Mike Porter
Postdoc
Posts: 3619
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
Reg: 11-21-04
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02-15-24 07:30 PM - Post#363244
In response to slane
Not to diminish anything that Fran Dunphy accomplished during his 17 years as Penn’s coach, it is worth noting that despite sharing absolute domination of the Ivy League with Princeton during his tenure, Fran’s Penn teams won only 1 NCAA tournament game and only 1 outright Big 5 title (2001-02). Fran’s Penn teams won 3 other Big 5 titles, including a shared 2-0 title in 1993-94, and 5 team 1-1 ties in 91-92and 97-98 (during the first non-full round robin era). Fran beat Villanova 4 times (91-92, 93-94, 97-98, and 2001-02).
SD has beaten Villanova twice (2018-19) and (2023-24) and has won 1 outright Big 5 title (2018-19). He has yet to win an NCAA tournament game.
The reality is that Penn no longer dominates the Ivy’s because the rest of the league has gotten much better. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have benefitted from the Ivyies being prevented to share the terms of their respective financial aid packages. It has been alleged that Harvard, Yale and Princeton have offered more generous packages. Penn in turn benefitted from an advantage over Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell in that while its packages were less generous that those offered by the “big 3’s”, Penn implemented its no-loan/grant only policy before Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth and Columbia did. (I am uncertain as to whether each of those 4 have no loan policies in place even now.)
As for recruiting deficiencies, I am hard pressed to see where the team Penn expected to have this year - which would also have included Dingle and Martz - would have been iany less talented than that of any of Penn’s rivals. in fact Penn expected to field the most talented roster in the league.
Finally, as for coaching, the only Ivy coach who has distinguished himself above all others is in my view Brian Earl at Cornell given what he has accomplished with the talent he has assembled. And I again remind everyone that the Tiger nation was screaming for Henderson’s head after Princeton’s meltdown at home against Yale last year.
Everyone in this space needs to chill and let the second half of the Ivy round Robin play out.
Jordan Dingle and Max Martz were not meant to be seniors this year. Only because of COVID would they have been there if they so chose (and in fact they chose to not be here), them staying an extra year would have only helped mitigate the poor recruiting across several classes after them.
If they were here you'd see a lot less of Perkins and Brown (Dingle would have played every guard minute he could alongside Clark). I don't agree it would have been the most talented team. Would have been a lot better placed for sure, and in the conversation, but no clear winner for talent.
Genuine question. Let's say we win 6 out of next 7, get to 6-8 and sneak into a distant 4th place to make Ivy Madness. What does that tell you about the staff that makes it any more clear they can make a big jump as a program after 9 years of what we've already seen?
For me, personally would I feel a little bit better about it? Sure. Would it change the trajectory of the program currently as I see it? No, it would just be more of the same.
This is really the only stat you need to know. # of Top 100 Penn teams in the last 9 years = 0. No number of wins the rest of the season will change that.
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