The Ivy Is Still Growing

They’re not just the smart kids anymore (but they’re still pretty smart). The Ivy League has long been lumped in with the likes of the America East and Atlantic Sun conferences come March — leagues that are expected to send their champion to the NCAA tournament, but nobody else. This season might be different for the Ancient Eight and that could be the beginning of a trend.

In the 1990’s and early 2000’s Princeton and Penn dominated the Ivy League, one of which won the conference title every year from 1989 through 2007. That gemini-dominance really extends back throughout the history of the conference, with only a minority of titles being won by one of the other six.

“I think we walk among princes, and what I mean by that is that we are in the top-10 all time in wins among NCAA division-1 men’s basketball,” Penn head Coach Jerome Allen said of his school’s history of success on the court. “So when we play Duke, UCLA, Kentucky, Temple and Villanova, and all those schools, we’re all in the same company in amount of wins.

“We exist in two separate leagues [the Ivy and the Big 5] and they’re both competitive.”

The Ivy League is on the rise. Teams like Harvard and Yale are challenging the traditional powers to for conference titles and at-large bids to the NCAA tournament aren’t out of reach.

“One thing I can say, is think that the talent has improved and the league is much better than what most people think,” Allen said.

The recruiting game in the league has changed dramatically in recent years, with schools bringing in new coaches like Tommy Amaker at Harvard, who previously coached at Michigan, Seton Hall and Duke, or Bill Courtney (Cornell), Mitch Henderson (Princeton), and Paul Cormier (Dartmouth), who all have experience as high-major assistants.

“Recruiting is good,” Henderson noted. “You get all these guys who have experience recruiting from high-major programs, they know how to attract kids that maybe don’t know much about schools like Princeton

“That’s what we’ve got to do. It’s an unbelievable product and for a young man that deserves a place like this, it’s a pretty special place.”

Even with athletic success, that unbelievable product is an academic one. Recruiting benefits from greater athletic success, but coaches still lean on their school’s strengths when wooing their star players.

“[T]he more that we — in terms of the Ivy League brand — plays on television, the more exposure we get, I would hope that it will help recruiting,” Allen posited. “At the end of the day, all eight schools have such a strong brand recognition in terms of academic excellence that I don’t think the athletics will ever be able to trump that.”

Yale senior forward Greg Mangano agreed, noting that “it’s tough to turn down Ivy League schools, so if you can get in and you’re a pretty good player, I think that the talent will keep improving.”

Mangano has played through a period of change for the league.

“You could probably call it a changing of the guards,” Mangano said. “When I came into the league Harvard wasn’t one of the top teams and Cornell was the team to beat. I think we’re always predicted pretty low, I feel underestimated.

“I’d also say that the quality of talent has changed. It seems like every team has a couple of guys who can play at a high level.”

Mangano is one of those guys who play at a high level, so high, in fact that he did something unusual for an Ivy League junior last spring: he declared himself eligible for the NBA Draft. He ultimately pulled his name back out, but the league’s second-best scorer (and best rebounder and shot-blocker) still has his heart set on a professional career.

“Of course, you want to get drafted, and a lot of that is how you play after this last game or if we play in the post-season,” he said. “I got invited to the Portsmouth Invitational, which is the top-64 seniors, so a lot of it has to do with how you perform there, and from there you get other opportunities for workouts and stuff.

“If I’m able to play well in those camps and workouts, you never know. If not, we’ll see, but I definitely want to keep playing.”

Mangano won’t be the only Ivy alum at Portsmouth; Penn guard Zach Rosen and Harvard forward Keith Wright will join him there, all three following in the footsteps of Knicks point guard and former Harvard star, Jeremy Lin. NBA scouts in attendance will be paying attention to the “smart kids” more than ever.

While the talent in the league has improved in recent years, it has been anything but lopsided. The Ivy League has a level of parity now that it didn’t have before.

“We were good when I played and you kind of had your eyes on Penn a little bit,” Henderson said of his playing days at Princeton.

“We’re this close to having a 4-team race,” he noted before Harvard’s ended that possibility.

“Parity in the league is good, but its also important that young men understand that this is a place that you can come and play high-level basketball and be successful. I think that the perception is something that’s going in the right direction.”

