game home winning streak. They also stopped a four-game losing streak to the Pride. And a former Philadelphia Daily News writer of some renown gives props to Frank Elegar.

The Drexel student paper profiles the school's pep band.

Dartmouth guard Leon Pattman, by far the Big Green's best player, won't travel to Penn this weekend. Abner's could be in for a very long couple of days.

Down in Durham, David Aldridge talks to a pair of Seniors named Wayne Ellington and Gerald Henderson. Their sons, of course, are freshmen of the same name.

From eight miles down the road, Mel Greenberg reports on No. 1 Duke's win over No. 2 North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Big, big win for Duke, which has now won this season at UNC, Maryland and Tennessee.

Also on the women's side, Philly native Dawn Staley will be an assistant coach with the U.S. national team through the 2008 Olympics.

And something I was looking for yesterday but didn't find: the list of Delaware's football recruits for this year.

National news after the jump.

A big, big win for the Dragons.

Hmm.

-- Drexel fell a bit because of the Old Dominion loss, but because ODU is ranked higher (68) in Pomeroy, it wasn't too big of a hit. But given that the Dragons have dropped 12 spots over the last three weeks, tonight's game at Hofstra is really, really big. A win would do wonders for the rankings, and might (might) make the Creighton game not a must-win. But that scenario would probably also require a run to the final of the CAA Tournament. Still, it all starts tonight.

-- La Salle did take a big hit, and it's because the loss last night to Duquesne was at home. Yes, the Dukes are 6-4 in conference play, but they're 10-11 overall. The La Salle-St. Joe's game Saturday is La Salle's home game, which could make the RPI and Pomeroy numbers look really bad next week even if the place is all Hawks fans. The Explorers' RPI didn't fall so much this week because it was already low to begin with.

-- Penn didn't fall nearly as much in the RPI as I thought they would after the Yale loss, but being 3-1 on the road in conference play will do that. And Yale has the second-highest RPI in the conference. But the Sagarin and Pomeroy ratings took a big hit because Penn was supposed to win those games but didn't.

Here's the thing, though -- and I hate to go off on a Penn tangent but this is one of the weird things that happens sometimes when you get deep into the stats. Pomeroy's season prediction had Penn finishing at 13-1 in the Ivy League. I figured initially that wouldn't change, but now he has the Quakers finishing 12-2. It must be the Princeton game at the end of the season, but given Penn's recent struggles at Yale and Princeton being 0-4 in the league I'm a bit surprised.

-- Seems to me that St. Joe's fell farther than a loss at a team of Villanova's rank might justify. But this is another case of a team doing something that conform to the Pomeroy prediction, in this case losing by 17 and only scoring 39 points in a game. Still, the Hawks are close to back where they were two weeks ago rankings-wise, and the team hasn't either won or lost two in a row since Jan. 17. So that probably has something to do with it too.

-- Yes, Temple beat a bunch of bad teams, and did so at home, which is why the RPI actually fell. Nonetheless, the Owls' 32-spot jump in Pomeroy shows that three blowout wins will bump you up no matter who they're against. Better news for Temple fans: Pomeroy's predicting a 79-78 win over UMass, though with only a 53 percent probability.

-- Even though Villanova's has a losing record in conference play, those rating numbers are outstanding. If the Wildcats can get to .500, they'll have a very good resume to present to the selection committee. And if they get above that mark -- which is certainly doable, because most of the remaining games are pretty easy -- the ratings and resume will be really good.

Odds and ends after the jump.

I put together a page with a bunch of football signing information. It includes stories and recruit lists for Rutgers, Penn State, Temple and Villanova, and a bunch of other stories about programs and players nationwide.

If you follow St. Joe's, Penn or Drexel, you know that if your team scores 100 points in a game you get a free cheesesteak at Abner's at 38th and Chestnut. It so happens that the two teams in the city (proper) that don't have that promotion are the ones who hit the century mark last night.

The dynamite blew up in La Salle's face as the Explorers lost to Duquesne, Ray Parrillo writes in the Inquirer. In the Daily News, Bob Cooney offers the consolation that the Dukes "might be the feel-good story for all of college basketball."

Mike Jensen reports in the Inquirer that Temple hit triple digits for the first time in 616 games against St. Bonaventure. Mike Kern notes in the Daily News that the Bonnies are 0-28 against Temple in Philadelphia.

Drexel has a must-win game at Hofstra tonight, and Bruiser Flint says he's running out of out of "Knute Rockne speeches" to give his team.

