Ivy Madness begins early as Princeton fails to shoot down its peskiest rival
Welcome to the Ancient Eight, where the madness has gotten off to an early start.
PRINCETON – Yale has emerged as the best team in the Ivy League. Or, at the very least, Yale is in the best position to land the No. 1 seed in the Ivy League tournament, better known as Ivy Madness, next month.
Beyond that, we have a table in chaos, and your guess for how the season will end is as good as mine.
Welcome to the Ancient Eight, where the madness has gotten off to an early start.
Princeton fumbled away a 19-point lead in the second half on Saturday night, allowed Yale to force overtime and appeared to have an empty tank for the extra session. The Bulldogs managed a 93-83 overtime win despite that giant deficit, despite playing in someone else’s gym for the second straight night… and despite being without injured leading scorer Matt Knowling.
The win, coupled with Penn’s romp over Brown, created a three-way tie for first in the league standings. Yale, Princeton and Penn are 8-4.
Some background for the uninitiated: Unlike most conference tournaments that include every team in the league, Ivy Madness, instituted in 2017, only brings in the top four. And lo and behold, we have another tie in fourth place between Cornell and Brown at 6-6. Just behind them, Harvard made a crucial move up to 5-7, tying Dartmouth, which failed to capitalize on a late lead against last-place Columbia on Saturday night.
We could have been staring at three-way ties for first and fourth had Dartmouth won. Still, seven teams are mathematically in the running for Ivy Madness participation with two games to play. It’s a sign of an entertaining season, if not one where a Goliath is clearly better prepared than the others to win an NCAA Tournament game.
Let’s split the rest of this overview into three parts: the Ivy race, Princeton’s loss and Yale’s win.
1. I’m burying the lede here, but Saturday’s results mean Yale, Princeton and Penn have all locked up berths in Ivy Madness.
If you have any remote interest in Ivy League sports and you aren’t following Luke Benz on Twitter yet, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. Benz is a biostatistics PhD student by day and a sports data nerd by night, his account @recspecs730 chronicling Ivy Madness clinching scenarios and other fun trifles for us to pore over. Major hat tip to Benz for the data he breaks down and provides us this time of year.
With 256 possible scenarios for the final two Saturdays of the regular season, Benz has found that Yale, Princeton and Penn make the field of four in all 256 outcomes. (Editor’s note: Minutes after I published this Monday morning, the Ivy League confirmed that this trio had qualified.)
As nice (and technically unofficial) as this is to know, it isn’t groundbreaking stuff. Penn and Yale are the only programs to make all five Ivy Madness fields, counting the March 2020 edition canceled for obvious reasons. Princeton has made four of five. It’s chalky.
Two things will be more interesting to see: which school rounds out the field, and how the seeding will play out. Princeton must be praying for the No. 1 seed because it increases the likelihood of a Penn-Yale game in the 2-3 semifinal and, while the Tigers have been woefully unable to defeat the Bulldogs (more on that below), Penn is capable of knocking them out early.
But Yale has earned control of its own destiny via Saturday night’s improbable comeback. In the current three-way tie for first, the league tiebreaker begins with head-to-head records among the tied teams, meaning Yale’s 3-1 combined record over Princeton and Penn gives it top billing while Princeton and Penn each own a 1-2 record in the group. (All three teams can’t win out, because Penn visits Princeton in their regular-season finale, but all three could wind up 9-5.)
Without boring you to death with other tiebreaker rules, Yale is guaranteed the No. 1 Ivy Madness seed by winning out (vs. Cornell, at Brown), while Princeton or Penn need some wins and some help.
As for the fourth team, Cornell makes the field in 121 of the 256 remaining scenarios, per Benz’s breakdown. Cornell was the No. 4 seed last year and gave Princeton a tough game in the semifinals. If we’re looking for newer blood, Brown makes it in 97 scenarios, which would mark the Bears’ first appearance. Harvard gets in 34 ways and Dartmouth (another potential first-timer) has just four possible paths.
2. Princeton fell to the Bulldogs for the 10th time in 11 meetings and gave away Saturday’s game in especially brutal fashion.
The Tigers led 63-44 with 7:59 remaining. In the final 7:43 of regulation and five minutes of overtime, they gave up 49 points to the Bulldogs, including three 3-pointers to John Poulakidas and 14 points to Bez Mbeng.
The Tigers led 69-66 with 14 seconds to play, but they had Matt Allocco foul Mbeng almost right away, sending the 66% free throw shooter to the line with 11 seconds left. He made them both, and Allocco missed his second on the next trip, allowing Mbeng to drive the length of the court and make the overtime-forcing layup.
“In hindsight, you can look at it, but they made every single free throw,” Mitch Henderson said of the timing of fouling up three. “I think we lost a little bit earlier than that.”
