On the Outside Looking In ... With Envy

Once again, the Ivy League doesn't get it. That's my opinion, at least.

While college basketball tournaments were going on all week, the Ivy League, as is the case each fall, was standing against the wall smug in its belief that the entire rest of the country has it wrong.

The Ivy League does not hold a postseason basketball tournament. The feeling is that the team that wins the regular season should go on to the NCAA's. Clearly there's merit to that belief.

But if you watched the unbelievable excitement of so many of the tournament finals on TV the past week or so, it's hard not to believe the Ivy League is cheating itself, and more importantly its athletes.

Some of those who argue against a postseason event refer to the Ivy League season as "The 14-Game Tournament." That sounds impressive until you realize that by the midpoint of this year's fictitious "14-Game Tournament," five teams had been all but eliminated. And unlike real tournaments, those teams had to continue to soldier on through the long winter with no realistic hope for a championship. Kathy Orton touches on that in her book on Ivy League basketball, Outside the Limelight:

"At 1-6 in Ivy play and tied with Dartmouth for last place, the Lions were all but mathematically eliminated from the league title race. Seven games remained on the schedule, and other than pride, they had nothing left to play for."

And ...

"In a sense, they had nothing left to play for – no conference tournament, no postseason."

I can't find the page, but Orton also references the difficulties coaches can have getting their teams "up" to play in the second half of the season when they've been eliminated from the "14-Game Tournament." I've had coaches tell me the same thing over the years.

Could there be a better way? A way that protects the Ivy League champion while at the same time giving teams something to play for after they've lost three or four early games? I think so.

I've sketched this out before, but here's a postseason tournament format that I believe would do just that.

It would be a six-team tournament. That's right. Two teams would sit out the Ivy League Dance. That would give new incentive to teams near the bottom of the standings as they battle to be the "last team in."

The top two teams would receive both opening-round byes and home court in the next round, thereby rewarding their regular season showing.

In the opening round, the No. 3 team in the standings would host No. 6, and the No. 4 team would host the No. 5. With that, every single spot in the standings would suddenly have meaning instead of just one. Supporters of the "14-Game Tournament" say the status quo makes every game important. That's true only for the teams at the top of the standings. This format really does make every game important.

In the second round, the No. 1 team would host the lowest-seeded survivor from the opening-round games. In that way the No. 1 team would be doubly-rewarded for winning the regular-season title.

The No. 2 team would host the other winner.

The two teams that win those games would then play for the championship, again on the home court of the highest remaining seed.

Here's how this year's tournament might have set up this winter. Columbia, Brown and Penn all tied for fifth at 5-9, but Columbia would earn the No. 5 seed by virtue of sweeping the other two. Because they split their season series, Brown would edge Penn for the No. 6 seed as "last in" by virtue of a better record in the second half of the season, 3-4 vs. 2-5. (That's an arbitrary tiebreaker, but one that would make that second half even more interesting. I'll leave it to the Ivies to work up the real tiebreakers. ;-)

Given those seedings in this year's tournament ...
• Cornell (13-1) and Princeton (11-3) get byes.
• Harvard (10-4) wins at home against Brown (5-9).
• Yale (6-8) wins at home against Columbia (5-9).

Which means ...
• Cornell goes on to host Yale, and comes away with a win.
• Princeton hosts Harvard and wins.

And that sets up the Championship Game ...
• Cornell plays host to Princeton and I'm not going to tell you how that one turns out because you should have seen it but never got the chance.

Wouldn't it have been fun to find out by somehow finagling a ticket to sold-out Newman Arena (you'd probably have to find a scalper) or by watching the ESPN broadcast along with the rest of the nation?

Wouldn't it have been fun to see one team storm the court surrounded by its fans, with everyone jumping up and down the way it happens everywhere else in the country?

One of the Ivy League message boards has been having a debate about the merits of an Ivy League tournament and the anti-tourney faction has taken to posting attendance numbers at some of the postseason tournament games and remarking about the starting time/audience for the Lehigh-Lafayette championship game on ESPN2. Too bad they aren't willing to give it a chance.