Things began to change when Cornell rattled off three straight Ivy titles between 2007 and 2010, ending that run with a surprise appearance in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet Sixteen. Then, last season, Harvard ended its season on top of the standings for the first time in program history, tied with the stalwart Princeton Tigers, who ultimately took the NCAA bid after a one-game playoff.

“I definitely think the league is getting better, I think it is improving from top to bottom,” Allen said.

“The league has more talent now,” Allen said, comparing the current Ivy League to when he played at Penn in the early 1990’s, “it’s more competitive and on any given night I think that anyone can beat anyone.”

This year, Harvard has again clinched at least a share of the Ivy title with two wins this weekend, but if Penn wins at Princeton on Tuesday to force another playoff, the Crimson may still be headed to the dance. They currently sit at 38^th in the RPI rankings and their only real “bad loss,” was on a January 3^rd trip to Fordham’s Rose Hill gymnasium.

Harvard played a tough non-conference schedule, but their league games were hardly an RPI-killer.

“The teams that are at the bottom of the deck here, Dartmouth, Brown — Columbia is running into overtime with Harvard — those are well-coached teams that give you problems,” Princeton coach Mitch Henderson noted. “Gone are the days where you sort of roll through things.

“I’ve seen a lot of good coaching, there are good coaches across the board.”

Especially with no conference tournament offering second-chances, teams in the Ivy League have to battle their way through 14 league games. Yale coach James Jones knows that there are no nights off in the new Ivy League.

“Every weekend is the same thing, everybody tells me that this is a big weekend, that’s a big weekend, but tell me the weekend that’s not a big weekend?” Jones asked rhetorically. “They’re all big. They’re all big games because we don’t have a conference tournament. We have to play 14 games, so every single one of the games that you play is important and they all mean something.”

The race to the top of the nations most academically prestigious conference was heated this season, with four teams still in the mix to take the title on Friday. Even the vaunted Big East and ACC were down to one or two teams at the top of the standings by then. As many as four Ivy schools, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn, could have ended the season in a tie — forcing a three-game playoff — had Harvard lost to Columbia and Cornell and Penn lost to Yale and Princeton.

The Ivy League has never had a four-way tie before and thanks to Harvard’s weekend sweep, that won’t change yet. Yale’s loss on Friday eliminated the Elis from contention, but the league remains undecided, pending Tuesday’s game between Penn and Princeton.

Penn guard Zach Rosen has lead the Quakers and the Ivy League in scoring all season, but has never been part of a team that won a league title or played in the NCAA tournament. That could change this week.

“We’ve never been in this position while we’ve been here, we’ve always been heading into Tuesday at Princeton or Tuesday here against Princeton with nothing to play for except for the rivalry,” Rosen said after taking care of Yale, 68-47 on Saturday.

“For us, its exciting, for the seniors its exciting, but make no mistake, for us its nothing yet. We can get coach off our back if we hang a banner. We want to come back here in 20 years and look up and say, ‘we did that.’”

“Its probably the craziest season I’ve ever been a part of, not only as a coach, but as a player as well,” noted coach Allen.

As for Jeremy Lin, his story is appreciated, but he is a product of the league, and not it’s driver.

“I don’t think its fair to say that Jeremy Lin has helped the Ivy League to grow,” Allen said.

Lin’s media sensation has shone a spotlight on a league that was already on the rise. That spotlight will help the next generation of talented brainiacs get their shot.

“I look at a guy like Jeremy Lin and say, ‘thanks!’” Mangano exclaimed. “You know, he’s doing a lot for the Ivy League and its definitely going to help me and other guys coming out of the league because it shows the caliber of talent that’s in the league that can go unnoticed at times.”

Henderson, meanwhile, sees a little bit of Jeremy Lin in most of the players he encounters around the league.

“When you listen to Jeremy Lin, the kind of person he is — the league is filled with those kind of guys who care about team first, work very hard at being a very good basketball player, and ‘oh by the way, he graduated from an Ivy League school’”

For the Ivy League, a heightened level of talent and competition means that America will once again be paying attention to some of the nation’s oldest universities.

The league plays by a different set of rules than the rest of the country. They have eschewed big-time television contracts to play a classroom-friendly schedule of games that are almost exclusively on Fridays and Saturdays. They have also stayed away from athletic scholarships since their founding, offering only need-based or academic aid to student-athletes.

Despite those voluntary handicaps, the Ivy League continues to get better and will not only produce more stars, but also more NCAA tournament success.