Princeton Should Win Ivy Basketball Crown

It has become a notorious commonplace to say that in Ivy League sports "anything can happen," but the cliche has rarely been more strikingly illustrated than by this season's scintillating Ivy basketball race.

With the season half over, no less than five teams are in contention for Ivy laurels. Surprising Cornell leads the league with a 5-2 mark; Penn and Princeton are tied for second with 5-3 records, while Yale and Harvard are 4-3.

Princeton should win the championship. In Bill Bradley the Tigers have one of the greatest Ivy League basketball players in history. Averaging 26.6 points per game in league competition, Bradley has become a near legend in his sophomore year. Although the amazing number 42 has garnered all the publicity, the Tigers have two other standouts. Art Hyland is the sixth leading scorer in the league; sophomore Chuck Berling, who joined the squad this month after a semester's absence, scored 17 points when the Bengals jolted Penn two weeks ago.

Princeton has lost three league games so far, but all were by narrow margins--to Penn by three points, to Yale by one, and to Cornell by six. But the Tigers have now passed the tough part of their schedule. They have six games remaining, two with Harvard, two with Dartmouth, one each with Columbia and Cornell.

The Big Red is currently the hottest quintet in the East. With consistently fantastic performances by Jerry Szachara and Jerry Krumbein, Cornell derailed Penn and Princeton two weeks ago and drubbed Dartmouth and the Crimson last weekend. The Big Red would win the title easily if they could sustain this they can. Cornell must still play all the leading title contenders, and five of their last seven are on the road; still, the Big Red should win a photo finish for second place.

Yale and Penn are both potent title threats. The Elis may well stage a late season uprising. Despite the loss of blistering pace, but it is doubtful that their star forward Rick Kaminsky because of a broken wrist, the Blue held their own in Ivy competition with diminutive Dennis Lynch pacing the attack. Kaminsky is back now; last weekend he scored 28 against Penn.

The Quakers may have suffered traumatic effects from their one-point loss to lowly Brown last weekend, but with a fairly favorable schedule and the high-scoring twosome of John Wideman and Sid Amira, the pre-season Ivy favorites still have a chance.

Harvard, unfortunately, is the one team among the top five which can almost definitely be counted out. The Crimson has turned in a remarkable performance this year, and its well-balanced attack and tenacious zone defense have made the quintet one of the biggest surprises of the Ivy season. But while the squad may play the role of the spoiler this year, it lacks a real scoring punch and is too erratic to have a significant chance for the championship. Harvard has feasted on the dregs of the Ivy League in compiling a 4-3 record, and closes its season against some rugged competition: two games each against Yale, Princeton, and Penn.