Penn is hosting its emergency town hall meeting today with Quakers' head basketball coach, Glen Miller (pictured above). Miller will likely address (at least indiretly) Cornell's back-to-back Ivy League championships and Penn's inability to play competitively within the league in recent seasons.We personally have nothing against Glen Miller. Others do. However, it should be noted that Miller never won an Ivy League title with players that he recruited. Sure, during his first season with Penn in 2006-2007, his Quaker team rolled to an Ivy title, but Penn did so entirely with an inherited roster of players recruited entirely by Fran Dunphy, Miller's predecessor.
During Miller's second season with Penn, Cornell turned the Ivy League upside down with the Big Red cruising to the 2007-2008 Ivy title with a 14-0 record. A dejected Miller declared to the Philadelphia media, "We have better days ahead. Our opponents in the Ivy League are enjoying it. It won't last long...We'll continue to battle, as hard as we can, the rest of the season. We wear Penn across our jerseys. We'll get back to where we always want to be. Real quick. Quicker than a lot of people think."
Notwithstanding Miller's condescending comments and reference to a proud history of Penn basketball, which as a matter of fact, he had no part in building, Cornell repeated its Ivy League Championship during the 2008-2009 season. Meanwhile, Penn continued to struggle and lose players from its program. One departing player said, "Glen Miller, I just didn't feel like he was the coach for me. That kind of started it."
Is 2009-2010 Penn's year to return to prominence? We shall see. But for now, we are sure this Penn program is getting a good dosage of Big Red humility.
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