Breaking Down The Ivy League

The Ivy League is an odd duck. They don’t have an end-of-season tournament and they do not hand out scholarships. As such, they stand alone in the D-I college basketball world. Sometimes they get neglected, especially around Tourney time. Because there are no dramatics near the finish of the regular season, the team that moves on to the NCAA Tournament from the Ivy League (and usually this is Penn or Princeton) has about two weeks of waiting before they have to turn it on again for the tournament- which is typically a disadvantage unless the team happens to need some rest to get players back to form. Anyways- the Ivy League has not won an NCAA Tournament game in a long, long time (since 1998, in fact). Could this year be the one that breaks the streak?

The Ivy League has been dominated by Penn and Princeton for the past few decades… that is, until Cornell came barreling into the upper echelon of the Ivies last season. The Big Red won the conference and played in the NCAA Tournament last season, and, according to Andy Glockner of ESPN, they should win the conference again, as they return a very strong backcourt. Cornell’s problem will be making up for the absence of their big man from last season, Jason Hartford. He did a lot of the dirty work down low- rebounding, blocking, playing good defense in the post- but they don’t appear to have anybody who will step into that role right away.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on August 11, 2008 - Post a comment