College Volleyball Notebook: Radford U and Yale are Among Emerging Small School Teams

While our last entry was on teams in the ACC, a conference with three nationally-ranked programs, we now turn our attention to two smaller schools which are having great years.

The first one is Yale University. The Bulldogs' Mollie Rogers (pictured top) was named co-Ivy League Player of the Week along with Alexis Censke of Penn. With home weekend straight-set wins over Columbia and Cornell, Yale also won their fourth consecutive Ivy League with two remaining games in the season. Brittani Steinberg of the Bulldogs had 15 kills in the win over Columbia.

Meanwhile, Radford University (the alma mater of the blog editor), is gradually pulling ahead in the Big South Conference with one remaining weekend of play, which will include two games on the road.

For the Highlanders, Rachel Wiechecki (pictured bottom) was named Big South Player of the Week. She led her team to a home victory over Campbell University with 22 kills and 19 digs in a game that went to the full fifth set. Additionally, she had 20 kills on Saturday when the Highlanders won another home game in straight sets over High Point University.

Here are weekend scores for the Ivy League, Big South and other east coast games.

Friday:

Big South:

Radford 3 Campbell 2

Winthrop 3 Gardner-Webb 0

High Point 3 Liberty 2

UNC-Asheville 3 Presbyterian 2

Other scores:

Yale 3 Columbia 0

NC A &T 3 Savannah State 0

Wofford 3 Elon 1

Saturday:

Big South:

Radford U 3 High Point 0

Winthrop 3 UNC-Asheville 2

Liberty 3 Campbell 0

Other Scores:

Penn 3 Harvard 2

Furman 3 Elon 1

UNC-Greensboro 3 Wofford 1

Princeton 3 Dartmouth 2

Brown 3 Columbia 0

Yale 3 Cornell 0

Sunday:

Univ. of Rhode Island 3 George Washington 1

Quote of the Day/Week- Woody Allen

We continue our month-long series of quips from Oscar-winning film directors with a great quote from Woody Allen, who along with fellow filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, is perhaps the person we have quipped the most on our two blogs.

Allen won his Best Director Oscar for "Annie Hall" in 1977. The comedy film with his then-girlfriend Diane Keaton also won Best Picture, beating out "Star Wars." This year, Allen is nominated yet again for his most recent film "Midnight in Paris," which is also his biggest box office success.

Just this week, Allen's skit segmented film "Everything You Always Wanted to Know Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask" (1973) became the 6,000th film I voted for on the IMDB (I had first seen the film many years ago, but I didn't realize I had never voted on the film).

Since Valentine's Day is around the corner (yes, I hate it with a passion too), we thought we'd get an Allen quip on relationships:

"A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark."

SIDEBAR: We have been reporting on the very impressive Harvard University men's basketball team which remains nationally ranked this week (we believe they are ranked 24th) as they stand a plausible chance of being the first Ivy League team to play in the Final Four since Pennsylvania did it in 1978.

Last weekend, Harvard won back-to-back home games (on Friday and Saturday nights) over Cornell then Columbia.

In Friday's win over the Big Red, Harvard's Canadian sophomore Laurent Rivard scored 16 points. The Crimson won the game 72-60.

On Saturday night, Harvard bested Columbia in a narrow 57-52 win thanks to 20 points from Rivard.

Harvard will play Penn-U in Philadelphia on Friday night, and then on Saturday the Crimson's road game against Princeton will be nationally televised on ESPN-U at 7:00 p.m.

Bonus Road Trip (8 of 10)_ In the Ivy League

Today, we ask you the blog reader how far apart two Ivy League towns are. They are Princeton, New Jersey, where (of course) Princeton University is, and Hanover, New Hampshire, the home of Dartmouth College, where Ron Paul might very well be trying to pump students up for the upcoming New Hampshire Republican Primary so he can surge past Newt Gingrich, or as we like to call him here (we are a center-left blog) Sigmund the Sea Monster (forgive the retro humor).

Until today, we were unaware of Dartmouth's nickname; they are the 'Big Green.' And, their men's basketball team will have a daunting task when they face nationally ranked Harvard on the road at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. As for Princeton, they can boast at least one NBA star and U.S. Senator from their alumni, as Bill Bradley, who was both, graduated from the school as a Rhodes scholar. Alas, he still lost the Democratic Party nomination to Al Gore in 2000, perhaps New Hampshire was to blame.

So, for this trip, our destination points are the Ivy Inn in Princeton, NJ, and Molly's Restaurant in Hanover, NH. Feel free to take a guess so you can win an 8-track tape of the Oak Ridge Boys' greatest hits.

Is the answer:

A) 4 hours even

B) 5 hours even

C) 6 hours even

D) 7 hours even

Quote of the Week- Niccollo Machiavelli

Today's quote of the day comes from Italian philosopher Niccollo Machiavelli (1469-1527) who authored the ever-controversial book "The Prince," which was listed by "Mental Floss" magazine as one of the best books to read that can be read in one sitting. (Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" alas did not qualify, though some inmate in Oklahoma has perhaps had the opportunity to read that Russian literary classic before the lights went out).

"The Prince" was intended to serve as a model for creating principalities and many scholars feel it has encouraged ruthless dictatorships and countless gangster movies. (A Virginia Tech student once told me a professor of his wanted him to compare "The Price" to the film version of "The Godfather.").

Perhaps, the book is also on Hosni Mubarak's amazon.com wish list. We would go with the even more infamous Libyan el presidente, but the former Egyptian dictator's name is much easier to spell and don't like complaints from Princeton University English professors (actually no one from the Ivy League has ever complained about this blog; yes- we are surprised by that too!).

Incidentally, Italy is celebratings its 150th anniversary, and we are going to quip other Italians for that occasion at some point this year. In the mean time, the BBC has produced has several interesting pieces about how Italy, which is more culturally divided that many may realize, is celebrtaing the milestone.

Here is the quip from this most contrversial philosopher, we strongly recommend that you not use this on a sympathy card:

"A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair."