AROUND THE IVIES: Men's Basketball Heads Into Biggest Weekend of Season

Oh God, it’s happening again.

If you’re reading this, you know what occurred last weekend. For the third time in two years, Harvard suffered a gut-wrenching one-point loss to an Ivy rival that put its ability to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1946 in jeopardy.

What had been a coronation turned into a collapse, as the Crimson blew a double-digit second-half lead at home to Penn while Zack Rosen went Super Greg Jennings and willed the Quakers to victory in the biggest game of his career.

Normally, in this section, I’d delve into a deeper recap of last weekend’s festivities, but I’d rather not think about them because quite honestly, I have fonder memories of my bris.

And besides, my colleagues, E. Benjamin Samuels and Alexander Koenig, have already written outstanding columns this week on the heart-wrenching experience of being a Harvard basketball fan over the past two seasons. The Crimson is now left to hope that “The Charge” does not become 2012's version of “The Shot.”

So let’s just jump into the picks and not think about the fact that if Harvard loses the Ivy title, the Red Sox's 2011 season will no longer be Boston’s biggest sports disaster of the year. Because, as Ricky Bobby would say, “If you’re not first, you’re last.”

HARVARD (24-4, 10-2 Ivy) AT COLUMBIA (14-14, 3-9)

Winning on the road in the Ivy League is always tough, and the Columbia-Cornell road trip is especially difficult to sweep.

But that is what Harvard must do this weekend, starting by knocking off the Lions, whom they only beat by five a month ago and who have played Penn, Princeton, and Yale within five points at Levien.

If the Crimson can contain Brian Barbour again—and Brandyn Curry, who held him to 4-of-13 shooting in the squad’s last meeting, is the team’s best chance to do so—it should, on paper, be able to win this. But the Lions are dangerous (just ask Simba’s dad), and Harvard needs to come out strong.

Pick: Harvard 66, Columbia 61

BROWN (8-21, 2-10) AT PENN (17-11, 9-2)

I need to stop forgetting how much power I have with these columns.

Two weeks ago, after singlehandedly inspiring Dartmouth to a win over Brown, I probably should not have challenged Zack Rosen to have a Michael Jordan-esque weekend with his collegiate legacy on the line.

Because that’s exactly what he did, scoring the last 16 (SIXTEEN!) Penn points against Dartmouth Friday, then the last nine against the Crimson Saturday. It’s only fair if I take full credit for those events, so...my bad. Like Ron Burgandy in the bear cave, I immediately regretted that decision.

Brown, meanwhile, staved off what would have been an embarrassing last-place tie with the Big Green with a Saturday win over Columbia. After scoring 100 in the season’s penultimate Saturday last season, Brown strangely went off again in the third-to-last game of this year, dropping 94 on the Lions.

Brown shot a ridiculous 14-of-22 from three, motivated by the advice that’s been given to every runner towards the end of the pack, every student before a test he or she didn’t study for, and every American World Cup team for the past half-century: “No matter how bad this turns out, whatever you do, just don’t let yourself be as bad as Dartmouth.”

Pick: Penn 74, Brown 57

YALE (19-7, 9-3) AT PRINCETON (16-11, 7-4)

The Ivy League may be as deep as it’s ever been, with four squads in the Top 100 of the RPI, including these two.

Both have something to play for in this one and can keep their tournament dreams alive—provided Harvard loses this weekend—by winning out.

If there’s one team with the size to stop Greg Mangano and the Bulldogs, it’s Princeton, which has won five of its last six and—after topping the Crimson in Jadwin—played Harvard to the wire in Episode II: Attack of the Clones Friday night.

Behind its home crowd, I think the Tigers take this in a tight one.

Pick: Princeton 61, Yale 60

DARTMOUTH (5-23, 1-11) AT CORNELL (11-15, 6-6)

Last weekend, the Big Green had the chance to stun Penn at home, nearly tying the game with 12 seconds to go on a Jvonte Brooks and-one layup. But Brooks missed the ensuing free throw, Rosen hit two from the charity stripe (they call it that for a reason, Jvonte!), and that was that. Classic Dartmouth.

The only thing remotely interesting about this game is that if the Big Green’s Gabas Maldunas (9.0 PPG, 7.3 RPG, 1.3 BPG) goes off, he could possibly overtake Cornell’s Shonn Miller (9.3 PPG, 6.3 RPG, 1.8 BPG) for the league’s Rookie of the Year.

If basketball doesn’t work out for those two, I suggest they team up and star in a buddy cop movie called “Gabotage.” They’d be the best Lithuanian-Ohioan BFF combo since Big Z and LeBron.

Pick: Cornell 68, Dartmouth 57

HARVARD AT CORNELL

Would there be anything—and I mean ANYTHING—in the world that would make the Cornell Basketball Blog happier than the Big Red ending the Crimson season by winning this one? Save for the Knicks signing Jeff Foote and then trading Jeremy Lin to Morgan Stanley for Ryan Wittman, I don’t think so.

