Steve Donahue

THE GAP BETWEEN the Ivy League and Atlantic Coast Conference is about the biggest in college basketball. With conference seasons about to begin in earnest, Steve Donahue is negotiating it about as well as possible. Donahue parlayed the three consecutive Ivy titles and the unforgettable 2010 Sweet 16 run at Cornell into the Boston College job and games with Duke, North Carolina and the rest of the ACC minefield. BC is 10-2. The Eagles have won seven straight. They won their ACC opener at Maryland.

What it was like during the Revolutionary War is demonstrated at Carl Sandburg Junior High in Levittown by George Washington, a.k.a. Lee Reed of Burlington, N.J. As eighth-grade students (from left) Andy Atkinson, Steve Donahue and Rich Schmidt look on, Reed unpacks supplies of the era.

Steve Donahue has paid his coaching dues. After 10 years next to Fran Dunphy on the Penn bench, Donahue's days as an assistant coach could be drawing to a close. He's ready to be a head coach. In fact, he's been ready. Late next week, Cornell will choose its next coach. Donahue has been interviewed twice. Three more candidates will be interviewed next week. "I feel real comfortable with it," Donahue said yesterday. "I think I'm right there. " Donahue was a strong candidate at William & Mary and Albany this summer before those schools made other choices.

Oggie Kapetanovic, the 6-foot-10, 235-pound forward/center who was expected to provide muscle and bench-scoring for the Penn Quakers next season, will not be returning to the team. Kapetanovic, who played his first two years at Brown, sat out the 1998-99 season and then played for Penn for only one season. He graduated this summer after averaging 3.9 points and 2.6 rebounds in 13 minutes per game last season, as Penn won its second consecutive Ivy League championship. Kapetanovic was unavailable for comment yesterday.

It was motivation enough for Cornell last night that it could clinch a share of its third consecutive Ivy League title by beating Penn. But just in case that wasn't enough, Big Red coach Steve Donahue only had to remind his players that the Quakers had dealt them their only conference loss of the season thus far, three weeks ago at the Palestra. With seniors Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale leading the way, Cornell hit a barrage of threes coming out of the gate and rolled to a 68-48 win on senior night at sold-out Newman Arena.

Steve Donahue has been close to several head-coaching jobs. The 10-year Penn assistant has had interviews at William & Mary, Albany, Brown and Yale. He's out of that process now. This afternoon, he will be named head basketball coach at Cornell. He will replace Scott Thompson, who resigned in July after being diagnosed with colon cancer. He continues to work for the school in development and fund raising. Penn coach Fran Dunphy has faced a former assistant before. He plays Lafayette and Fran O'Hanlon every season.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - After Wisconsin advanced to meet Cornell tomorrow in the second-round of the NCAA East Regional at Veterans Memorial Arena, Badgers coach Bo Ryan was asked if he had a history with Big Red coach Steve Donahue. Though about 15 years apart in age, both are from Delaware County. Ryan, who is from Chester, guided his team to a 53-49 victory over Wofford right after Morton native Donahue's squad got past Temple in a first-round game. "He had a chance to coach with me in the World University Games, so he calls me and says, 'I can't learn anything from you, so I'm not going to go,' " Ryan said with a laugh.

Cornell forward Ryan Wittman was not even born when his father, Randy, won the NCAA national championship as a member of the 1981 Indiana squad. "You never fully realize what happened, and the magnitude of it, until you get to college," Ryan Wittman said. Today, Wittman will get his third crack at playing in the NCAA tournament when the Big Red take on Temple in the first round of the East Regional at Veteran's Memorial Arena. And though nobody has mentioned Cornell as a threat to win it all - the Big Red made it no further than the opening round the last two seasons - Wittman returns to the event with a healthy respect for the opportunity.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Before Temple and Cornell met yesterday in a first-round NCAA East Regional game at Veterans Memorial Arena, Big Red coach Steve Donahue had to walk past the Temple bench to reach his own. Stationed on the Temple side were assistants Dave Duke, Shawn Trice, and Matt Langel. Donahue served alongside Duke as an assistant during the 17 years Owls coach Fran Dunphy spent guiding Penn. Trice and Langel were players Donahue helped recruit for the Quakers. Donahue paused and exchanged greetings with the three assistants, then made his way to the Cornell end. There, he met up with Dunphy, who as usual was the last to come out of the Temple locker room.

When Tommy Amaker and Sydney Johnson were hired last spring to coach basketball at Harvard and Princeton, respectively, they brought to six the number of African American men's coaches in the eight-team Ivy League. That gave the Ancient Eight, in which some schools have started opening their doors to students from lower economic backgrounds - athletes who may not have had a chance to attend one of the elite universities - the highest ratio of African American coaches in college sports.

