Monday, February 25, 2008

Weekend Ramblings

Could this weekend have ended up any worse for our 3 local Div. 1 men's basketball programs? The Rhody Rams have officially played their way off the bubble with a 3rd consecutive home loss in a "must" win game and have now lost 5 of their last 6. PC got drubbed in Morgantown by the West Virginia Mountaineers while Brown had a nice win Friday night at Columbia only to have their Ivy League title hopes dashed the following night at Cornell.

The Rams defense has been virtually nonexistent for the past few games. Granted, when you are an up-tempo high-scoring team, it's only natural that your defense will suffer a bit. But not to this extent. This team was scoring lots of points earlier in the season but they were also defending much better. Now, they're not. As much as we're all concerned about this team's losing skid coinciding with Jimmy Baron's struggles, I can't put alot of weight in that. The offense hasn't suffered! They're scoring a ton of points and their shooting percentages have been very good. It's the defense and, to a lesser extent, the turnovers that are killing them right not. With an RPI of 56, Rhody needs to win a minimum of 4 games (maybe 5) between their 3 remaining regular season games and the A-10 tourney to have a shot at making it to the Big Dance.

There's not much to say about the Friars other than it will be interesting to see what Bob Driscoll does at season's end. Does he stick with Welsh or let him go? The bet here is it's the latter. And who makes his short list of coaching candidates if there is a change? As for on the floor, I've had some people say to me that PC "gave up" in the 2nd half at West Virginia. I'm not going there. I just think that, among other things, this team's confidence is now gone making it twice a difficult to pull out of this rut.

The Brown Bears played a great 2nd half at Columbia Fri. night to beat the Lions setting up a huge game Saturday in Ithaca, NY where they lost to 1st place Cornell. For the Bears (3 down with 4 to go) there's still plenty to play for like a 19-win season (17 is the most wins for one season in Brown history) and a postseason berth in either the NIT or CBI. This weekend the Bears host Princeton & Penn with Saturday being senior night. Two of the all-time Brown greats will be honored that night in Barrington's Mark McAndrew (this Ivy League's leading scorer) and Damon Huffman. Big man Mark MacDonald will also be honored that night. The same night that the man who brought them to Brown (Glen Miller) returns to the East Side with his Penn Quakers. It's a 6pm start at the Pizzatola Sports Center. I highly reccommend checking it out!

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