Wisconsin visited Penn State last night, and Frank Fitzpatrick profiles Badgers coach Bo Ryan. The Chester native "wears expensive suits and earns more in a year than his father did in a lifetime," but flashes his blue-collar roots just as much while on the bench.

I am so jealous of David Aldridge, who paid his first ever visit to Krzyzewskiville last night.

And Villanova's new athletics center should be open this fall.

The local football teams did well on signing day. Villanova got what might be the best recruiting class in program history. It's led by Terrell Wilkes, who runs track in addition to running the football, and picked a place that has a nice reputation for doing both pretty well/

Temple got the MAC's best recruiting class including a quarterback from one of the better programs in the Washington area: DeMatha High School quarterback Chester Stewart.

Penn State missed out on Broderick Green, leaving the Nittany Lions without a real marquee recruit. Joe Paterno didn't even hold a press conference. Green went to Southern California, which got three of the top 14 running backs in the country. But Linebacker U. did get more linebackers.

And Rutgers got the top player in New Jersey for the first time in school history.

Please allow me to do a bit of grandstanding if you would. This is a blog, after all.

On Pardon the Interruption today, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon proclaimed North Carolina coach Roy Williams to be the best-dressed coach in college sports. With all due respect to both columnists, they're wrong.

You, I, and everyone else knows full well that it's Jay Wright.

I mean, Roy dresses well and all. I even like the argyle sweaters. But you just can't beat Jay Wright in an open shirt, much less his three-piece suits. Or his four-piece suits, for that matter.

Temple beat the stuffing out of St. Bonaventure, 109-70, which made Philly.com blogger Kris Gochenour very happy. We had this from Line of the Day regular Mark Tyndale:

And we had this from Dionte Christmas:

We also apparently had Dustin Salisbery on the bench in the second half wearing a neck brace, which isn't good (UPDATE: Strained neck). But he did score 21 points in 21 minutes: 7-12 FG, 3-7 3pt and 4-4 FT.

Meanwhile, up at Tom Gola, La Salle led Duquesne 105-104 with 45 seconds to play, but gave up seven free throws without making a field goal thereafter to lose, 111-105. Five Explorers scored in double figures, led by Darnell Harris:

Duquene had six players in double figures led by Mr. February himself, Reggie Jackson:

And this on defense and the glass from Kieron Achara:

Duquesne had 88 possessions, La Salle had 87. St. Bonaventure-Temple was pretty frenetic too, with both teams registering 71 possessions.

I wonder what Bill Raftery would have been like calling games like those.

All the Philly hype in the Carolina-Duke game has been about Gerald Henderson and Wayne Ellington, but we forgot someone -- Duke's Haddonfield, N.J., native Brian Zoubek. He's getting his first start for the Blue Devils since their first game of the season tonight.

The game's on ESPN (of course), unless you're for some strange reason reading this blog in ACC country, in which case it's on whoever in your market takes the Raycom/Lincoln Financial ACC package. I know of at least one reader down there at the moment.

And it shouldn't surprise you to hear who's calling tonight's game: Mike Patrick and Dick Vitale on ESPN, and Tim Brando and Billy Packer in ACC-land (literally and perhaps figuratively as well).

Well, we knew this was coming: Villanova's the only team in Joe Lunardi's field of 65 this week. Drexel's the fourth team out and Penn's nowhere to be seen, because the 3-1 Quakers are two games in the win column behind 5-1Yale.

(Have some pity for the Bulldogs, by the way, because they get the play-in game against neighbors Central Connecticut State for the right to face Florida.)

Anyway, Villanova gets what Penn got last week: Air Force. The Wildcats are a 12 and rising -- Lunardi admits that they are an 11 on the S-Curve that he uses to make his seeds. The Falcons, meanwhile, are a 5-seed and falling in a hurry after losing at San Diego State last night.

But in some interesting ways, this is a pretty even matchup. Villanova is 18th and Air Force 19th in Pomeroy, and both teams boast Top 70 offensive and defensive efficiencies. Villanova is 66th in offense and 55 in defense, while Air Force is No. 2 in offense and 49th in defense.

The Falcons shoot extremely well, which could give the Wildcats problems. Air Force is sixth in 2-point FG percentage and third in 3-point FG percentage. But the Falcons are 185th in 2-point defense and 221st in the ratio of threes to all field goals given up, so Villanova could have a reasonable chance to put up some points.

Having said that, Villanova's 271st in 3-point percentage given up and 319 in the percentage of threes to all field goals given up.

