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UPIA1968 
PhD Student
Posts: 1116
UPIA1968
Loc: Cornwall, PA
Reg: 11-20-06
08-07-17 10:19 PM - Post#231676    

After several months of talking only about recruits who will not likely make an impact until the 2019-2020 season it time to start thinking seriously about this season. I performed an analysis of the Pomeroy statistics and the verbal commit statistics for all eight teams and have come up with the following conclusions.

First, the league loses only two players who made PomeroY ‘major contributions’ Spieth of Brown and Petrasek of Columbia. No top ranked ‘go-to’ contributors left. The only two such stars in the league, Aiken of Harvard and Boudreaux of Dartmouth return. Princeton lost three third ranked ‘significant’ players while Harvard, Brown and Yale lost 2 below the ‘Major’ rank and Penn lost one Significant, Matt Howard. Cornell and Dartmouth lost nobody of importance from 2016-17. In summary, the league lost relatively few really good players after last season and should be comprehensively better this season.

I next looked for freshmen and sophomore contributors on the theory that rising sophs and juniors improve the most. All the teams had four or more players in this category. The outliers were Harvard with four, all frosh (scary), Yale with five including two frosh and Penn, with six including three frosh. Penn will have real depth this season. Max Rothchild is typical of such a player.

Finally, I looked for newcomers with a 2.5 or higher recruiting score. This was not a good year for the Ivy’s with only two 3’s, one each to Penn and Princeton and four 2.5’s, one each to Penn, Harvard, Yale and Princeton. I also gave credit to Penn for the return of Wood who scored a 2.7 as a recruit and who was a promising freshman. All in all, however, the majority of improvement for the league from freshmen will have to come from the random pool of undistinguished recruits that Mike James points out make up most of good Ivy players, but with the majority riding the bench.

When one combines the results of the three inquiries each team has some hope of improvement divided into four groups. Columbia, Brown and Cornell have the least prospects for improvement. As decidedly mid 200 ranked teams the most they can reasonably hope for is a more down towards 200. Princeton is in the next category, with just enough talent to next just above the loss of the three good seniors. However, their rank of 58 was clearly an outlier, strongly suggesting a regression to the mean for good Ivy teams putting them around 100 - if things go well. They could easily be the surprize underperformer.

The next group includes Dartmouth, Yale and Harvard, all who should expect to improve noticeably. For Dartmouth, it simply means a chance at breaking even given their 305 rank for last year. Yale could move up from its 151 rank to challenge Princeton. Harvard, departing from a 112 rank could easily move below 100, particularly if they can replace the important Siyani Chambers.

In the final, best improvement slot is the good old Quackers losing just one player, with lots of returning young talent and the best incoming talent when one factors in Woods, not to mention the wild card seven-footer. The catch of course is the departure point, the mediocre 171 ranking for a team that did not break even. This analysis suggests that they can hope to approach a 100 ranking, still behind Harvard but equal to the Pussies and Puppies. With some extraordinary luck, one could make an argument for more, but should Steve D. get the team to 100 level in year three, we should all be very happy. I know everyone wants to move well down below 100 as Harvard may do again. But after all, last year’s flawed model got within a missed free throw of defeating the Ivy Champion to earn a rematch with a team they had just beat for a trip to the dance. I would suggest a three seed in the Ivy tournament next March with dancing dependent on the maturation of all those sophomores in Cambridge. I’ll be interested to see what Mike James surely more scientific approach says. One hopeful point: both Harvard and Penn had two frosh last season with Pomeroy offensive ratings over 100, Aiken and Lewis verses Brodeur and Betley. There is real cause for optimism in the Palestra this year for the first year in HOW LONG? Maybe this recently sorry program can move into the rarefied of the exaulted women’s program. Maybe my son, DPerry, the loyal reporter on that program on this site will resume his lapsed interest in the men’s program. Showing the good sense that has always differentiated him from me, he has been absent from the men’s program for a long time. He is a lapsed Phillie and Flyer Fan too. Go figure!

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