Busting Brackets
Fansided

Ivy League Basketball Tournament: Penn and Harvard part of 2019 field

By Pan Karalis

PHILADELPHIA, PA - MARCH 11: The Pennsylvania Quakers men's basketball team hold up the championship trophy after winning the Men's Ivy League Championship Tournament at The Palestra on March 11, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Penn defeated Harvard 68-65. (Photo by Corey Perrine/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA, PA - MARCH 11: The Pennsylvania Quakers men's basketball team hold up the championship trophy after winning the Men's Ivy League Championship Tournament at The Palestra on March 11, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Penn defeated Harvard 68-65. (Photo by Corey Perrine/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 4
Next
PHILADELPHIA, PA – DECEMBER 11: Max Rothschild #0 and AJ Brodeur #25 of the Pennsylvania Quakers celebrate after the game against the Villanova Wildcats at The Palestra on December 11, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Quakers defeated the Wildcats 78-75. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA, PA – DECEMBER 11: Max Rothschild #0 and AJ Brodeur #25 of the Pennsylvania Quakers celebrate after the game against the Villanova Wildcats at The Palestra on December 11, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Quakers defeated the Wildcats 78-75. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images) /

The Ivy League Basketball Tournament kicks off for its third edition on Saturday, leaving its first home at the Palestra after two seasons.

Yale will be hosting this year’s tournament at Lee Amphitheater, before the tournament begins rotation between every Ivy Basketball venue in 2020. With a capacity of only about 2,500 at Lee, the tournament is sure to have an electric atmosphere through its duration, on the men’s and women’s side. It doesn’t have the size or prestige or size of the Palestra, but this year’s edition might be every bit as fun as in other years.

Hosts Yale will also likely be the favorites heading in, sharing the regular season Ivy crown with Harvard, and having perhaps the biggest weapon in the league in Miye Oni. But the four-team tournament invites only the top teams in the conference, and anything can happen when Ivy Madness rolls around.

Hosts Yale will be joined on their campus by Harvard, Penn, and Princeton. All four teams have a legitimate path to the conference title and the only NCAA Tournament bid the league will get. Every team has serious talent, weapons that can carry them over any other Ivy team on any given night, and at least a .500 league record. And with all due respect to Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, and Columbia, the four teams everyone wants to see in this tournament (so long that it remains a limited four-team event) are in this year.

The first two editions of the Ivy tournament were won by a regular-season Ivy champion; the first, in 2017, was won by Princeton after they completed a perfect Ivy regular season, and last year’s was won by host Penn, who shared the league’s regular season with Harvard, who they defeated narrowly in the title game. Both tournaments might have ended in predictable fashion, but neither was without drama.

Penn brought a rolling Princeton squad, a team that would only drop to 14th ranked Notre Dame in the NCAA Tournament by a single bucket, to overtime in the first round of the 2017 tournament, and Penn and Harvard in the final a season ago went back and forth before Penn secured its first trip back to the NCAAs since 2007 with a three-point win.