This game will be tough; traveling to Ithaca for Saturday contests always is. Add in the fact that it’s the Senior Night of Chris Wroblewski and Andrew Ferry (who, after going to the Sweet 16 as sophomores, won’t want to end their careers with a loss), the fact that the game is on ESPN3 (Harvard is 2-7 over the past two years on ESPN affiliates), and the fact that the Big Red has topped Yale and Princeton at home, and I am sufficiently terrified.

Because quite honestly, the Crimson looks lost offensively right now. This just doesn’t feel like the same Harvard squad which you knew last season would reliably hit its threes at home and which would come back against an inferior team no matter how much it was down by. And it isn't.

The defense has kept the ship afloat all year, but—despite the fact that it brought everyone back from 2011’s team and added to them a talented group of freshmen—the offense has struggled to find any sort of flow all season long. Last year, the Crimson scored at least 68 points in 11 of its 14 Ivy games. In 2012, it has hit that mark just three times, with a high of just 71.

Nobody has emerged that the team can rely on to score in a tight game down the stretch. That could not have been more evident this weekend, when Rosen took over for the Quakers while the Crimson was left with last year’s Player of the Year—Keith Wright—sitting on the bench and a freshman, Corbin Miller, taking the biggest shot of the season.

It has gotten to the point where, during the timeout before Casey’s charge Saturday, I turned to my co-beat writer, Martin Kessler, and asked what he would call. Neither of us had an answer. Instead, we both had a sinking feeling that “Oh crap, now they have to score.”

If the Crimson is going to win this weekend, somebody needs to step up and knock down shots. If Laurent Rivard, Oliver McNally, and Corbin Miller combine to go 2-for-9 again from deep and Wright doesn’t reestablish himself as a dominant force inside, Harvard could be in trouble.

But this is a veteran squad fully aware of the magnanimity of the situation, and I imagine it will find a way to win. A loss here would be a bigger stomach-punch than that thrown by Nicholas Cage during his future guest appearance on “Gabotage.”

Pick: Harvard 65, Cornell 59

DARTMOUTH AT COLUMBIA

No one cares, moving on.

Pick: Columbia 59, Dartmouth 53

BROWN AT PRINCETON

I’ve made fun of Brown a lot this year, and deservedly so—the Bears have been awful.

That being said, Brown is going to be a major threat to win the league next year. Seriously. With Harvard losing Wright (not to mention Miller and McNally), Yale losing Mangano, Princeton losing Doug Davis, and Penn losing Rosen and Bernardini, things should open up a bit next season.

And the Bears, who have just one senior, will return all five starters and add All-Ivy forward Tucker Halperin—who missed this entire season due to mono—and top recruit Rafael Maia, who was ineligible this year.

In fact, with Maia, Andrew McCarthy, Halperin, Sean McGonagill, and Stephen Albrecht, it will, on paper, have the best starting five in the conference.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Because Brown’s current bridge remains in worse shape than the one over the River Kwai.

Pick: Princeton 71, Brown 60

YALE AT PENN

The Palestra should be rocking like it is 1979 tomorrow night. And I know it seems paradoxical to take the Bulldogs after picking them to lose to Princeton because it means Yale will have nothing (besides an outside chance of an NIT berth) to play for tomorrow night.

But that’s exactly what I’m doing because Yale is the better team. And the old saying is true. Size matters. The Bulldogs are a bad matchup for the Quakers, who might be the smallest squad in the league.

Then there’s the fact that Mangano will certainly have something to play for in this one. If he outplays Rosen, it could give him a leg up on what should be a very close race between those two for Ivy Player of the Year—an award we learned last season Greg really, really wants to win. So don’t expect any brotherly love in Philly from him. And while Penn doesn’t really have anyone who can defend Mangano (who had 23 and 10 in their last meeting), Yale has Reggie Willhite, one of the best defenders in the league, to throw on Rosen.

Finally, there’s the fact that Penn is just not that good—if it wasn’t for Rosen’s heroics, it would have lost to both Columbia and Dartmouth in two of its past three games. The Quakers are really a one-man show—and like that of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, one that needs to come to an end, eventually.

Pick: Yale 67, Penn 65

PENN AT PRINCETON

If all of the above happens, this one—played on Tuesday thanks to Princeton’s weird finals schedule—won’t matter, and Harvard will be dancing for the first time in 66 years. But both these squads would be playing for possible postseason births in the CBI or CIT, and any game between these two is always a good one.

Zack will get to play what could be the last game of his collegiate career in his home state of New Jersey, the land where only three things are impermissible: gay marriage, wearing Abercrombie & Fitch on your reality TV shows, and supermarket recruiting.

For Princeton, Ian Hummer has had a great season and should join Rosen on the All-Ivy First Team, along with, in my opinion, Mangano, Barbour, and Wright.

If Penn loses one this weekend, I would expect the Tigers to be able to top what would certainly be a deflated Quaker team at Jadwin.

Pick: Princeton 64, Penn 62

LAST WEEK: 6-2

SEASON: 33-5

—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.