MARCH IS just about everybody's favorite month of the college basketball season. I am partial to February. You don't need to look at a calendar to know it's February. Just check out the stress level of coaches. You can see it etched on their faces. When your future depends on the whims of teenagers who may have just broken up with their girlfriends, you would be stressed, too. You wonder why the basketball gods dislike you so much. You become convinced everybody is out to get you. You are absolutely positive nobody from your team will ever make another shot.

CHRIS MOONEY grew up in the Parkwood section of the Northeast, close by Franklin Mills Mall, - which was being built when he was a teenager - Parkwood Shopping Center and Archbishop Ryan, where he went to high school. It is a neighborhood of row homes, nearly side-by-side front doors and hard-working people like Mooney's father, who drove a Greyhound bus. In 1990, Mooney parlayed basketball ability and academic achievement, leaving the asphalt and concrete for the trees and open spaces of Princeton, where he played for Pete Carril and majored in English.

THE GAP BETWEEN the Ivy League and Atlantic Coast Conference is about the biggest in college basketball. With conference seasons about to begin in earnest, Steve Donahue is negotiating it about as well as possible. Donahue parlayed the three consecutive Ivy titles and the unforgettable 2010 Sweet 16 run at Cornell into the Boston College job and games with Duke, North Carolina and the rest of the ACC minefield. BC is 10-2. The Eagles have won seven straight. They won their ACC opener at Maryland.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Before Temple and Cornell met yesterday in a first-round NCAA East Regional game at Veterans Memorial Arena, Big Red coach Steve Donahue had to walk past the Temple bench to reach his own. Stationed on the Temple side were assistants Dave Duke, Shawn Trice, and Matt Langel. Donahue served alongside Duke as an assistant during the 17 years Owls coach Fran Dunphy spent guiding Penn. Trice and Langel were players Donahue helped recruit for the Quakers. Donahue paused and exchanged greetings with the three assistants, then made his way to the Cornell end. There, he met up with Dunphy, who as usual was the last to come out of the Temple locker room.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - After Wisconsin advanced to meet Cornell tomorrow in the second-round of the NCAA East Regional at Veterans Memorial Arena, Badgers coach Bo Ryan was asked if he had a history with Big Red coach Steve Donahue. Though about 15 years apart in age, both are from Delaware County. Ryan, who is from Chester, guided his team to a 53-49 victory over Wofford right after Morton native Donahue's squad got past Temple in a first-round game. "He had a chance to coach with me in the World University Games, so he calls me and says, 'I can't learn anything from you, so I'm not going to go,' " Ryan said with a laugh.

Cornell forward Ryan Wittman was not even born when his father, Randy, won the NCAA national championship as a member of the 1981 Indiana squad. "You never fully realize what happened, and the magnitude of it, until you get to college," Ryan Wittman said. Today, Wittman will get his third crack at playing in the NCAA tournament when the Big Red take on Temple in the first round of the East Regional at Veteran's Memorial Arena. And though nobody has mentioned Cornell as a threat to win it all - the Big Red made it no further than the opening round the last two seasons - Wittman returns to the event with a healthy respect for the opportunity.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Take a map, lay it flat, smooth out the creases. Take a compass and choose a place to stick the sharp point. There really is only one place. As Cornell coach Steve Donahue said, "I think the Palestra is the first thing that grabs you. " Draw a circle on the map. The radius around the Palestra needs to be a little more than 20 miles - but only because Villanova coach Jay Wright went to Council Rock High School. If not for that, the circle would be half the size, even that much tighter.

It was motivation enough for Cornell last night that it could clinch a share of its third consecutive Ivy League title by beating Penn. But just in case that wasn't enough, Big Red coach Steve Donahue only had to remind his players that the Quakers had dealt them their only conference loss of the season thus far, three weeks ago at the Palestra. With seniors Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale leading the way, Cornell hit a barrage of threes coming out of the gate and rolled to a 68-48 win on senior night at sold-out Newman Arena.

Folks weren't expecting much when Steve Donahue became men's basketball coach at Cornell. Young and unproven, the former Penn assistant would become just another hapless leader of a doormat program. Or so people thought. Ten years later, Donahue is being recognized for completely turning the Big Red program around. Once known mostly as a hockey-loving campus, the school in Ithaca, N.Y., is now a hoops haven. Consecutive Ivy League crowns, NCAA tournament appearances, a national ranking, you name it. Donahue, 47, brought it all to a program that had recorded just 11 winning seasons since 1967-68.

Even as it was about to happen Monday morning, some very prominent Penn alums had no idea coach Glen Miller was about to be let go. It was not that they thought he would last much beyond the season, but they just did not imagine a coach at Penn being asked to leave during a season. Athletic director Steve Bilsky made the decision because he was trying to salvage this season and get a jump-start on the future. He was less than pleased he had to do it right before Christmas, but this was the time with a 2-week break and a chance at a clean start.