Havahd gets some love and is ranked at 24th in the Coaches poll.
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
Kenpom has Stanford at 15, first in the Pac-(insert number here).
Stanford defeated UCLA 60-59 last night so The Cardinal are off to a 1-0 start in PAC 12 play. Next up is USC on Saturday afternoon.
http://espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=313630024
Bob Green
Harvard won last night against Boston College. I wish I could see some of those games. Tommy's really got a good group of guys.
Crimson trailed by ten at the half, and didn't take the lead until less than two minutes remained. Good, tough, confidence-inspiring win as they head into the new year.
A measure of how things are changing at Harvard: the home games against Princeton and Penn are sold out eight weeks in advance.
I am officially worried about Johnny at Stanford. After a 10-1 start, the Cardinal is now 16-8, 6-6 in the lousy Pac-12, and has lost 5 of its last 6. That's 7th place in the conference, with only one quality conference win, over Colorado.
I saw the 2nd half of the game against UCLA last night. UCLA is utterly mediocre, but they were better than Stanford. Chase Randle is a nice player, but the overall talent level of the Stanford squad is just lacking. I don't have any idea how they stayed with Syracuse earlier in the year, but in watching these guys, they were just not impressive. No chance at an NCAA bid unless they make an extremely unexpected run in the conference tournament. Not good.
When I saw the revival of this thread, I thought it was about tonight's game.
Harvard (6-0 in the Ivy) is at Penn (4-1) at 7 p.m. Tomorrow night they are at Princeton (a very unimpressive 2-3).
Right now, Harvard, Yale (5-1) and Penn are the only real contenders in the Ivy. Harvard crushed Yale at Yale. Win tonight and Tommy's Crimson is in great shape in the league. Lose tonight and it's a three team race.
Sorry about Johnny';s Cardinal. Stanford has played themselves out of at-large contention. The only way they can make the field is to win the Pac 12 Tournament.
Harvard 56, Penn 50 -- final ... looking very good for Tommy and the Ivy title
Princeton won, 70 - 62.
They stormed the court after beating Harvard. That's cute.
Tough loss for Tommy and Harvard. With a win, they really could have taken a leg up in the Ivy race. But they are still in good shape. As it stands:
Harvard 7-1
Yale 6-2
Penn 5-2
Cornell 5-3
Princeton 4-3
Considering the schedule, they're in better shape than it looks. They have Yale, Penn and Princeton all scheduled to visit Cambridge. In fact, their next four games are at home before they finish up with Columbia (which should be a gimmie) and Cornell on the road. The trick is to lock up the Ivy crown before the Cornell game.
I attended tonight's Stanford game against Oregon, and it seemed to be the kind of game that can really break a team's morale. Stanford led the entire way until the last 4 minutes or so when Oregon just took the game away from them. Singler the Younger made some huge plays down the stretch.
To be honest, in this game I think Johnny's stoic demeanor cost Stanford a little bit. The referees blew some calls that would have sent K through the roof, but as far as I could tell Johnny essentially let them off the hook. I hate to say it but in basketball, the ability/willingness to work the refs from time to time is critical to building a winning program.
The other thing I noticed was that Oregon seemed to be winning a lot of the hustle plays (offensive rebounds, loose balls). I don't know enough about the talent levels of the two teams to say whether this was the result of better talent or more desire on Oregon's part. But here again I can't help but think that the results might have been different if Johnny showed a little bit more fire from the bench. I simply don't think he'll get maximum effort out of a group of 18-year-old kids without raising his voice every once in a while. (Of course, it could be that he saves that for practice...)
In any case, I really hope Johnny is given the chance to keep moving the Stanford program forward. He is on his way to a significantly improved record over last season, albeit within an extremely weak Pac 12. He's done well with recruiting despite being a long way from home. He's got a roster full of great kids.
The way the football program turned around out here under Harbaugh tells you that anything is possible. We are all pulling for you J.D.!