The most significant difference between the teams, though, is the tempo. Villanova averages 67.7 possessions per game, while Air Force (which runs the Princeton offense) is 330th in Division I with 59.4 possessions per game.

And one other positive thing for Villanova about the matchup: It would take place in Buffalo as part of the East (Meadowlands) regional, so the fans wouldn't have to travel too far. The winner would get the winner of Kentucky vs. Davidson.

Just got word that Penn State missed out on highly touted running back Broderick Green. He picked USC instead. The Daily News and Inquirer both have stories on it.

More recruiting news will be posted on Philly.com through the day

Villanova won the Big 5 mud wrestling championship last night, Shannon Ryan reports in the Inquirer. Ray Parrillo reports on Phil Martelli's apology to the city for such a bad game. Jim Salisbury apologizes to the "Palestra purists" out there for "the Holy Bore," but praises Villanova's defense.

In the Daily News -- which used "Holy Bore" as its back page teaser headline, by the way -- Dick Jerardi reports that a woman in the stands yelled out, "Somebody please make a basket." Dana Pennett O'Neil relays Phil Martelli's admission that the game was "boys against men and we had all the boys." And Rich Hofmann outdoes them all by adding apologies to James Naismith, ESPN2, Dr. Jack Ramsay and all the ships at sea.

The Penn student paper prints the expletive from Martelli that didn't make it into either the Inquirer or Daily News.

By the way, if you were that woman in question, please email me because I'd love to get a fan's perspective on what it was like to watch the thing from in the building.

Elsewhere in the Daily News, Dick Jerardi does double duty by filling out his 65-team dance card. Penn and Villanova are in, Drexel is not. He has Duquesne from the A-10, which would be one hell of a story. He also has eight from the ACC and six from the Big East, Big 12, Pac 10 and SEC.

In the Inquirer, Mike Jensen previews the first Ellington-Henderson showdown by talking about practice.

It's football recruit signing day, and Penn State is in the hunt for a big-time running back, Broderick Green, to replace Tony Hunt. The Nittany Lions are also looking to junior colleges.

Villanova's getting a hotshot safety, Cardinal O'Hara's John Dempsey. They're also getting a quarterback from the Prep, Chris Whitney.

Temple's getting some speed on both sides of the ball with Daryl Robinson, a North Catholic grad-to-be who can play running back and cornerback.

And finally, some lists: One with players going to the local colleges and coming from the local high schools; and another with all the commitments of players across the region to colleges across the country.

National news after the jump.

Oof.

I don't eat scrapple, and I'm not all that into Rocky, and I couldn't care less if Wing Bowl existed or not. But if there's one real sign that I live in Philadelphia, it's that I have a very high tolerance level for low-scoring basketball.

It got one hell of a test tonight, though: Villanova 56, St. Joe's 39.

Villanova finished with what Temple scored in a half against La Salle on Sunday.

(Now there's a rollout for you.)

Coming in, Villanova was averaging 80.5 points per game in its city games this season; St. Joe's was averaging 73.3. And we got 56-39.

We got it at 70 possessions per side, which is quite higher than either team's average tempo this season -- 67.6 per game for Villanova, 62.2 for St. Joe's.

Played in forty minutes of basketball that did include the legal use of a three-point line. Not that you'd know, though. The Hawks shot 3-for-16 from beyond the arc, which is 18.8 percent, and the Wildcats shot -- ack, I can't believe I'm typing this -- 3-for-22, which is 13.6 percent.

Paging Steve Donches or Paul Arizin to the Main Line, stat. Or Penn's Bobby Morse, who could really shoot from long range.

And the turnovers... yikes. We welcome the St. Joe's freshman class to the Holy War: three each by Darrin Govens and D.J. Rivera, four by Garrett Williamson and six by Jawan Carter. Junior Pat Calathes had four too. Twenty-two overall for the Hawks. Then again, 'Nova gave the ball up 17 times, with (yep) freshman Scottie Reynolds doing it four times.

No St. Joe's player scored double figures; Mike Nardi (11) and Curtis Sumpter (14) did so for 'Nova. Sumpter's the player of the game, of course, on 6-11 shooting (0-1 from 3), 2-2 from the line, seven rebounds (four on offense), two assists and three blocks. It ain't much, but it'll do.

At least the Hawks matched the Wildcats on the glass with 40 boards apiece. St. Joe's even gets the edge with 12 offensive rebounds to Villanova's 11.

