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Username Post: Donahue Recruiting        (Topic#25843)
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32685

Reg: 11-21-04
01-10-22 05:39 PM - Post#333046    
    In response to Penndemonium

It's young, inexperienced, had a year off and then was forced to play far more talented and experienced teams for 11 games rather than develop confidence at our level. It was a tremendous mistake scheduling this way for this season--and all for a few bucks in one of the richest schools in the nation.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
01-10-22 07:15 PM - Post#333050    
    In response to Penndemonium

Good Columbia has appeared at times OOC. We saw them Saturday, they also appeared for the first half against Princeton. But bad Columbia has appeared a lot more, including the second half against Princeton. Bad Columbia can’t shoot and commits turnovers at an alarming rate. Bad Columbia could be worse than that overall 345 rank. This is why I would have liked to see us try to pressure the ball in the second half — to see if we could get them turning it over. We never made them uncomfortable, even when we eventually clamped down.

The reason Columbia shows such dramatic swings in performance is lack of experience. When they played OOC without Nweke, they were relying on guys with little experience across the board, with predictable results.

One frustrating thing is the performance of Shockley-Okeke against us. He is in and out of the rotation on the 345 team in the country. I’m not sure whether their staff even views him as a guy who would be playing if they had everyone healthy. And yet we couldn’t keep him from getting and hitting wide open 3s.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-10-22 07:45 PM - Post#333052    
    In response to andybech

If Penn is 100-150, we’re not going to win many Ivy titles — only in years where Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are all down. Steve actually got us into that range (or AJ did) for 4 straight years. Got to get into the top 100 in order to really be serious about Ivy regular season titles the way we were in the 90s and early 2000s.

 
Buckeye Quake 
PhD Student
Posts: 1601

Reg: 11-21-04
01-11-22 12:14 AM - Post#333070    
    In response to SomeGuy


It was AJ. With some help from some experienced backcourt teammates. If the recruiting continues at this rate, get used to being a bottom feeder until philosophical changes are made that might attract some talent. Whether that comes from this staff or another. From what I've seen and heard, I don't see it happening with this staff.

 
UPIA1968 
PhD Student
Posts: 1117
UPIA1968
Loc: Cornwall, PA
Reg: 11-20-06
01-11-22 12:41 AM - Post#333073    
    In response to Buckeye Quake

It's time to quit using the improvement of Ivy teams as an excuse for Penn's mediocracy. Dumphy's teams were usually well below Pomeroy 100, a ranking determined by their entire schedule, a schedule that included some good competition.

If indeed the Ivy's are better then that would be reflected in Penn's ranking as well. No matter how one cuts it, the program since Fran's departure has slipped dramatically.

Sure Steve is better than the worst coach in program history. I like the way he handles his players - a classy guy. But the recruiting is clearly inadequate to return Penn to the level Franny achieved.

 
10Q 
Professor
Posts: 23199

Loc: Suburban Philly
Reg: 11-21-04
01-11-22 08:59 AM - Post#333083    
    In response to UPIA1968

It's time to quit using all excuses for Penn's mediocracy.

 
OldBig5 
Masters Student
Posts: 639

Age: 66
Reg: 02-18-18
01-11-22 10:28 AM - Post#333086    
    In response to 10Q

What is crazier. Expecting one's team to always be on or neat the top or accepting mediocrity? Most college sports fans have unrealistic expectations. Not many programs that are always great. It's tough to compete against Yale, Harvard and Princeton-they have the name recognition amongst kids who are interested in an Ivy education.

Penn and Princeton dominating for so long was very unusual--I am happy they can compete now and seem to have a coach that runs a good program and is not a d***. The current team has a bunch of young guys on the floor at most times so think the rest of this year and the next couple should be fun.

