Soft Pretzel Logic

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- After watching Penn's defense allow Harvard to shoot 53.7 percent from the field, let's pay tribute to a couple players elsewhere who turned their opponents into swiss cheese tonight.

On the local side, it was Fordham's Marcus Stout, who helped the Rams deal Temple an ugly 78-76 loss at the Liacouras Center:

And on the national side, it was Kansas State's Michael Beasley, who scored more than half his team's total of 86 points in a loss at Baylor:

Oh, and then there's the small matter of Villanova beating Connecticut... and sowing a few seeds about possibly making the NCAA Tournament? Really?

Not to mention Drake winning a great game at Butler, and Tennessee capping off the night with an ugly but pulsating win at Memphis.

I can't help thinking, though, that the 25-2 Volunteers shouldn't really be the No. 1 team in the country come Monday. Obviously they will be, but if I can put a good case together for the Monday podcast arguing for someone else I might just do it.

Interesting results in the Big 5 last night, and I can honestly say I'm not sure any of them surprise me this morning.

Well, St. Joe's losing at Duquesne surprised me when I first heard it. But in retrospect, it doesn't, because the Dukes play a far faster tempo than the Hawks do and the game was played at 80 possessions a side.

It's certainly no surprise that Phil Martelli is furious about his team letting Duquesne shoot 60 percent from the field after defending Villanova so well.

Nonetheless, let's highlight Dukes forward Shawn James, who recorded the first triple-double in school history:

Anyone who gets ten blocks in a game is worthy of the spotlight, even before the points and rebounds.

As for Temple, I said on this week's College HoopsCast that I had a hunch Richmond would sneak a win in this game. That's exactly what happened, though Mark Tyndale's flu had a lot to do with the result as well.

Unlike the St. Joe's-Duquesne game, the Temple-Richmond affair was played at a snail's pace -- 60 possessions a side. That's no surprise, because the Spiders play a Princeton offense and their coach, Chris Mooney, is a Princeton alum (and Archbishop Ryan graduate).

But if I had to pick one coach from anywhere in the country to beat a Princeton offense, I'd pick Fran Dunphy. Including last year's win over Richmond, Dunphy is 21-14 all-time against Princeton offenses -- indeed, at Penn all those games were against the Tigers themselves.

Indeed, the Owls held Richmond to 39 percent shooting from the field last night. Looking at the game flow, it just seems like one of those nights where the two teams were close throughout and the Spiders just edged it at the end.

The line that stands out is from Richmond guard David Gonzalvez:

The good news of the night came in Washington, where La Salle heaped further misery upon my boss' alma mater by beating George Washington. Great job by the Explorers defense to hold the Colonials to 39 percent shooting, and at the other end it was another big night for Darnell Harris:

Just as importantly, the Explorers are now 4-4 in conference play and are in a comfortable position for a trip to Atlantic City next month.

Nationally, Dick Vitale was given quite a gift for his return to the broadcasting table -- a barnburner of a game between Duke and North Carolina.

For as much as I don't like feeding the hype machine that gets cranked up to full blast whenever the Blue Devils and Tar Heels meet, the two teams lived up to their rankings last night and gave it every ounce of the effort you would expect in such a fierce rivalry.

Who knows what would have happened if Ty Lawson had played, though? If nothing else, I'm sure Carolina wouldn't have committed 20 turnovers.

But because he didn't play, and because we all knew his absence was coming, the gameplan for Duke was clear. As J.P. Giglio and Caulton Tudor down at ACC Now predicted, Mike Krzyzewski let Tyler Hansbrough score his points and put the clamps down on everyone else.

Taking out Hansbrough's 28 points on 12-for-21 shooting, the other seven Tar Heel players combined to make only 16 of 48 field goal attempts. Episcopal grad Wayne Ellington was perhaps the game's worst shooter, finishing 3-for-14.

And while UNC shot 3-for-17 from three-point range, Duke shot a (yes, Dickie V) sensational 13-for-29 from beyond the arc.

So full marks to Duke for a big road win that solidified their status among the top of this year's class in college basketball.

And I don't mean El Wingador at 3-to-1. But given that it is Wing Bowl Day, and that we could see a Philly.com record for single-day pageviews today (I have to keep an eye on this stuff as part of my real job), I figured I'd add to the tally with a cheap headline.