Oh, and St. Joe's shot 10-22 from the line. Which is at least better than Penn's 8-21 (another rollout), but it's still frigid. I was cold enough walking today from the Inquirer/Daily News building to Broad and Race, at which point I decided to get on the bus to get to the El (I am not kidding, and yes it's stupid) because it was just so freezing out. I did not need this.

One last time, for emphasis' sake: Fifty-six to thirty-nine.

But at least there was that Will Sheridan dunk.

Yet again, a chance for me to tell you what I think about something even if you didn't ask for it...

I think tonight's game is actually going to be pretty close and low scoring. What a surprise, right? Well, both teams are in the top 50 in offensive efficiency. Villanova has a better defensive efficency, but St. Joe's averages five fewer possessions per game.

I think Villanova's going to win, but they'd better do their work on the perimeter or they could be in trouble. SJU is 38th in the country in 3-point shooting percentage, and 'Nova is 284th in 3-point defense. St. Joe's will probably have to rely on its perimeter shooting, because the 'Cats are 80th in defensive efficiency and 90th in 2-point percentage given up.

But with apologies to the stat folks, the important things in this one are intangible. St. Joe's is going into the Pavilion with an all-freshman backcourt and only one player -- Pat Calathes Artur Surov, which really tells you something -- who was around when the Hawks last played on the Main Line in 2004. Villanova has the experience, the crowd, and a serious need to not lose this thing for their NCAA Tournament hopes.

It'll be close, though. If you pick games for more than recreational purposes, you've probably heard that 'Nova is favored by 11 1/2 by the people who try to make more than $5 a year off college athletes' work. That's way too much for a Big 5 game.

I'll probably check back with something to say later tonight when the game's over, if not sooner. It's on ESPN2 at 7pm, so be sure to watch.

Mike Jensen just told me that he got an email complimenting him on the College HoopsCast. Which means there are listeners! Hooray!

Of course, if you haven't listened yet, well, why are you waiting? This week, Mike and I talk about the Holy War and a bunch of other good stuff. Check it out and let me know what you think by emailing me or posting a comment.

Sorry this took a while, but the servers here have been acting screwy all day.

What do you know, an actual rivalry in Rivalry Week. I loved the opening segments last night where ESPN had friends/relations/spouses on opposite sides talking trash at each other. I can only wonder what tonight's segment will be like (and what it would be like for Penn-Princeton).

In the Daily News, Dana Pennett O'Neil speaks the truth about the Civil War that is local hoops these days: St. Joe's and 'Nova have been kicking everyone else's butt in the City Series. In the Inquirer, Shannon Ryan wonders whether we'll be watching a Vegas show, Snoop Dog or a basketball game tonight. In the Delco Times, Jay Wright makes no assumptions about tonight, thus adhering to the first rule of Big 5 games. And in the Penn student paper, a writer cracks open the history books lest her fellow students find better things to do in the library.

The Temple student paper chats with John Chaney's top assistant, Dan Leibovitz, who's now the "basketball coach-slash-pizza delivery guy" at Hartford.

Tomorrow is national signing day for college football, and the Inquirer has two good stories. First, the tale of P.J. Shirdan. The Monsignor Bonner player didn't play at all his senior year because of injury, but is going to West Virginia because the Mountaineers coaches were impressed by a DVD of his games from years past.

Second, Ray Parrillo reports on how Rutgers' success last season has translated into a bumper crop of recruits from South Jersey.

And on the women's and political sides of things, Penn State women's hoops coach Rene Portland has settled a lawsuit brought against her by a former player who accused Portland of booting her off the team because Portland thought she was a lesbian.

The new College HoopsCast is up. This week, Mike Jensen and I look ahead to tomorrow night's Holy War between Saint Joseph's and Villanova. We also discuss Drexel and Penn's struggles of late, and reflect on Herb Magee breaking the all-time Division II wins record at Philadelphia University.

In our national segment, we talk about how wide-open the top 25 is this year, and Mike should know because he votes in the AP poll every week. And we close things out with a local angle on the biggest rivaly in college basketball: Duke and North Carolina.

Do check it out, and let me know what you think of it either by emailing me or posting a comment.

(I haven't gotten any comments since I switched to TypeKey, and I promise it's not that difficult to set up!)

I can't help posting this tidbit: Morgan State coach Todd Bozeman got in a huge fight over the fact that a restaurant couldn't give his team the kind of sandwiches he wanted.

