Seifter | A long way to the top

After the Penn men’s basketball team took Ivy co-champions Harvard and Princeton to overtime in consecutive games, the sense around campus was that the Quakers were on par with the best in the league, if not quite ready to win the Ivy crown.

Now — with the regular season in the rearview mirror and the benefit of perfect hindsight — it’s clear that those games were aberrations for a gutsy but inferior squad.

It’s no fluke that the Tigers and Crimson are now preparing for the NCAA tournament and NIT, respectively, while the Quakers will be at home watching on television.

Harvard’s NIT berth is the first for an Ivy team since Brown’s in 2003, which suggests that the Ancient Eight is stronger at the top today than in recent years.

Meanwhile, with a 7-7 Ivy finish and a sub-.500 record overall, Penn firmly established itself in the middle of the pack.

Considering Penn finished with an 8-6 conference record three years ago in Jack Eggleston’s and Tyler Bernardini’s freshman year, it seems fair to ask whether the Quakers are stuck in neutral compared to the league’s best.

Princeton and Harvard both finished with top-40 RPIs this year, while Penn ranked 173rd. Worse still, Penn’s realistic outlook for next season looks grim.

The Quakers will lose their best front-court player in Eggleston, and the Tigers may take a step backward with the graduation of senior stalwarts Dan Mavraides and Kareem Maddox. But the Crimson will not graduate any players as they have no seniors on the roster.

Next year, which Quakers will match up with Harvard’s Keith Wright and Kyle Casey, who weren’t even contained with Eggleston in the lineup?

Even in a best-case scenario, Penn has a lot of work to do this offseason.

That starts with shoring up a recruiting class of questionable size — both in terms of the number of incoming players and their physical height. Although it’s foolish to judge players before they arrive on campus, Penn hasn’t appeared to win this Ivy recruiting season on paper — that title likely goes to Harvard as well.

Therefore, the development and health of the team’s returning players is especially crucial.

The Quakers have enough talent in the backcourt to compete, but freshman Fran Dougherty has been the only big man to consistently stay healthy and see playing time.

Barring an unforeseen collapse or catastrophic injury issues, Harvard’s 23-win season is now the absolute minimum benchmark for 2012.

It’s hard to envision Penn eclipsing that mark next season. But with clear progress from last season — the worst ever for the program — perhaps coach Jerome Allen can make that a realistic benchmark in the years to come.

ARI SEIFTER is a senior computer and cognitive science major from Ellicott City, Md., and is former Associate Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. He can be contacted at dpsports@theDP.com.

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