AROUND THE IVIES: Yale, Princeton Fight for Title in Final Weekend

It’s the final weekend of Ivy League play, a strange time in Cambridge. Amidst a bevy of thesis deadlines, getting drunk on the steps of Widener has become, like multi-paragraph Facebook orations on our country’s future, oddly popular. On the horizon, eliciting more freshman apprehension and nervousness than an ABC party, is Housing Day. The momentous week will close with the official beginning to #SpringBreak2016, a tour de force in hedonism where the only acceptable attitude is a slight shrug.

The stakes couldn’t be higher in Ivy League play, however. After escaping Dartmouth last weekend, Yale is a road sweep of the Gentleman’s C’s away from at least a share of the league title. Princeton, which comes to Lavietes tonight, can at a minimum force a playoff by taking care of business in its three remaining games against the league’s middle class. For a pair with two combined losses—both to each other—in 2016, a playoff feels less likely and more inevitable.

Yet coming into the weekend, the pressure of the race appears to be weighing on both teams. The Bulldogs, which haven’t made the tournament in 54 years, needed last-minute heroics to avoid a devastating loss to Dartmouth at home on Saturday. With captain Jack Montague on leave, Yale is perilously thin at the guard position. The Tigers, coming off their second close scare with Columbia, have flirted with danger all season—using two crazy comebacks on the road to stave off near-defeats. With a team that has never been in this position, road games in Cambridge and Hanover loom as possible stumbling blocks.

For the rest of the league, the final two games are just about playing spoiler. One could say that the Lions remain mathematically alive for a share of the title, but their title hopes are maybe better viewed as Schrodinger’s cat: science tells us they are alive, but common sense knows better. Columbia’s best opportunity comes Saturday, when it hosts the shaky Bulldogs with a chance to send its superb senior class out on a high note. Given its recent string of good performances, the Lions might be a favorite were it not for its penchant to treat close games as prime opportunities to sack-tap its fan base.

Therein lies the rub of the 14-game playoff: no other conference has such tension built into the finish or such monotony woven into the journey.

For three weeks now, the other five teams have been ostensibly eliminated from the playoff race. Columbia, Yale, and Princeton are a combined 25-0 against the rest of the league, winning those games by an average of 14.6 points. It has been 13 years since a Brown-Dartmouth tilt actually affected the league’s title race.

Against this backdrop, the call for a conference tournament has grown fiercer. While change is usually suppressed in the Ivy League by arguments for history and Ancient Eight exceptionalism, insiders indicate that a four-team playoff is almost a certainty next year.

These logistics have yet to be hashed out, but the timing looks brutal. Since Penn and Princeton close every season out four days after everyone else, the tournament would need to be played in a quick and abbreviated two-day window before Selection Sunday. Like many Ivy traditions, the Quakers-Tigers game made more sense a decade ago—when it often decided championships—than, say, last year, when Princeton’s student newspaper simply decided not to cover the event.

The reasons for the tournament are less than compelling. It’s true that a conference tournament gives every team a shot at the title, but what kind of shot is that? For every case of the 2008 Georgia Bulldogs, a team that went 4-12 in conference and rode a stirring conference tourney to the title is … well, 100 cases of the 2009 Georgia Bulldogs, a 12-20 team whose most promising prospect was the unforgettable Trey Thompkins III.

Likewise, a mid-major conference like Ivy League should want its best representative at the Dance. By KenPom, the best Ivy League team has gone to the tournament each of the last 13 years, something you can’t say for comparable leagues like the Horizon or the MEAC. The league, which is a Siyani Chambers three from having split its last 10 Tournament outings, deserves more respect, and occasionally sending its middle class to the Dance will only hurt its reputation.

Yet the most compelling argument in favor of the playoff turns this logic straight on its head. By putting its four-team playoff right before Selection Sunday, the Ivy League will get a national spotlight it can’t have the first week of March. At a time where everyone is watching basketball, the Ancient Eight can edge its way into the national conversation. As I wrote yesterday, the league is already slighted nationally—inserting a tournament would drastically increase the chances of an at-large bid.

