Either both teams stink at scoring or they're both really good at defense. Penn's defense has been good but their offense has struggled.

HD Box score here.

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HDbox score here.

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Villanova 69, Penn 48 in basketball action at the Palestra. It's never good when your defensive rebound percentage is less than 50%...
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Penn 47, Villanova 69 Villanova 7-0 vs. Penn 1-5 12/2/08 8 p.m. at the The Palestra (Philadelphia, Pa., -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Penn 47 (1-5)  Penn			+/-	Pts	2PM-A	3PM-A	FTM-A	FGA	A	Stl	TO	Blk	OR	DR	PF 24 Eggleston, Jack	-21	8/36	4-6	0-0	0-0	6/41	2/9	3/59	2/59	1/31	1/29	2/30	3 42 Votel, Brennan	-8	4/16	2-3	0-0	0-0	3/16	2/3	0/27	1/27	0/12	0/11	3/16	3 01 Rosen, Zack		-23	0/17	0-0	0-3	0-0	3/26	2/6	0/40	3/38	0/26	0/22	1/25	4 03 Bernardini, Tyler	-24	12/33	3-6	1-5	3-4	11/37	1/8	0/49	1/47	0/25	1/26	1/23	0 32 Cofield, Remy	-9	3/22	0-2	0-2	3-4	4/20	3/8	2/36	2/35	0/18	0/13	1/18	1 13 Schreiber, Andreas	-1	2/16	0-3	0-1	2-2	4/16	1/5	1/19	1/19	0/12	0/12	1/10	3 14 Loughery, Larry	-11	0/20	0-1	0-0	0-3	1/20	1/7	1/29	1/27	0/20	0/14	1/15	0 15 Egee, Kevin		-4	3/29	1-4	0-2	1-1	6/28	0/8	0/38	0/40	0/23	0/20	0/18	1 22 Gaines, Harrison	-7	14/38	3-8	2-3	2-2	11/34	0/7	0/46	1/47	0/30	0/22	2/28	0 30 Belcore, Rob		1	0/2	0-0	0-0	0-0	0/2	0/1	0/4	1/3	0/1	0/2	0/2	0 44 Turley, Conor	-3	1/6	0-0	0-0	1-2	0/5	0/2	1/8	0/8	0/7	0/4	1/5	1    TOTALS.......	-22	47	13 - 33	3 - 16	12 - 18	49	12/16	8/71	13/70	1/41	6/35	18/38	16.394	.188	.667		.750	.113	.186	.024	.171	.474 Villanova 69 (7-0)  Villanova		+/-	Pts	2PM-A	3PM-A	FTM-A	FGA	A	Stl	TO	Blk	OR	DR	PF 00 Pena, Antonio	16	8/44	2-6	0-0	4-6	6/40	2/13	0/48	3/46	0/16	3/27	3/22	5 33 Cunningham, Dante	27	20/61	8-14	0-1	4-4	15/45	2/14	1/54	2/56	3/29	4/25	7/27	1 01 Reynolds, Scottie	23	10/62	1-3	2-6	2-2	9/53	4/18	0/58	3/62	0/31	1/34	2/30	0 10 Fisher, Corey	13	7/43	3-7	0-2	1-2	9/42	4/13	3/49	2/49	0/21	1/27	5/25	3 24 Stokes, Corey	20	14/50	1-2	4-6	0-0	8/34	1/14	1/45	1/43	1/19	2/17	3/22	1 04 Colenda, Jason	-1	0/1	0-0	0-0	0-0	0/1	0/0	0/3	0/4	0/1	0/2	0/2	0 15 Redding, Reggie	12	2/46	1-5	0-1	0-0	6/42	2/14	1/46	0/47	1/23	2/30	4/22	3 20 Clark, Shane		4	5/22	1-3	0-1	3-3	4/21	0/5	0/23	2/27	0/13	3/15	1/13	2 22 Anderson, Dwayne	0	3/12	0-0	1-1	0-0	1/9	0/4	0/12	1/11	0/8	0/4	1/7	0 23 Wooten, Russell	-1	0/1	0-0	0-0	0-0	0/1	0/0	0/3	0/3	0/1	0/2	0/1	0 42 Tchuisi, Frank	-3	0/3	0-1	0-0	0-0	1/7	0/1	0/9	1/7	0/3	1/7	1/4	1    TOTALS.......	22	69	17 - 41	7 - 18	14 - 17	59	15/24	6/70	15/71	5/33	20/38	29/35	16.415	.389	.824		.625	.086	.211	.152	.526	.829 Efficiency: Penn 0.671, Villanova 0.972 Substitutions: Penn 29, Villanova 31 2 point shot selection Dunks: Penn 0-0, Villanova 2-2 Layups/Tips: Penn 7-12, Villanova 8-22 Jumpers: Penn 6-21, Villanova 7-17 Fast break points: Penn 2, Villanova 2 Points in the paint: Penn 22, Villanova 26

