Patriot

American

Army

Bucknell

Colgate

Holy Cross

Lafayette

Lehigh

Navy

 

Conference Rank: 20th

CHN's 31 conference ranking, including 10 year historical averages based on average RPI finish. For more information on historical RPI averages, check out the Conference Data Page. Links lead to league preview pages.

 

In recent weeks, the Rise & Fall series has chronicled the progress (or regress) of college basketball's major conference teams. But if I equated each team to a civilization, I was mistaken. It is really the NCAA conference that equates to a burgeoning civilization or nation, each with its sometimes stable and sometimes rotating member states. Like civilizations, the prestige and power of conferences wax and wane..

 

Patriot League Preview
American has home court, but will it matter?
By Raphielle Johnson

American

Bucknell

Holy Cross

Lehigh

Other (Army, Colgate, etc)

I took a day off from the Dribble yesterday because I was working on CHN's new "FanBlogs". Basically you can have a blog about anything basketball (not even just college) related on CHN.. simply register (on the left) if you haven't already.. and then click on "My FanBlog" and start posting away. Right now we're in a developmental stage, so the blog posts don't appear on CHN's frontpage and I'm not promoting in full yet. But if you look on the right hand sidebar of this page, you'll see a box for "Recent FanBlog Posts" where you can see two of the readers who have already got started.

You should definitely think about having your own blog on CHN. You'll get an archive for your blog posts, your own user profile with a bio and a picture, and each week the best FanBlog posts will be featured on the main page.

I begin this blog with a quote from my last post:

"Although you normally want to wait until a team plays more than two games to state that they are the clear favorite to win their conference, can anybody truly challenge Penn at the top of the Ivy League? Preseason prognosticators tabbed Princeton to finish second, but they're sitting in last place right now. Maybe Cornell or Yale? Who knows, but I'll take the Quakers over the field." (January 29th)

Whoops. After this weekend's games (a sweep of Princeton and Penn), James Jones' Yale Bulldogs are atop the Ivy League with a 5-1 conference record. Yale is led by the tandem of guard Eric Flato and guard/forward Casey Hughes. This is an experienced ballclub that should hang around for the duration of the season and challenge for the league's automatic bid. They've played two more games than Penn, which explains the two-game lead in the win column (they're tied in the loss category), and they've got the Columbia/Cornell road swing this coming weekend. If they can get through that with at least a split, if not a sweep, the Bulldogs have their next four games at home. The season ends with games at Penn and Princeton, and those games could indeed decide who represents the Ivy in the NCAA Tournament.

Favorite: Bucknell. Player of the Year: Chris McNaughton. Conference Rank: 24th