Fran Dunphy walked into Rose Hill Gym last night carrying a two-game losing streak in the Bronx. Last year, Temple lost at Fordham on the last day of the season, 80-73, after being tied at halftime. A year before that, Dunphy's final Penn team won the first half by three points but lost the second half by 18.

So maybe it was good karma that Temple trailed at the half yesterday, 26-23. And maybe it was another sign of how far the Owls have come over the last few weeks that they rallied to beat the Rams, 58-50, even though Mark Tyndale and Dionte Christmas combined to shoot 9-for-25 from the field.

A Line of the Day, then, to the guy who stepped up to hit the big shots: Chris Clark.

Since I haven't posted for a few days, let's give a local Line of the Day and a national one:

First, one for La Salle's Darnell Harris, who did this in the Explorers' 84-61 win over St. Bonaventure:

Second, one for stud Kansas State freshman Michael Beasley. He did this in the Wildcats' 84-75 win over no-longer-undefeated Kansas, producing one of the biggest court-stormings I've ever seen:

Greetings to those of you coming over from ACC Now, the Raleigh News and Observer's fine college sports blog. UNC's fans came by last month, and with N.C. Stave having paid a visit to Philadelphia this past March, now we just need Wake Forest to play here to make the Tobacco Road quartet complete.

I've got a grand total of five audio clips for your listening pleasure. From Duke, here are Mike Krzyzewski and Gerald Henderson. From Temple, here are Fran Dunphy, Dionte Christmas and Mark Tyndale.

Henderson, of course, is a Merion native who starred along with Tar Heels guard Wayne Ellington for Episcopal Academy before heading down to the Triangle. The nationally-televised game those two played against Neumann-Goretti at the Palestra a few years ago was the subject of some good banter between Henderson and reporters before I turned the recorder on.

Of note, the Dunphy audio is one long clip with two parts spliced together. The first half is his press conference; the second is him talking to me and Mike Sielski of the Bucks County Courier Times outside the locker room after that.

Also of note, some final stats: Mark Tyndale scored 20 points and Dionte Christmas scored 23, the latter of which was notable for Christmas' 5-for-16 performance from the field, including 3-for-11 from three-point range. But he was 10-for-12 from the free throw line.

Duke averaged 1.051 points per possession for the game: a nicely balanced 1.049 in the first half and 1.053 in the second half. Temple averaged 0.870 points per possession in the game; 0.626 in the first half and 1.106 in the second half.

The key state for the game was probably assist-to-turnover ratio: 13 to 14 for Duke and 11 to 20 for Temple.

The crowd was announced at 18,030.

I can't honestly say that there was a great line from this game. So I'm going to steal two from the Rhode Island-Dayton game, a 92-83 win for the Flyers at a jam-packed UD Arena. A few of us caught glances of the streaming video on press row and were quite impressed by Rhody's comeback.

What impresses me most looking at the box score is that Rhode Island averaged 1.23 points per possession and Dayton averaged 1.29. Not much defense there, but I'm sure not complaining.

Here are the lines for the game's two big backcourt stars, Jimmy Baron of Rhode Island and Brian Roberts of Dayton. If there was ever a game when efficiency was meaningless, this was it:

Okay, with all that done, I'm going to call it a night and chill out to a 14-minute LP version of this song that I just stumbled across on iTunes:

(Gratuitous hat tips to Philadelphia Will Do, The Next Mayor and Heard in the Hall. Honestly, I just wanted to get it in here somewhere because it's just that cool.)

It wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing way to ring in the new year, but Saint Joseph's had little trouble in overcoming Drexel at the Palestra tonight, 69-51.

Drexel shot only 33.3 percent from the field, and continued its struggles from the perimeter with a 2-for-20 performance from three-point range. A big part of that fell on Tramayne Hawthorne's shoulders, who was 1-for-10 from the field and 1-for-8 from beyond the arc.

St. Joe's shot 53.2 percent from the field and 6-for-10 from three, and also had a 32-28 edge in rebounding.

The Hawks recorded 16 assists on 25 made field goals with 22 turnovers, while the Dragons recorded 12 assists on 16 made field goals and 17 turnovers. A good ratio, but all the numbers were lower than the Hawks' and there's the difference.