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32685

Reg: 11-21-04
01-11-22 11:24 AM - Post#333090    
    In response to OldBig5

This is all ridiculous. While a few posters have complained about recruiting, most notably Jeff, this public mourning after losing to Columbia is just over the top. Our talent is just as good as any other team in the League, but it is YOUNG. You have no one who has played more than one season who gets any minutes. We lost our most athletic and promising big man....and that is the only position where the criticism of recruiting holds some weight. But this team will be right there at the end, mostly because no one else is capable of running away with the league, which lost 90% of its upperclass talent in the pandemic.

 
andybech 
Freshman
Posts: 80

Reg: 02-15-20
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-11-22 01:47 PM - Post#333100    
    In response to SomeGuy

Nobody in the Ivies will be consistently better than that 100-150 range. Sure they will have good years and peak higher. Penn could do that too.

The Ivies generally have improved though nationally compared to 20 years ago because the rest of the league got better. That does not mean the top of the league is better relative to the country though. There are more good players and teams now, so there are lots of teams with top 100 aspirations.

In general though, COVID is not going to change much. The Ivies are a bit down this year because of the layoffs and transfers. But the value of the education is not going to go down and the advantage of keeping players for 4 years does level the playing field somewhat. Peaking at 100 is good for the Ivies. It is probably equivalent to peaking at 70-80 a couple of decades ago. There are just more teams and players (lots of international players) out there these days.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-11-22 03:11 PM - Post#333107    
    In response to andybech

The top team in the Ivy has been ranked outside the top 100 only one time since 2009. Agreed nobody is consistently top 100 — my point is just that the winner is (almost) always there.

Teams do it consistently for long stretches fairly regularly, though. Harvard was top 100 every year from 2011-2015. Princeton was 6 for 7 from 2011-2017. Yale is 3 for the last 5. And while Penn could do it — we haven’t since 2007.

 
UPIA1968 
PhD Student
Posts: 1117
UPIA1968
Loc: Cornwall, PA
Reg: 11-20-06
01-11-22 10:11 PM - Post#333127    
    In response to SomeGuy

Yes, Penn is young, at 271 nationally for experience. Columbia is 326. I remind you that the Zoller nucleus ranked 73 when freshman and 77 as sophs winning the first of three championships. The Allen nucleus did the same thing, as he AJ nucleus won a championship as sophs.

As to overacting to a home loss to a 345 ranked team: The last time Penn lost a home game to a team in that region was under Glenn Miller.

 
CM 
Senior
Posts: 393

Reg: 10-11-18
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-12-22 08:16 AM - Post#333135    
    In response to SomeGuy

Honestly, I do not understand how any Ivy basketball fan is comparing what happened before last year to what is happening now, especially when it comes to national rankings. Is it wishful thinking? Total ignorance? Something else.

So I'll try to be as clear as possible. Ivy programs entered this year with TWO classes that had never played a single college game before. TWO!

Even the upperclassmen had not played a competitive game in 18 months, during which time they had extremely limited access to gyms, trainers, and coaches. That Ivys can beat any non-conference teams is a freaking miracle, honestly.

So, please, spare me the historical KenPom references. You can throw that in the bin, it means nothing in the current atmosphere of Ivy basketball and the sooner you get your head around this the better supporter of Ivy basketball you can be.

 
Jeff2sf 
Postdoc
Posts: 4466

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-12-22 08:43 AM - Post#333136    
    In response to CM

CM, do you recognize that Donahue was doing a crappy recruiting job beforehand? do you recognize that he is losing WITHIN the Ivies? Because if you're just going to apologize, not cut slack, apologize, then i'm not sure how productive the convo's going to be.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-12-22 08:56 AM - Post#333137    
    In response to CM

We were talking about the larger question of where Penn needs to be to win the league. Almost every year, that is top 100.

This year absolutely will be the second year since 2009 that the league winner is not in the top 100. The impacts of the year off on the league on the court actually haven’t been as great as I expected — while we don’t have any top 100 teams, we only have one bottom 100 team. I expected at least 2 and as many as 3 or 4, frankly. Any impact on recruiting would be more of a surprise to me, simply because a lot of what is happening throughout college basketball with numbers based on a couple of weird pandemic years actually should help the league, not hurt it.