Henderson called the turnover disparity “the story,” with Princeton losing 18 turnovers and Yale committing just five. The Tigers have had turnover troubles all season, ranking seventh in the Ivy League in turnover margin.
That ball control, the inability on defense to contain a hot shooter like Poulakidas or Dartmouth’s Ryan Cornish and the Tigers’ middling free-throw rate of 70.7% are causes for concern in the postseason. Mistakes in those areas, as we saw Saturday, can nullify a red-hot shooting performance and nuke a 19-point lead. The Tigers made 10 of their first 14 3-pointers and, frankly, deserved to win until the final five minutes of regulation.
3. Yale was audibly ecstatic to pull out its seventh win in eight games, as I could hear emanating from the visitors’ locker room in the depths under Jadwin Gym.
This team had a fine nonconference showing before starting the Ivy season a surprising 1-3, with losses to Columbia, Dartmouth and Cornell. Now? Whatever their postseason seed, the defending Ivy champions should be the favorites to hang a banner again.
Poulakidas doesn’t usually go for 30 points, as he did Saturday to will the Bulldogs back into the game, but even when Knowling was healthy the shooting guard led them in scoring a few times. He shoots 40% from the arc and has an underrated supporting cast around him.
Mbeng is a multifaceted point guard who can step up in big moments. When I watched him in two Ivy Madness games last March in Boston, I thought he deserved all-tournament team honors for averaging 10.5 points, 7.5 boards and 2.5 steals. Mbeng doesn’t shoot it that well, but he averages 4.1 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.4 steals to go with 9.6 ppg.
EJ Jarvis (11.0 ppg, 5.2 rebounds) is a tough post player to go up against and August Mahoney (44.8% from three) is yet another weapon for Yale on the outside. Bench players like senior Isaiah Kelly, Jack Molloy and Yassine Gharram seem to have come into their own at this point in the year.
What could stand in Yale’s way come March? A Penn team that can catch fire behind leading scorer Jordan Dingle. Or a version of this Princeton team that says enough is enough and plays 40 minutes of stellar basketball, knowing what it knows now about the tenacity of this Bulldogs squad.
“I could have done a better job of picking guys up and encouraging them as the game went on,” Tosan Evbuomwan said. “We gave up a massive lead. I could have done a better job saying, you know, we still got this, we’re still up.”
“There’s a lot of basketball left to be played,” Henderson said. “We want to be playing when we walk out of here and it’s still light out in March, but this one hurts a lot. It’s not over. It’s not as bad as it will hurt if you don’t get where you want to get in a couple of weeks.”
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Happy Monday, and thanks for reading. Let’s stay in the Ivy League before taking a quick spin around the rest of New Jersey:
The women’s Ivy Madness field is already 100% determined, yet there’s still plenty of intrigue about the order. Columbia (10-2), Princeton (10-2), Penn (8-4) and Harvard (8-4) have been the best teams this season, with Yale (5-7) a distant fifth and mathematically incapable of getting back in the door. The Tigers split the season series with the Lions, and they’re on an 11-game winning streak, but they face a much tougher closing schedule of Harvard and Penn while Columbia gets Brown and Cornell. If they end up tied for first, it will matter which team places third: If Harvard is third, Columbia has a better head-to-head record against the Crimson and the Lions win the tiebreaker. If it’s Penn, it’ll depend on whether Princeton beat Penn in that final game for a season sweep, reversing the roles because Columbia has a loss to the Quakers.
Rider slipped into a tie for second with Siena in the MAAC in excruciating fashion this weekend. The Broncs blew a 13-point lead at home to Canisius and lost by three Friday night, then they forced overtime and double overtime Sunday at Quinnipiac before losing by two. It’ll be a massive weekend for title race and seeding implications this weekend, as Siena visits Rider on Friday and Iona on Sunday. Any of those three teams could make a run in Atlantic City next month. I’m already looking ahead to Rick Pitino and Iona visiting Lawrenceville March 4 for the regular-season finale.
When organizations like ESPN, CBS and The Athletic publish their latest bracketology breakdowns later today, I wonder if Seton Hall will be off the bubble entirely following its third loss in four games. At least the Pirates can still claim three Quadrant 1 wins, whereas a team like North Carolina is a fat 0-8 in Quad 1 games. But now that they’re down to 16-12, Hall’s resume needs urgent help. Friday against Xavier at home is the best opportunity left, because they close the regular season at Providence, where the Friars are 15-0.
Caleb McConnell missed Rutgers’ 58-57 win over Wisconsin on Saturday due to back spasms that apparently cropped up during pregame warm-ups. I would take that as a sign that he will be fine for the long haul and sitting out one game was the right call. “His back just went out on him. He couldn’t walk,” Steve Pikiell said postgame.