Drexel's big men had a good night against a St. Joe's defense that had been allowing only 44.2 percent two-point shooting. Randy Oveneke led the Dragons with 18 points on 6-for-12 shooting and 6-for-8 from the line, while Frank Elegar scored 17 on a perfect 6-for-6 night from the field and 5-for-7 from the line.

Because Drexel pulled down 12 offensive rebounds, there was a big differential in possessions. The Dragons recorded 66 and St. Joe's recorded 71. But St. Joe's averaged 0.97 points per possession to Drexel's 0.77.

In his postgame press conference, Hawks coach Phil Martelli praised his defense. Listen to his remarks here.

Bruiser Flint admitted that his team's shooting performance simply would not do, noting that while his team got some good looks, "you've got to make them, though."

But he politely reminded the reporters in the room after the game that his team is 7-6 heading into its CAA opener at home against UNC-Wilmington on Wednesday. Listen to his remarks here.

Line of the game goes to Pat Calathes for his double-double:

With that, I'm taking the rest of the year off. See you all in 2008!

I bet that headline gets some attention on a Sunday.

In a game that will go down as among the most rollout-worthy in Penn history, the Quakers scored only six points in the first half and made only eight field goal attempts during the entire game on the way to a 60-30 loss at Florida Gulf Coast University.

According to the game report, it took Penn more than 13 minutes to even register a point, as they missed 12 field goal attempts and committed 13 turnovers before Tyler Bernardini scored. Those six first half points are a record low for the shot clock era, and the Eagles had 30 at halftime.

We can only hope that happens against the Bills, even though the game's meaningless.

To put it even more starkly, Penn recorded 72 possessions for the game and averaged 0.41 points per possession. I don't have first-half-only stats but I'm sure the points per possession in the first 20 minutes is something really putrid.

So let's give a Line of the Day to the entire Penn offense:

That's the first time I've ever seen a negative efficiency total.

For those of you who might be wondering, the Eagles are a transitional Division I team located in Fort Myers, Fla.

By the way, isn't it great to see a team called the Eagles make Penn kids look so bad? If that doesn't warm the hearts of Philadelphia sports fans, I don't know what would.

It should at least make for some good rollouts at Penn's three Big 5 games in January, especially when St. Joe's visits the Palestra on the 19th.

But if Penn fans need any solace before facing a Miami team that lost for the first time all year today, there's this: the Quakers' 30 points is still more than the 21 that Princeton scored against Monmouth in 2005.

With so many great games yesterday, I figured I should post something this afternoon. But I can't offer you much because I'm overseeing our live coverage of the Eagles-Saints game, including my live running story.

So let's take a look at some of the crazy lines from yesterday's action. For starters, there's pretty much the whole box score from Seton Hall's 112-110 overtime win over James Madison. Among the highlights were 20 points and 10 rebounds from former St. Joe's guard Abdulai Jalloh.

On the local scene, there's Temple's 58-55 win over Eastern Michigan at the Liacouras Center yesterday. Mark Tyndale had the game-winning basket, but Dionte Christmas had (yet again) the best line:

At the other end, Eagles guard (yes, guard) Travis Lewis' effort against the Owls was completely pointless but quite efficient:

La Salle played well in a 93-88 loss to DePaul, and for those of you who had asked what Shannon Ryan's up to these days she covered the Explorers' trip to Puerto Rico for the Inquirer. Darnell Harris had 21 points for La Salle, but the line of the game goes to Blue Demons center Mac Koshwal. And not just because of his cool name:

And finally, there's North Carolina's 105-70 drubbing of UC-Santa Barbara in Chapel Hill. I'm not sure which was more impressive:

-- The frenetic pace of the game, with 87 possessions for UCSB and 84 for UNC;
-- Carolina's 1.24 points per possession on offense;
-- The fact that Tar Heels coach Roy Williams played seventeen players in the 40 minutes;
-- or Tyler Hansbrough's 360-degree dunk in the game's opening minutes, captured on video by the Raleigh News and Observer.

The game wasn't much, and the attendance (3,254) at the Palestra wasn't either, but the end result was significant: Temple 64, Drexel 51.

The Owls hit seven of 16 threes to the Dragons' 2-of-10, and held Frank Elegar to 6-of-17 from the field. His 18 points and 12 rebounds are big numbers, but the Dragons clearly needed someone else to step up and it didn't happen.

