Seen This?

Maybe you've seen this before. I hadn't. Click here to visit the Wikipedia entry for Dartmouth Big Green athletics. I could quibble with some of the stuff on the page, but overall it's pretty informative. While we're at it, there's also a Wikipedia entry for Buddy Teevens. ...

We listened to the Dartmouth women's basketball playoff game against Harvard over the internet last night. (Associated Press story) The Big Green went up 18 with under 7 minutes to play in the game and then went dry. No more field goals but enough defense and enough from the line to claim a 68-62 win and a date with Cornell tomorrow at 2 p.m. for the right to go to the "dance."

Having listened to that game and watched the Colgate-American men's game for the Patriot League championship on ESPN during the late afternoon, I'm reminded again about how badly I feel about the Ivies not having a postseason tournament. Congratulations to the Cornell men for winning the title this year, but the truth of the matter is that all the excitement in the Ivy League men's race was siphoned off weeks ago when it was clear no one was going to catch the Big Red. With nothing on the line, the battle for second or third or fourth in the conference was something less than riveting.

I've written columns about this in the past and won't bother you here, but suffice it to say a postseason Ivy tournament could be structured in such a way that the top teams are strongly protected. They can be rewarded with byes into the semifinals and then the chance to play on their home floors. The championship game would then take place on the home floor of the highest surviving team. If the regular-season champion couldn't make it through under those conditions it wouldn't necessarily be the best Ivy rep in the NCAA's anyway.

And please, no more wimpering about having to protect the Ivy League's automatic berth. That argument, which never held water anyway, disappeared when we learned that the "play-in," game wasn't permanently assigned to any conference, but rather was decided on a yearly basis.

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We got the predicted 2-3 inches of snow last night, not the powder we usually get but what we always called "packing snow," as kids. That certain Hanover High sophomore is gearing up to run the 5-K Shamrock Shuffle in Lebanon at noon today (with a chance at winning the women's overall) while her mom is going to make her 5-K debut. So far there's no indication that the race will be postponed, so we'll have to see. Maybe it rained down in the valley while we were getting snow.