Spike in Tournament Play Indicates Conference Improvement

Let’s be clear, Saturday isn’t just a big day for Harvard; it’s a big day for the Ivy League.

The Crimson will take center stage for the conference tonight when it takes on Michigan State with a Sweet Sixteen berth on the line. A win would mark the sixth consecutive year that Harvard has improved its postseason performance and the second time in five years that the Ivy League has made the Sweet Sixteen.

Hidden in that stat is the rub: this conference isn’t sneaking up on anybody anymore.

For the first time in its history, the Ivy League sent five teams to postseason play this year. Harvard, as the conference champion, headed to the Big Dance, but Princeton (CBI) and Columbia, Brown, and Yale (CIT) all punched their own tournament tickets. Four teams—all but Brown—advanced. Three will play games today, with Yale having a chance to avenge the league’s only loss tonight against Holy Cross.

“You can always argue about some teams being better in the past, but in terms of top to bottom, it’s as good as ever,” Yale coach James Jones said.

The numbers back him up. This year’s Crimson does not profile as the league’s best champion, but for the first time in 10 years, the Ancient Eight has four teams in the top 150 of the RPI. Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, the Ivy League has never had the run of postseason success it is having now. The conference has split its last eight Tournament contests, with only a Brandon Knight floater standing between it and a winning record.

The players certainly don’t fear the big conference schools anymore. In its two NCAA tournament wins, Harvard has led nearly tip-to-buzzer, trailing for less than seven minutes combined. Its next opponent, Michigan State, trailed Columbia for 20 consecutive minutes in November before back-to-back shot clock violations keyed a late 8-0 Spartan run.

“Anything can happen in these 40 minutes,” said Crimson co-captain Brandyn Curry on Wednesday. “These upsets are happening more and more often. I think it’s because the talent around America is just getting better, and these players are going to decide to be different.”

I’m not a subscriber to the belief that the pressures on Kentucky and Kansas to recruit one-and-done freshmen have leveled the playing field—after all, the biggest stars on some of the nation’s recent Cinderellas have been young. Sophomore Gordon Hayward led Butler to the championship game in 2010, and last year’s Final Four darling Wichita State used three underclassmen (Fred VanVleet, Ron Baker, and Tekele Cotton) in its backcourt.

The Ivy League has emerged because the conference has shown an ability to recruit talent in spades. The stories have all been written about Harvard’s recruiting prowess, but both Yale and Penn have three-star recruits playing for them. Princeton came extremely close to having two consecutive Ivy League Players of the Year; Cornell is just four years removed from a 29-win team.

“I don’t think people understand really how hard it is to go and play back-to-back nights against these teams,” Curry said.

The 14-game regular season, with each team playing a home-and-away series against every other, ensures coaches and players are extremely familiar with one another. Often called “the 14-game tournament” by Harvard coach Tommy Amaker, the grueling road back-to-backs of the regular season—with players on the bus just two hours after a game and on the floor a day later—prepare teams well for the turnaround part of the NCAA Tournament.

Mastering this quick turnaround is essential to winning the league. Much has been made about Michigan State coach Tom Izzo’s 18-3 record in tournament turnaround (Saturday/Sunday) games, but Amaker himself is 13-5 on Saturdays over the three-year Tournament run.

“You got to take each weekend by itself because it’s a mini-tournament within itself,” Curry said. “The Ivy League is just going to continue to get better.”

“I just hope it gets more credit,” he continued.

Three wins Saturday, and it certainly will.

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