Hoops Fever

For those of you who follow this blog, you know that I am a big follower of Ivy hoops and a fan of the Princeton Tigers. My unique perspective is that I grew up in the Philadelphia area as a diehard Penn Quakers fan, so I love the Palestra and have a lot of respect for both the Princeton and Penn programs.

During the hoops season, for Ivy hoops information, you have to check out both the Princeton Basketball News blog (run by a very generous guy named Jon Solomon, who, incidentally, is a Northwestern alum and not a Princeton alum) and the Ivy Hoops website. The Princeton hoops blog is an off-shoot of the Princeton Basketball News website, which is first-rate, and there's a chat list that you can join and read commentary from subscribers, most of whom are Princeton alums and/or fans. All of this is good stuff, and the Ivy Hoops site has up-to-date information regarding Ivy hoops recruiting.

For college basketball generally, I already recommended that you buy this hoops guide (on a business trip I read The Sporting News' college hoops yearbook, and while it provides good details on what I would call college hoops' version of the BCS schools, it doesn't go into the detail on that many schools, and The Blue Ribbon Guide does). As for college hoops blogs, there are many of them to which I link, among them Yoni Cohen's College Basketball Blog (Yoni does an excellent job of trolling the net for tons of articles about the top college hoops programs), the ACC Basketblog (which has been very generous in its linking to this blog in the past), Dave Sez (a frequent linker who provides excellent insight as to the ACC -- and he's an alum of Washington U. in St. Louis, to boot!), the Patriot Hoops blog and Hoop Time (both of which are dedicated to the Patriot League (and who can catch the Bucknell Bisons this year?), Big Ten Wonk, the St. Joe's of the Midwest Hoops blog (I'm sorry, I meant the Marquette Hoops blog) and many others. There is a lot of interesting insight there in the blogosphere, and, yes, while there's also some very good stuff in the mainstream media, the blogosphere can and does add a unique perspective.

As you know, I also follow certain coaches, and I am most intrigued as to how Larry Brown's patience will fare in New York. You can read this from Hoops Junkie and decide for yourself. I agree with the premise -- I think that regardless of whether he's one of the best coaches of his time, if he doesn't have the talent, he won't fare that well. It will be a painful year for the blue and orange.

College hoops is among upon us!