Holland said an assistant coach for the Morgan State team had ordered 52 sandwiches, requesting Philly steak or chicken. Holland explained that they couldn't handle 52 Philly steak sandwiches but could put together a variety of sandwiches, and the assistant coach told him to do what he could.

When Bozeman arrived to pick up the sandwiches, he was apparently angry about the selection of ham and turkey sandwiches, Holland said.

"He yelled, 'I ain't scared of you country bumpkins. I want my . . . money back!'" Holland said.

He might want to give a call to Ali G or Pat Buchanan.

UPDATE: More -- and more biting, I should say -- punchlines here.

It's Monday, so start with Dick Jerardi's weekend wrap-up. He leads with 'Nova's rather ugly win over Louisville, then asserts that he's "not sure it's going to matter much in the long run" that Penn lost at Yale. I gotta disagree with that one, and I'll defer to the NCAA Selection Committee to describe why come Selection Sunday.

Temple routed La Salle, 89-64, after scoring 56 in the first half of a Big 5 game. Whoa. John Chaney was in the house, giving Mark Tyndale as much of an earful as Fran Dunphy.

St. Joe's beat Dayton to give Phil Martelli one more career win than the good doctor, Jack Ramsay. Apparently Gov. Rendell was in the house, which might not please the folks at the school where he got his law degree. And someone hit the fire alarm a few seconds before they were supposed to hit the final buzzer.

Drexel beat Towson, but that loss to ODU is going to sting a lot. More on this subject on the College HoopsCast to come this afternoon.

Penn beat Glen Miller's old team on Friday, then lost to Yale for the third time in the last four years on Saturday. So much for that undefeated Ivy run. A columnist in the Penn student paper wonders whether Miller was right to say this is a good thing.

And after Villanova's win over Louisville, David Aldridge made Villanova's case for an at-large bid. Dana Pennett O'Neil reports that Scottie Reynolds is taking advice from Kyle Lowry.

National news after the jump.

We interrupt the weekend in which I wasn't planning to blog for this important announcement: Temple is offering live streaming video of the Owls' game against La Salle on its website, owlsports.com. The women's game that follows against Dayton will also be streamed live for free. After today, though, it's $4.95 a month.

No posts tomorrow as I'm headed out of town to cover Penn's games at Brown and Yale for the Inquirer. So go do something else. Maybe get to the grocery store before the inch of snow overnight brings the world to an end.

This week, Penn and Villanova are in, and Drexel is the fifth team out. Yes, I'm late with this, but as you might imagine Crunchy Numbers took me a long time and I wanted to get that over with.

The 13-seed Quakers get a cross-country trip to Spokane to face Air Force in the East (Meadowlands) Regional. The Falcons are a lofty 20th in Pomeroy, but Joe Lunardi writes (Insider subscription required) that Air Force is teetering in its seed because of a recent loss at BYU.

Nonetheless, Air Force's offense is astonishingly effective. Second in offensive efficiency, first in effective field goal percentage, ninth in turnover percentage, fifth in 3-point percentage, third in 2-point percentage, seventh in free throw percentage and 14th in ratio of assists to field goals made.

But there's a caveat to all this, and Penn fans already know it -- the Falcons play the Princeton offense. In fact, current Princeton head coach Joe Scott was Air Force's head coach when the program rose to prominence a few years ago. I would have to think that, despite the Falcons' lofty stats, Penn would like nothing more than to play a team that runs an offense that it knows as well as the ghosts in the Palestra's rafters.

Air Force plays at a slow tempo -- 59.3 possessions per 40 minutes, which ranks 332nd out of 336 teams in Division I. Again, the result of the Princeton offense, but Penn averages 10 more possessions per game. Of course it's folly to assume this matchup will actually happen, but it strikes me as reasonably favorable towards Penn compared to the other 4 seeds: Nevada, Oklahoma State and Butler. The winner of that game gets the winner of Kentucky-West Virginia.

Villanova is one of the last four teams in and gets a 12-seed and a matchup in Buffalo against Virginia Tech as part of the South (San Antonio) Regional. The Hokies are good, but Villanova's three spots higher in Pomeroy and plays defense plenty well enough to have a more-than-reasonable shot at winning that game. Having said that, this week's bracket came out before the Hokies lost at home to N.C. State last night, so Virginia Tech certainly wouldn't be a 5 if the thing came out this morning.

The other 5-seeds are Kentucky, Texas and Indiana. Texas would be out of the question because they played the Wildcats in the regular season. But Kentucky and Indiana are both ranked higher in Pomeroy than the Wildcats, at 13th and 9th respectively. Kentucky plays outstanding defense (no surprise there) and is far better at scoring two-point shots than threes, which plays into Villanova's hands. It would be low-scoring and hard-fought, and I like Villanova's chances in a game like that.