Gerald Colds, who wore a face mask to protect a broken nose suffered at George Mason, was only 4-for-13 from the field and 2-for-7 from three. But no other Drexel player took more than six field goal attempts or made more than three.

The standout performance really goes to a guy who has rarely merited it before, but stepped up in a big way today when called on to guard Frank Elegar one-on-one. Sergio Olmos stole the show at both ends of the floor, finishing with this line:

Mike Jensen and I will have more to say about the game on Monday's College HoopsCast. But for now, listen to the Temple and Drexel postgame press conferences, including some less-than-positive remarks from both coaches about their teams' performances.

I didn't see it or follow it live, but I have to think La Salle fans are just crushed tonight after the Explorers gave up a 12-point lead at Bucknell and lost by a point, 67-66. Ruben Guillandeaux had a chance to win it but his layup sat on the rim with three seconds left and rolled off.

I know that there are some Bison fans who read this blog and I'm sure they're ecstatic about stopping a four-game losing streak. But La Salle hit 14 threes, pulled down more rebounds (34-31), dished out more assists (11-9) and committed fewer turnovers (11-12).

By the way, the official box lists 34 and 31 rebounds but the Basketball State one lists 32 and 29 because it doesn't count the "team rebounds" stat. Either way, the Explorers come out on top by three.

Anyway, check out Darnell Harris' line in the loss:

Cobbling together a few things in the news today...

The Associated Press, quoting the Harrisburg Patriot-News, reports today that Penn State football coach Joe Paterno "is being paid more than a half-million dollars this year."

On the count of three, let's all be shocked together: One, two, three...

Yeah, that's what I thought. I know that Paterno and Penn State fought hard to keep the information private, but given how much college football coaches get paid today is this really such a big deal?

Two basketball games last night caught my eye as I was drifting off to sleep. The first took place at the Carrier Dome, where Massachusetts knocked off Syracuse, 107-100. I'm not sure what's more surprising: that the Minutemen upset the Orange, or that both teams topped the century mark.

This happened despite a six-possession differential -- 86 for UMass to 80 for Syracuse -- and the fact that the Orange outrebounded and shot better from the field than the Minutemen.

But consider what UMass guard Ricky Harris did last night. Yes, he scored a game-high 25 points for the winning team, but look at the rest of his line:

The other strange game was contested between VMI and Columbia Union. Thanks to a mind-blowing 119 possessions, the Keydets tied a school record by scoring 156 points against the Division II Pioneers.

Okay, so it isn't quite fair to go too deep into this game given the level of the opposition, and the other team VMI dropped 156 on (Virginia Intermont) was also D-II.

But still... one hundred and nineteen possessions. Put another way: 107 field goal attempts, 41 free throw attempts, 23 turnovers and 30 offensive rebounds (59 total).

Columbia Union scored 91 points and recorded 114 possessions: 87 field goal attempts, 44 turnovers (!) and 23 offensive rebounds (50 total).

Combined, that's 233 possessions in the game, or 5.83 possessions per minute. Which translates to a possession every 10.28 seconds.

I have no idea how that's possible in a 40-minute game.

One thing I do know, though, is that the whole mess led to five (yes, five) unbelievable lines. For VMI, we have Chavis Holmes, Travis Holmes and Reggie Williams; for Columbia Union, we have Mark Moore and Tim Turner. Look at the minutes played as much as anything else:

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I realize that had nothing to do with anything around here, but it really was just too weird to pass up.

To make up for that, perhaps the two biggest games in the country tonight will both involve local teams. Drexel goes to George Mason for a conference game in November that will be broadcast on Comcast SportsNet, while St. Joe's welcomes Gonzaga in a game that has become a tougher ticket than Jameer Nelson's senior day. It will be broadcast on ESPNU.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a shooting performance quite like the one turned in by Chris Lofton in Tennessee's 93-59 win over North Carolina A&T last night:

Makes you wonder where he took the two-point shot from.

We give out two LOTDs today, because I meant to do this yesterday and forgot.

First up is Temple's Mark Tyndale. No, it's not just because the Owls' win over Marist got them off the schneid for the season. There will be whole teams that don't do this well this year from the free throw line in games:

I'm fairly sure you won't see a guy score 23 points but end up with a 21-point efficiency score all that often.

