Hooping It Up

There's all kinds of critical action in Dartmouth athletics this weekend, but one team is in the spotlight as it tries to accomplish something that hasn't happened in 50 years. Although the Big Green men's basketball team faces long odds, it comes into the weekend with a chance to claim its first Ivy League title since 1959.

Here's what has to happen:

Friday: Dartmouth (7-5) has to win at Yale (7-5). Ivy-leading Cornell (9-3) has to lose at home to Penn (5-6).
Saturday: Dartmouth has to win at Brown (1-11). Cornell has to lose at home to Princeton (7-4).

If it goes down that way Princeton has to lose either at Columbia (6-6) on Friday, or at Penn on Tuesday.

The Ivy League standings:
Cornell 9-3, 19-9
Princeton 7-4, 12-12
Yale 7-5, 12-14
Dartmouth 7-5, 9-17
Columbia 6-6, 11-15
Penn 5-6, 9-16
Harvard 5-7, 13-13
Brown 1-11, 7-19

For a Dartmouth Alumni Magazine story about that 1959 Ivy League championship season, click here.

Speaking of the men's basketball team, all-everything forward Alex Barnett '09, has been named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches All-District first team along with Cornell's Ryan Wittman, Harvard's Jeremy Lin, American's Garrison Carr and Navy's Kaleo Kina. For a story I freelanced on Alex Barnett earlier this winter, click here.

The Lehigh Football Nation blog takes a look at Fordham's push for football scholarships, a move that may force the Patriot League's hand.

Having lived, worked and gone to school in Pennsylvania, I've always been impressed by the level of football played in the state. While this Pennsylvania Football News commitment site doesn't appear to have been updated in some tme, it's interesting to note that there are as many kids headed to the University of New Hampshire as there are to the entire Ivy League. Again, the site hasn't been updated, but it's still worth mentioning.

Dartmouth grad Mike Slive's contract as Southeastern Conference Commissioner has been extended three years. Find the league's announcement here.

If you check on the lower left column of the blog you'll see that I've now got a Twitter link for the Big Green Alert blog. Not owning a cellphone (call me a Luddite if you'd like) means I can only update it from my computer, and even then it may just sit there and not Twit for extended periods of time, but I thought I'd give it a try.

And finally, it's off to Boston and the Reggie Lewis Center today for the New England high school indoor track championships. You-know-who qualified for the 1,000 meters and will run a leg on the Hanover 4x400 that also qualified. While the Hanover girls won the New England cross country championship in 2007 and finished second last fall, this is a whole different kettle of catfish. The goal is simply to run a PR.