Princeton coaches and fans rave about Justin Conway, the 6'4" center who was an end of the bench player at last season's outset who then, through hard work in practice, earned a starting job and was named Honorable Mention all-Ivy. Conway is a gritty player and a leader by example on the Princeton squad. Princeton coaches have a lifetime of achievements in turning on lightbulbs and finding hidden gems such as Conway.
But the Tigers don't have an exclusive franchise on doing that. The Penn Quakers over the years have excelled in this area too, the latest case in point being point guard Brian Grandieri. Read this article, and click on this box score from last night's Penn-Drexel game, and see what I mean -- 12 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists (to only 2 turnovers, and while Penn won by 19, first-team all-Ivy players Ibby Jaaber and Mark Zoller had 8 turnovers -- apiece) and 3 steals. Sounds like Penn once again has outstanding leadership at the point guard position to help propel it to yet another Ivy hoops title. They certainly are the odds-on favorite to win the league.
With games like this from Grandieri, the question may only be "by how many games?"
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Great to see Grandieri getting some pub, but it's hard to say that he qualifies as a "hidden gem". After all, he was the Interacademic League Player of the Year in 2004, when the other rosters in that very high quality league were populated by names like Ayers, Grimes, Henderson and Ellington. He also was selected as the PA Small School Player of the Year that season. The Tp 25 programs simply regarded him as undersized and too slow, but never gave him full credit for his extremely high basketball IQ. At Penn, we couldn't be happier about their oversight.
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