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
3 of 4
Next
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA – DECEMBER 18: Official Bill Covington explains a call to the Princeton Tigers during the first half of their game against the Duke Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium on December 18, 2018 in Durham, North Carolina. (Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA – DECEMBER 18: Official Bill Covington explains a call to the Princeton Tigers during the first half of their game against the Duke Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium on December 18, 2018 in Durham, North Carolina. (Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images) /

Review of the teams

This being the shortest and most lightly staffed tournament in the country, we don’t have to pick and choose what teams to feature for this one. We’ll give you a brief run-down of all four teams vying for the Ivy title.

Yale

It doesn’t take much to deduce that Yale will be the runaway favorite for this weekend’s tournament. Although the Bulldogs are going into the tournament with the worst record for a league champion since Penn won the Ivy with an identical 10-4 record in 1987, hosting the event at the intimate Lee Amphitheater is obviously a huge advantage for Yale.

Their weaker Ivy record is more than likely more of a testament to the Ivy’s growing parity than any indictment of the Bulldogs. The league scored multiple wins over top 25 opponents this season, and a handful over high-major competition. Oni’s more that 17 points and six boards are supplemented by a balanced and veteran attack. Everything will be on the line for seniors Alex Copeland and Blake Reynolds, James Jones’ second and third-leading scorers, and there’s no reason for the Bulldogs not to believe they’ll be celebrating in front of their fans on Sunday.

Penn

Penn might have just snuck into the tournament through a tie-breaker with both Brown and Cornell, but they very well might be Yale’s biggest competition to earn the league’s NCAA Tournament bid. The defending champs got a bit hot at just the right time, and handed Yale their fourth Ivy loss of the season. Despite struggling in Ivy play, the Quakers knocked off Villanova at the Palestra and a likely tournament-bound Temple team on the road. They were starting to earn at-large talks before Max Rothschild and Michael Wang went down with injuries and the losses started coming.

They never fully recovered despite getting healthy, but they just showed how dangerous they can be in a two-game, must-win scenario. The outright Big 5 champs will be a handful for anyone unlucky enough to land them on their schedule for the rest of the year.

Princeton

We haven’t talked much about the Tigers, a perennial winner since the inception of the Ivy league, yet in this piece, but they won’t be a whole lot of fun for the hosts on Saturday themselves. Led by local players, Myles Stephens and Richmond Aririguzoh, respectively from Lawrenceville (home of DI competitor Rider) and Ewing, both in Princeton’s home county of Morris, Princeton will also bring a balanced offense into this weekend’s tournament. The Tigers felled their own major opponent this year, beating a then-ranked Arizona State, less than two weeks after getting blown out by 51 points to Duke.

This might not be the same Princeton team that went undefeated in the Ivy in 2017, but they’ve largely been unfairly lost in the shuffle between the co-champs and Penn sneaking in with a dangerous team.

Harvard

Really, we don’t need to talk about Harvard again. Click a slide back, and that’s all you’ll read all you really need to know about the Crimson. Their season was night and day with and without Aiken, and no one else on the team even comes close to his production, and they might not even be in the tournament, forget league co-champions, without his return. Amaker has a fine squad behind him, but they won’t get far if Aiken isn’t carrying the team.