 
CM 
Senior
Posts: 393

Reg: 10-11-18
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-12-22 08:56 AM - Post#333138    
    In response to Jeff2sf

I am specifically addressing the relentless references to previous years' national rankings of Penn (and any other Ivy) and the unwillingness of commenters to address the fact that the Ivys as a group cannot be compared now to what they were then.


Edited by CM on 01-12-22 08:56 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
CM 
Senior
Posts: 393

Reg: 10-11-18
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-12-22 08:58 AM - Post#333139    
    In response to SomeGuy

I can only assume you didn't read what I actually wrote.

And I really don't know why this is hard to understand.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Donahue Recruiting
01-12-22 09:23 AM - Post#333142    
    In response to CM

I assume you did read what I wrote, but just didn’t understand it.

 
andybech 
Freshman
Posts: 80

Reg: 02-15-20
01-12-22 07:18 PM - Post#333180    
    In response to SomeGuy

There are two questions here. First, is Penn any good and the answer is they are really a .500 team now for various reasons (recruiting, injuries, etc.).

There is a second question of how good are the Ivies and the whole league is down a bit temporarily because of COVID. Skipping a year when nobody else did is a big disadvantage (plus the net transfers to other programs). I guess whether the Ivies will continue to have a disadvantage because of COVID is a 3rd question. I think that is unlikely (even if I undershot the top of the league rankings a bit).

The whole league took a year off however and Penn in particular has been hurt because significant players (Williams, Charles, Wang) missed even more time because of injuries. We'll probably need to get to next year to start seeing how good the league is again.

 
UPIA1968 
PhD Student
Posts: 1117
UPIA1968
Loc: Cornwall, PA
Reg: 11-20-06
01-12-22 11:23 PM - Post#333194    
    In response to andybech

My references to history apply to the Pre-covid Donahue teams as well as the post-covid teams. Franny set the standard for contemporary Penn basketball, virus or no.

Okay, I acknowledge that the lockouts may have caused the Towson and LaSalle losses. But in January of 2022, the problems relate to Penn's relative position within the Ivies. Ivy apples to Ivy apples: they rank fifth, in a league of eight. In Fran's time at Penn, his worst years were 2 thirds and a fourth, against 4 seconds and 10 firsts. Steve has bettered fourth once despite having the best big man in program history. If the difference is the improvement of the rest of the league, please explain why that general Ivy BBall improvement exactly coincided with Fran's departure and why Penn has declined, not to one of the contenders but to a second division regular?

No matter how one slices it, the program has regressed, with no current signs of a return to regular contention. I keep following the team in hopes that this will change. Let's just recognize that the current trajectory leaves the program mired in mediocracy.

And don't tell me that Penn can't aspire to excellence despite the insurmountable advantages of HYP. Does not Dartmouth regularly contend in football? They have finished tied for first in 3 of the last 6 years including the last two. Any Ivy school can win championships like Cornell in wrestling, Brown in Hockey, Columbia in fencing, and what Penn used to do in Football and BBall.

HYP have always emphasized football. That didn't phase Berndt, Zubrow, or Bagnoli. This year Penn finished last in football. What changed? The coaching of course - especially the lack of recruiting. Maybe such coaching leverage is more extreme in the non-HYPs. Still, Penn has regularly found excellent coaching in basketball and football in past. It is clear Penn does not have that in football, and, sadly, increasingly likely the same for basketball.



 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Donahue Recruiting
01-12-22 11:45 PM - Post#333195    
    In response to UPIA1968

I shouldn’t help you with your argument, since I disagree with quite a bit of it, but . . . the loss to Columbia dropped us to 6th in Pomeroy right now. So we managed to beat Cornell by 14 and the same weekend they still passed us in the rankings.

However, on the second division thing, since Steve took over we have finished in the second division one time — his first year, when we finished 5th. We’ve been top 4 every year since. Where we are in Pomeroy right now gives us a very reasonable chance to finish in the top 4 again this year. So I wouldn’t call us a second division team by any stretch. Under Steve, we’re a first division team 4 times out of 5. Obviously the Allen and Miller years are another matter.

Edited by SomeGuy on 01-12-22 11:48 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
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