I've been to a tournament championship game at Vermont and it was one of the most exciting sports events I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot of them including the NCAA Division I national football championship, one US Open won by Jack Nicklaus and another that went to an 18-hole playoff, a Masters won by Tiger Woods, a Yankee-Red Sox playoff game, and NCAA Tournament games won by Vermont (over Syracuse) and Princeton (over UNLV). Vermont's America East championship game was as much fun as any of them.

I watched the Lehigh-Lafayette Patriot League championship Friday afternoon and it was absolutely electric. You could feel the excitement of yesterday's Vermont-Boston University game in Burlington right through your TV set.

It's too bad the chance to even dream of playing in a game like that is lost to so many Ivy League players so early in a long season. A tournament giving the 1-2 teams a bye and the chance to host as long as they are the highest remaining seed would give the regular season meaning and I'm sorry, but if a tournament is formatted that way and the No. 1 seed can't win playing at home, well, it doesn't deserve to go the the tournament.

Who knows? It might just be that playing must-win tournament games instead of sitting on their hands for the final week of the season might just be good for the Ivy League champions, who haven't exactly had a stellar record in the NCAA Tournament in the past several decades. It would also have put Cornell in front of the nation in the final week of the season and given the "committee" reason to understand the Big Red deserved something better than a 12-seed.

It's worth trying at least. Give it a four-year run and if you don't like it, go back. Why is it OK for ice hockey in the winter but not for basketball?

PS: While the Ivies were sitting in front of their TVs Sunday morning, UVM's Marqus Blakely had the No. 1 highlight in the SportsCenter Top 10: a slam-dunk in the American East Tournament championship win over Boston University.

Now I'll get off my soapbox ...

Today's local paper has a column by the sports editor suggesting that Dartmouth would be well-advised to delay the hiring of a new men's basketball coach until a decision is made about a permanent athletic director so that person would have input on the hiring of someone he/she will have to work with for the next four or five years. As is so often the case, the paper did not put the story up on the web.

Speaking of basketball coaches, former longtime Dartmouth assistant Mike Maker has guided his second Williams College men's basketball team to a spot in the Division III Final Four. The Ephs improved to 29-1 with a 71-57 win over Brandeis, their 20th win in a row. They will now play Guilford in the national semifinals.

Poised on the other side of the bracket is Randolph Macon, the only team to beat Williams this year, 79-74, in the championship of the Randolph-Macon Christmas Classic on Dec. 30. The Division III bracket looks like this.

From a release about Dartmouth's finish at the 2010 NCAA Ski Championships at Steamboat Springs, Colo. (link unavailable:

Dartmouth junior Rosie Brennan recorded her second top-five finish, earning her first-team All America status, as Dartmouth moved up one place to fifth in the final team standings at the 2010 NCAA Men's and Women's Skiing Championships Saturday.

Final team scores:

1. University of Denver 785.5
2. University of Colorado 714
3. University of New Mexico 677
4. University of Utah 595
5. Dartmouth College 523
6. University of Vermont 516.5
7. University of Alaska-Anchorage 506
8. Montana State University 218.0
8. University of New Hampshire 303
10. Middlebury College 270.5
11. University of Nevada 258
12. Williams College 176
13. Colby College 172.5
14. Northern Michigan University 166
15. University of Alaska-Fairbanks 118
16. Bates College 98
17. University of Wisconsin-Green Bay 88
18. St Lawrence University 75
19. Michigan Tech University 30
20. Wellesley College 25
21. St Michaels College 19.0
22. Gustavus Adolphus College 7

And finally, that certain Hanover High senior left this morning for a week in Houston working on a Habitat for Humanity project as part of the school's "March Intensive." All high schoolers spend one week doing some kind of project or studying one particular subject. The certain sophomore lucked into a good one. He'll be watching Ken Burns' Baseball movie and then going to Cooperstown, N.Y., with a group to learn more about the history of the game at the Hall of Fame.