Next up is Duke's Kyle Singler... and yes, it pains me somewhat to give a LOTD to a Duke player, but his role in the Blue Devils' 83-61 embarrassment of Princeton (it was 31-4 midway through the first half) was pretty impressive:

Back tomorrow with the next-to-last football Crunchy Numbers of the season.

I'll come back Thursday night to write something about the NBA Draft. There's going to be a ton of coverage across both papers and on Philly.com, so why not throw my own hat into the ring. In the meantime, here's a taste of what I watch when it's not college basketball season, courtesy of former UCLA midfielder Benny Feilhaber...

I'm not saying the game was over early, because it wasn't quite, but Penn had a 20-point lead with only 7:36 gone by on the clock. The Bulldogs (whose band deserves credit for making the trip from New Haven) didn't hit double figures until 10:12 remaining in the first half, by which time Penn had 31 points on the board.

Yale cut a 20-point halftime deficit to 14 after 1:20 of play in the second half, but Penn launched a 13-2 run over the next 4:40 to take a 25-point lead and leave no doubt whatsoever. The lead got as high as 31 and was at 27 when a media timeout came with 5:11 left in the game and the Penn band struck up Rock and Roll Part II, as most of the bands traditionally do when the game's out of reach. That doesn't normally come with so much time remaining, but tonight there wasn't much question.

Line of the day goes not to Ibrahim Jaaber, who had the honor of sitting atop the Palestra's east basket after the nets came down, but to fellow senior Mark Zoller for leaving no category unfilled in his box score line:

Zoller's 14 defensive rebounds were just short of half the team's total of 32. Penn's defense was also quite impressive, holding Yale to 35.3 percent from the field and 3-of-12 from three-point range. The Quakers pulled down 13 offensive boards to Yale's 15 on defense, and out-rebounded the Bulldogs as a whole by a whopping 45-22.

And it's a good thing that Penn got this over with early, because Quakers fans might have to take a while to save up enough money to get out to Spokane.

I promise I will try hard to force myself to get the Drexel Crunchy Numbers up tomorrow morning. It really needs to be done before the Northeastern game tips, and I might as well hold myself to my word by putting it up on here.

The photo of Ibrahim Jaaber inheriting the seat once held by Jerome Allen and (Penn's) Michael Jordan, among many others, was taken by Ron Cortes of the Inquirer.

A long night on the local hoops scene. Villanova got a much-needed win at Connecticut to assure itself of at least a .500 finish in the conference. It will be beaten to death over the course of tomorrow's news cycle, but Scottie Reynolds deserves all the praise he's going to get for a record-setting night:

That's a new freshman record at Villanova, and the most points ever scored by an opposing player at Gampel Pavilion. Oh, and it's more than half of the Wildcats' points total on the night, which would be 78 to UConn's 74.

The news was not so good for La Salle, which is to say it wasn't good at all. The Explorers were eliminated from contention for that last A-10 Tournament spot with a bruising 102-63 loss at UMass. It shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that Minuteman Stephane Lasme had a big night, but a triple-double is always worth highlighting. Especially when one-third of that comes from blocked shots:

The biggest stat of the game, though, was rebounds: UMass pulled down 50 of them to La Salle's 24. The Minutemen had 14 offensive rebounds and the Explorers had 15 defensive rebounds.

Uh, yeah.

And I'll give you one national Line of the Day. It has a Philly-area connection because Maryland coach Gary Williams is a South Jersey native, and has every bit of that fight and passion and emotion in him that you'd expect from someone whose accent is as thick as what you hear at the Italian Market.

Williams has a 6-5 freshman guard from Venezuela, Greivis Vasquez, who's a livewire unlike perhaps any other freshman at that position in the game this season. Vasquez is full of energy and just flies around all over the place with the ball, and sometimes without it, and from what I've heard he's just as energetic off the court as he is on it.

The Terrapins beat Duke at Cameron tonight, the third time in the last five years they've done so. Here's what Vasquez did to the Blue Devils:

I've been telling people all season not to sleep on Villanova come March, which lo and behold has arrived while I type this post. It's been quite a few years since Maryland played with this kind of consistency (and they did lose at home to Miami this season), but I'm starting to think that the Terrapins could do some damage in this year's Tournament.

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.

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:

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.

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.

A big, big win for the Dragons.

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.

Geez.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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