In three weeks from today, there will be a bracket. I can not believe the time is finally here for the NCAA tournament. It is also Sunday which means it is time for another Sunday Mailbag, the only time I get to interact with the fans directly and answer their questions regarding college basketball. Every week I post on social media that it is time to supply the questions you would like me to answer for the Sunday Mailbag for Busting Brackets, and every week I get some excellent questions that allow me to think about and research my answers. The goal is to provide a highly researched response to every question. Nothing is off limits, and I will answer anything college basketball-related.
This week there were three questions and all of them were about the NCAA tournament. The first one takes us to the Ivy League and looks at who will win the auto bid in that conference. The next one focuses on the CBI and NIT instead of the NCAA tournament. The final question is going to be a resume comparison of three very similar teams and why those teams are appearing where they are in bracketology projections currently. It is going to be a fun week of questions and I can not wait to answer them for you all.
Who should be the favorite to win the Ivy League- Tristan Freeman (@hoopsnut351)
The Ivy League has quietly been one of the most competitive conferences in the country as the season heads into the stretch run. For those of you who don’t know the Ivy League only plays games on Friday and Saturday of each week and after the games have completed on Saturday there is currently a three-way tie at the top of the league. Cornell, Princeton, and Yale all stand at 9-2 in the league. Heading into Saturday Cornell was winning the league but they lost at home to Brown to make the top of the league 9-2.
The Ivy League has a very interesting conference tournament as only 4 teams make the tournament and that way they can still play all of the games on a Friday and Saturday. Princeton, Yale and Cornell are locks to make the tournament and currently Brown sits in the 4th spot of the tournament. The tournament is really going to be between the top three teams as those teams are the best in the league. Who is the best? Or who is going to be thought of as the best as the season winds down? It is hard to determine because all of the top three teams have won their games against each other at home, but there is one team that stands out above the rest.
The Princeton Tigers are the team that I trust the most in the Ivy League to win and come away with the automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. It was mere weeks ago when everyone was talking about the possibility of a two-bid Ivy if the Tigers would have remained undefeated in the league and lost in the league title game. That has since passed and the Ivy is only going to get one bid and it is going to go to the best team in the league. Princeton has the best player in the league in point guard Xaivian Lee and they have the easiest remaining schedule. The Tigers still have to play Cornell one more time but the game is in New Jersey and given how well the Tigers are playing now they will likely win the game.
The Tigers are not going to be your ordinary Ivy League team either. Don’t forget that they were in the Sweet 16 a season ago. The key players from that team have all left but head coach Mitch Henderson still had enough of a core to enter the year as the favorite to win the Ivy League. Then Princeton started the year off with a win over Rutgers which got people talking, then they beat Duquesne on the road, which at the time was a great win. Princeton has good metrics and they are more than capable of pulling off an upset against the right team. The Tigers are still the favorite to win the league and likely will win the Ivy League auto bid.