Month: March 2010

Finally the month of March is here.

Saint Patty’s Day is steadily approaching, Major League baseball is warming up down in Florida, and spring is right around the corner.

But the buzz around Penn Manor during March doesn’t involve wearing shamrocks, following sluggers crack homers, or waiting for that thermometer to reach the fifty-degree mark.

Instead, March Madness fever spreads over the school faster than an ugly rumor.

Selection Sunday is coming up on March 14 where the NCAA college basketball tournament participants will be announced. Students of Penn Manor are preparing their online leagues, scouting different conferences, and even looking for potential “sleeper teams” that could surprise the nation during this frenzied tournament.

Sixty-five Division One college basketball teams will enter the tournament which begins this year on Tuesday, March 16. That number will diminish down to two teams on April 3 when the championship game will be played in Indianapolis.

Syracuse, Kentucky and Kansas will be the top dogs entering the tourney, but senior Wes Rowe says that it is the upsets that make this tournament so fun to watch.

“My team won’t make the tournament, but the excitement and great match ups will still make March Madness the best time of the year,” said senior Billy Scheid.

“March Madness gives well-deserving teams an opportunity to compete at the highest level and believe that their hard work [during the regular season] can be rewarded on the basketball court, and possibly make some history,” said Penn Manor history teacher John Erisman, who is also a huge fan of the tournament.

Among others, Villanova, Duke and Syracuse seem to be the favorite around Penn Manor as the playoff approaches.

But when this anticipated time of the year comes, tension as each student hopes for the best chosen bracket, and roots for their team to go all the way will bring a certain liveliness to Penn Manor that can only be described as March Madness.

By Cody Erb

She shoots, she scores! That is her second goal tonight, Marie-Philip Poulin puts Canada up by two late in the first period.

After making it all the way to the gold medal round, team USA lost to team Canada in the Olympics 2-0. Canada came out of it with a gold medal, USA with the silver.

Team USA just could not simply put the puck between the pipes as Canada’s goalie, Shannon Szabados, stopped every shot that came her way. The total shot count of the USA was 28. Canada only got off one more shot with a total of 29 shots on goal.

Although Canada did score two goals, USA’s goalie, Jessie Vetter, can not be blamed. She stopped 27 of Canada’s shots. On top of all that, USA’s offense could not capitalize at all out on the ice. USA had two, 5-on-3 power plays and not one goal to come out of it.

The team’s rivalries began to boil going into the game, and seemed like it became personal out on the ice. There were penalties being called left and right in the first two periods. Canada had a total of 12 penalty minutes and USA with 10.

Even with no penalties being called in the third period, it was just as rough. There were no signs of checking, which is illegal in womens hockey opposed to men, it was still very rough. It looked as though you could have been watching the men, but it just seemed like the referees got tired of blowing their whistles.

In the end it was a fantastic match-up between the two teams. Both teams went undefeated on their way to the medal rounds. USA outscored their opponents 40-to-2 going into the game and Canada outscored their opponents 46-to-2. The game was definitely a game to remember, and a game to talk about until the next time the two teams face off.

By Mike Bouder

The Orange improved to 7-0 against ranked teams with a win over Villanova Saturday.

With the top ranked teams losing earlier in the day, it meant that if the Orange beat Nova they could be ranked number one for the first time since the 1989-90 season.

Jim Boeheim didn’t want to talk ranking.

The cats came out with an early lead and kept it till the Orange went on a 15 – 7 run to take a 10 point lead to end the first half.

Nova never recovered from the first-half deficit with the Orange taking the easy victory, 77 to 95, in front of the record crowd of 34,616 on their home floor.

The Orange big men were the difference makers in the game with Rick Jackson scoring 19 points and grabbing 8 rebounds, Arinze Ounaku had 17 points and also cleaned the glass with 9 boards.

With the win, the Orange locked up a one seed in the Big East tournament and moved one step closer to solidifying a number one seed come March. The win also guaranteed them as the Big East regular season champions.

Novas star guard Scottie Reynolds still scored 16 points and was relatively quiet.

With two games remaining in the regular season for the Wildcats, they may still be able to get a good seed come March and could meet the Orange again in the Big East or NCAA tourney.

The Orange with two games remaining, and looking very strong, will be tough to beat in March in the upcoming Big East tournament. The Orange’s future could be filled with greatness but the same could be said of the Wildcats.

The poll gets released Monday and with the top three teams picking up losses this week and the Orange picking up a very sweet win, Syracuse should be ranked number one.

By Sam Valentin

By Sam Valentin-

It depends where you live, the United States was hoping for the second upset in U.S. mens hockey. But just miles away, Canadians everywhere got their way when the Canadian National team scored first in the sudden death overtime victory over the U.S. Sunday on Canadian ice.

The U.S. achieved more in just being against the hockey machine, in the gold medal game because most analysts had the US team finishing fifth in this year Olympics and being able to force overtime.

The U.S. even defeated the highly ranked Canadian team a week ago.

Jonathan Toews scored early for Canada going up one-nill against the scrappy, young U.S. team.

Canada scored again in the second period when Corey Perry cleaned up a breakaway chance.

But no shut out because the U.S finally showed up almost 13 minutes into the second period off a shot by forward Patrick Kane that got deflected into the back of the net by Ryan Kesler to make it into a game.

The U.S had so many scoring chances because Canadian goalie Roberto Luongo couldn’t cover up the puck leaving the U.S. with a plethora of great rebound chances in front of the net.

The U.S. finally capitalized when a shot by Kane ricocheted off of Luongo and U.S. forward Zach Parise was in front to tie the game up with 25 ticks remaining in regulation.

The U.S. wasted the clock out after they got the puck and with momentum and all the U.S could taste the gold heading into overtime.

United States filmmakers were already thinking about a sequel to a miracle on ice.

But then Jerome Iginla passed the puck to Sidney Crosby and with a flick of his wrist and only 7 minutes and 40 seconds into the most watched game in Canadian history was ended.

He didn’t even know it went in; he was just trying to get off a quick shot said Crosby to ESPN after the game.