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Athletics demand resources in a fundamentally different way than other fields in higher education. If Pomona and CMC both have excellent cancer research facilities, and make important breakthroughs for cancer, everyone benefits and we can celebrate both labs. We can do the same for every other academic discipline and artistic endeavor; we celebrate excellence where we see it. However, if Pomona and CMC both have excellent basketball teams, we only care if they are good relative to other teams. In athletics the objective is to win, not just to become excellent, so there's a constant pressure for teams to improve relative to other teams. I believe that bad teams playing today could beat good teams from twenty years ago, because for twenty years teams have faced continual pressure to get better or risk oblivion.

The result is that university athletic programs are involved in a continual arms race, as Judge Richard Posner points out (Coincidentally, most professional sports teams lose money because of the constant pressure to spend more money on players). Athletic directors and coaches continually plead for better training facilities, more coaches and/or bigger budgets, citing a need to lure recruits and stay competitive. They succeed when they ask for money because athletics, unlike academic departments, provide immediate feedback about success; if a team isn't competitive, they will lose games. It's much more difficult to receive feedback from investment in academic disciplines than athletics, so a donation to the sports program provides a quick, visible result unlike endowing a professor's chair or paying for a scholarship. As a result, schools are build bigger and better athletic facilities and hire more staff. Salaries for top basketball and football coaches are often higher than salaries for university deans. Most schools boast shiny new weight rooms and/or practice facilities. Our own school has plans to renovate the gym and build a new weight training room.

There's no need for the arms race. All of the external benefits of sports (high attendance, championships, success, school pride) are correlated with winning. Spending money only helps achieve wins if one school can spend more money on its sports programs than the others. As long as one school can spend more money on its sports programs than the others, there will be a constant upward pressure on athletic budgets. We can help stop the arms race by regulating athletic departments, either through the NCAA or through conference organizations. The NCAA already regulates some aspects of athletics, placing limits on recruiting visits and phone calls, ensuring that a team's average SAT is within one standard deviation of the school's average SAT, and limiting the number of athletic scholarships by sport and school division. Granted, many people believe some NCAA rules are dumb, and some of their rules make little sense. However I encourage the NCAA and/or school conferences to take a more active role to stop the arms race among athletic departments. Schools should accept limits on the amount of money schools can spend on their athletic departments. Schools should offer scholarships to athletes based on financial need, and in line with a school's scholarship offers to regular students of the same need, as Ivy League schools do. I believe that attendance, school pride and success won't suffer if we place these restrictions on schools, because teams will still win games and championships, just with lower budgets than they did before.

