Rallies that fell short were the order of the night as two of the Patriot League's upper echelon clubs took on the cream of the Ivy League crop.

In Worcester, Holy Cross dropped a 56-53 decision to Princeton (box score), after rallying from a double digit deficit in the last five minutes. The Crusaders had a chance to tie it at the buzzer, getting an offensive rebound following an intentionally missed foul shot. But Torey Thomas' 3-pointer from the left corner fell short.

Said Mark Cofman in the Boston Herald:

The late-game drama was the climax of an unlikely rally in the final five minutes, during which Holy Cross used fullcourt defensive pressure to unnerve the Tigers and nearly erase a 10-point deficit. Twice the Crusaders were within a point in the final minute, the second time at 54-53 on Greg Kinsey's drive with 6.6 seconds left.

Jennifer Toland of the Worcester Telegram-Gazette (no link because they require subscriptions), made an interesting point:

All three of the Tigers’ victories have come against Patriot League schools. They beat Bucknell, 61-48, to open the season, and defeated Lafayette, 40-38, on Saturday.

So far this season, the Patriot has a 3-4 record against the Ivies. The three wins came against Ivy doormats Cornell, Harvard and Dartmouth.

Now that the Patriot League has scholarships, this stuff should not keep happening. But it does.

In Philadelphia, Bucknell fell to 0-2 against Ivies, 3-4 on the season, with 65-52 loss at Penn.

Trailing by 21 early in the second half, with Chris McNaughton saddled by foul trouble and Charles Lee off his game Box score, Bucknell battled back to get within single digits late, before succumbing to the Quakers.

The Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out, the hole was just too deep.

"Last night, the Quakers played the kind of defense that made Bucknell look sloppy. The Bison committed 12 turnovers, and connected on only 26.1 percent of their field-goal attempts, in the first 20 minutes.

Penn's defense made every trip down the court an adventure for the Bison. And it didn't help matters when center Chris McNaughton was tagged with a pair of fouls and went to the bench with 14:05 remaining in the half.

Penn, getting points from nine players, was up by 18 points when the half ended, having scored 16 off Bucknell miscues.

While Bucknell was going scoreless over a stretch of six-plus minutes, Penn was building a 32-13 advantage."

Surprisingly, Tom Housenick of The Daily Item did not make the trip to Philly. Since taking over the "Deadly's" sports department, Tom has really improved the paper's college hoops coverage. The Item just ran Bucknell SID John Terry's wrap this morning. We'll give the link to BucknellBison.com.

Elsewhere in the Patriot:

Army picked up its first win of the season, beating up a winless D-3 Polytechnic University team, 77-43, in front of 390 hardcore fans at Christl Arena (box score).

In Annapolis, Navy staged a second half comeback to top Morgan State, 77-67 (box score). According to Gary Lambrecht of the Baltimore Sun, the Mids won even though they:

committed 26 turnovers, got combined 2-for-20 shooting from their starting guard trio of Corey Johnson, Taj Mathews and Leonard Green and did not convert a field goal after Mergerson's layup with 6:44 left ...

In Buffalo, the University of Buffalo Bulls topped Colgate, 74-62 (box score). Coverage from Bucky Gleason of the Buffalo News.