Indiana's also very good defensively and is ranked 51st in three-ponint shooting, so that matchup would be more difficult than Kentucky. But I'm not sure whether I really believe in Indiana at the moment, and Jay Wright beat Kelvin Sampson's Oklahoma last year at the Pavilion.

Virginia Tech could well end up with a 5-seed anyway, especially with a good run in the ACC Tournament. So maybe Lunardi's matchup isn't out of the question after all. But the most important thing is that a 12-seed always beats a 5, and if you're a fan of karma Villanova's in good shape indeed.

Finally, Drexel. Mike Jensen made the point on this week's College HoopsCast that Drexel might well be fighting Villanova for one of the last at-large bids. If both teams keep winning I think they both make it. But it always bears repeating that saying you have to get it done and actually doing it aren't the same thing. For what it's worth, Virginia Commonwealth's an 11-seed this week, but got a bit of a bump from the 12-seed Lunardi says its stats should merit.

So what do we know?

-- That Drexel's loss to Virginia Commonwealth didn't do too much damage, but I suspect tonight's game against Old Dominion could reverse the Dragons' slight drop.

-- That La Salle got a bump up, but I'm not sure from what, given its losses to Fordham and Charlotte. Then again, the Rams (131) and 49ers (139) are far higher in Pomeroy than the previous two teams La Salle played, Saint Bonaventure (248) and Richmond (260). -- That Penn definitely took a hit with the St. Joe's loss, especially because it was classified as a home game. If the Quakers go 14-0 in the Ivy League and end up with a 12 seed, which is possible (though not necessarily probable), it might not matter too much. But a win over the Hawks could have either solidified a 12 or bumped it up to an 11 with an unbeaten run through the conference. Then again, that's also a big assumption.

-- That St. Joe's got a bump from beating Penn but hasn't played since. Obviously, but still, there hasn't been another opportunity for significant movement in the rankings. Two games in the next four days will help that, though: Saint Louis tonight and Dayton on Sunday, both at home.

By the way, I still think that if the Penn-St. Joe's game had been classified as a St. Joe's home game, Penn wouldn't have been picked by Pomeroy's simulator to win it. I get the rules about venues, which basically say that it's Penn's home game the rest of the year so it is for that game too. But you and I and everyone else who was in the building know that it was a St. Joe's game in every way -- from the logo on the credentials to the public address announcer to the big majority of Hawks fans in the stands.

-- That Temple's loss at Pomeroy No. 203 Duquesne wasn't fully offset by the win at No. 260 Richmond, which is also rather obvious.

-- And that Villanova lost two games to higher-rated teams, and that it's far from the end of the world, even though one of the losses was at home.

The usual roundup of statistical odds and ends after the jump.

Temple routed Richmond, 80-59, to stay out of last place in the A-10. Dionte Christmas did play, combining with Mark Tyndale for 48 points. Tyndale said the win afterwards "might have been our biggest game of the season."

La Salle blew a 14-point lead and lost to Charlotte, 87-80. The collapse began when Explorers guard Ruben elbowed Charlotte's Carlos Williams after they roughhoused it a bit on an inbounds play. That drew a technical foul and down it went from there. But Darnell Harris shook off his ankle injury and got 13 points to easily pass the 1,000 career points mark.

Daily News writer Bill Fleischmann profiles Army coach Dave Magarity, who replaced Maggie Dixon as Black Knights coach after Dixon died last spring. Magarity attended Cardinal Dougherty and Episcopal Academy, and his family still lives in Mount Airy.

Elsewhere in the Daily News, Ted Silary offers his 30th annual list of the top high school players in the city, some of whom have already committed but all of whom are surely worth watching.

In the Inquirer, Marc Narducci previews what could be a record-breaking night for Philadelphia University coach Herb Magee. He goes for the all-time Division II wins record against Wilmington College at 7 p.m.

The St. Joe's student paper previews tonight's game between the Hawks and Saint Louis at the Fieldhouse; watch it at 8 p.m. on ESPN2.

The Penn student paper got to the Penn-St. Joe's game later than I did, but reflects on a successful campaign to get students in the house before tipoff.

And the folks up in Providence get ready for Quakers coach Glen Miller's return to Brown, including praise for Philadelphia as "the best college basketball city in the country."

National news after the jump.