An example which illustrates my point is the new Speedo LZR Racer Suit, which allows swimmers to shave their times by 1 to 2 percent. The suits cost $600 each and last for four races; a school that had enough money to pay for the suits would have a significant advantage over other schools, unless everyone bought the suits, then the advantage would disappear. In this situation, if the league or NCAA mandated that swimmers could not wear the suits, or could only wear them for the league championships, schools would save tons of money, the swimmers' relative rankings would remain constant, and the overall product would not suffer. In the absence of any regulation, schools will have to spend money on the LZR suits or their swimmers will not be able to win.

I wish that sports were a less important component of higher education. The results can provide the athletes and coaches with important life lessons, and games give students and alumni a fun night out; these benefits should not be overlooked, but the results are ultimately meaningless, unlike a cure for cancer or discovering how our minds work. Unfortunately, it's hard to measure success in academic fields and even harder to predict which students will be academic stars, whereas in athletics, success is measured with every game and one can predict with reasonable certainty the success of high schoolers at the college level.

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I make no money from blogging, hardly anyone reads my blog and if I ever run/hold a significant public position my blog will probably hurt my job chances. So why blog? I can think of three main reasons.

1) Focus my thoughts - Ideas come through writing and articulating my thoughts can help me give them shape and depth. But I could just as easily do this in a journal, which leads to:

2) Vanity - I can show off on my blog. Because I'm bright but not that bright and want to distinguish myself from the crowd. The blog gives me a place to share what I've been thinking about, and to show off how much I read and know.

3) Historical record - I can track my intellectual progress and what I thought was interesting at various points in time.

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"He" is Dean Kamen.

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I thought Michigan was very sloppy in the halfcourt. Their screeners often missed UCLA defenders or took a bad angle into the screen. and defensive pressure forced them far away from the basket, making it extremely difficult for them to run their offense. Fortunately UCLA's defense broke down after a few passes, because despite the haphazard formations, and their inability to run more than the same play over and over again, Michigan was able to get open looks at the basket. DeShawn Sims was the difference maker for Michigan. He made some very nice plays and hit a few fifteen foot jumpers. He finished the game 9-15 from the field, and the rest of the team shot 12-38 (31%). John Beilein, the Michigan coach, believes strongly in the power of the three-point shot, but his team shot only 5-20 from 3 today. If Michigan can add offensive power and rebounding skill to their already strong 1-3-1 defense, they will be a dangerous team later on in the season.

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Ford sources said it is the sort of plant the company wants in the United States, were it not for the United Auto Workers, which has historically opposed such extensive supplier integration on the factory floor.

Watch this amazing video (3 mins) of Ford's most efficient plant, in rural Brazil. The accompanying article is here.

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"Though Steve has studied subjects as diverse as quantum physics, classical philosophy, Latin, Greek, electrical engineering, communications theory, and the history of exploration, he has no college diploma, and this makes him feel somewhat inadequate and defensive. "The blessing part of high intelligence is that it seems that you're equipped with a telescope and a microscope, and other people have binoculars and a magnifying glass. The curse part is probably when you have a feeling that there is so much that you could be doing but haven't lived up to the possibilities. "It's easy, when you're interested in lots of things, to get sidetracked. You start studying one thing, and that leads to the next thing, which is also interesting. Before you know it, months have gone by and you're very far afield. I enjoy the sharp upward learning curve associated with new knowledge, but, frankly, I often become bored with the tedious plateau associated with expertise." Unfortunately, Steve says, expertise is far more marketable. "You want to find work where you can utilize your talents," he says, "but how do you put on a resume that you're probably going to see things more clearly, have better ideas for strategies, have a better overall view than anybody else in the entire company? And do people really want somebody like that? Highly intelligent people are not seen as team players. They're seen as loners with their own ideas, as people who are difficult to deal with. Some people get more despondent and isolated as they age, and it's very, very difficult. Others take that as a challenge--how to interact with other people, how to talk with other people. I kind of took that route. I took a lot of drama courses, read a lot of things. If you become actively hostile against the environment around you, that's like a certain kind of hell."

That's from an old Esquire article about four incredibly bright individuals. I think the solution is to have people work for you, not the other way around.

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