If the 2010 Cornell team or the 2014 Harvard team—probably the two best champions of the last decade—had lost in this tournament, they surely would have deserved at-large bids. Had they not gotten them, Dick Vitale—the first, but sadly not last, pioneer of “how I feel for those kids”—would simply never let the committee forget it.

For one more year, however, there is no need to worry about conference tournaments. This weekend is about Yale, Princeton, and the seniors playing their final home games. Well, at least the first two.

On to the picks:

YALE AT CORNELL:

The disturbing underside to the Ivy title race has been the furor that erupted this week in New Haven surrounding Montague. The captain left school last week without any disclosure as to why, leaving the Bulldogs’ decisions to honor him during Friday warm-ups with shirts emblazoned with his nickname (“Gucci”) and the word YALE spelled backwards peculiar, to say the least.

Monday morning, the story took a turn. Pictures of the team in the shirts, tagged “stop supporting a rapist” sprung up around campus. Reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Justin Sears fanned the fire, acknowledging the shirts were controversial but refusing to explain any possible symbolism behind them.

Without opining about accusations regarding facts to which I am not privy, it is sufficient to say that Sears’ statement that “no one in the team is aware of what happened” to their teammate is suspicious, especially with ESPN reporting that Montague is active in the team’s group chat. Mum has been the word around New Haven, with the athletic department denying any knowledge of the creation of the shirts.

As Yale chases its first title in half a century, the circumstances are—to say the least—a heavy weight on the team’s back. It’s hard not to feel, however, that this is partially self-imposed.

Pick: Yale

PRINCETON AT HARVARD:

In other years, this might be the game of the season. In this one, it feels like a footnote.

Pick: Princeton

PENN AT DARTMOUTH:

Among the non-Harvard seniors, I’ll miss Penn center Darien Nelson-Henry most of all. The big man, who has been putting up big numbers to lead an offense full of underclassmen, has toiled for four mediocre years in Philadelphia in a program that has only recently found continuity and direction. Nelson-Henry has borne his curse in style, progressively growing out a beard that is among the best in college basketball. His post moves have certainly improved, but a beard that fearsome deserves acknowledgment.

Pick: Penn

BROWN AT COLUMBIA:

A couple weeks ago, the New York Times ran an expose on the art interests of senior Lions point guard Maodo Lo. The mother of the German point guard is a renowned painter, a fact that apparently shocked even Kyle Smith, Lo’s own coach. In his words: “I knew she was an artist, but I’m like, dude”.

Oh Howard, this Ivy league prose ain’t what it once was.

Pick: Columbia

PRINCETON AT DARTMOUTH:

Yawn.

Pick: Princeton

YALE AT COLUMBIA:

The biggest game of the weekend will be decided in the frontcourt, where Lions forward Alex Rosenberg will be tasked with both containing Sears on the defensive end and taking him away from the basket on the other end. It’s a strategy that Princeton has utilized to great success, but Rosenberg is a notorious defensive liability.

This matchup couldn’t be more unfortunate for the beat writers covering. Last weekend at Yale, a YDN member was observed Googling “what is a frontcourt” during the game. Certainly not as embarrassing as the neighboring beat writer using Internet Explorer, but a dark mark nonetheless.

Pick: Yale

PENN AT HARVARD:

On senior night, in front of a sold-out home crowd, Harvard has an opportunity for revenge on the only other inhabitant of the league’s middle class. Penn, which like the

Crimson is winless against the league’s top three teams, has gone an impressive 5-2 against the rest of the league. It wore down Harvard in the last meeting, with freshman point guard Jake Silpe badgering Tommy McCarthy into one of his worst games of the season.

In the aftermath, senior Patrick Steeves noted that the 1-5 Crimson “play all these teams again.” Harvard is 2-3 so far in its rematches, and this represents its best shot to get the third win.

Pick: Harvard

PENN AT PRINCETON:

This game should do a good job of bearing out the difference between “frisky” and “good”.

Pick: Princeton

–Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com.