AROUND THE IVIES: Men's Basketball To Face Brown and Yale

Harvard-Yale is back, and this time Lee Corso is not coming with it.

If you missed last weekend, here’s a quick recap of where the league stands. Harvard swept the Penn/Princeton road trip for the second year in a row to right the ship after a home loss to Dartmouth. It’s been a tough season for the Killer Ps, who have a combined 14-21 record on the season. Consequently, I’ll be rechristening them the Black-Eyed P's from here on out.

Yale extended its league-winning streak to four with solid victories over Cornell and Columbia. On the topic of rebranding, it’s occurred to me that the twin New York teams have never had a deserving nickname. Since they have spotted a collective 40-38 home record over the last two-plus years and a Columbia affiliate has admitted to inflating grades, I’m going to call them the Gentleman’s C’s.

With every other team posting a 1-1 record or worse over the weekend, the two foes are one-two in the standings once again. Harvard took out Yale on its home floor to clinch the title last year, shutting down everyone but junior forward Justin Sears in a game that was 9-0 at the first media timeout and not much closer the rest of the way. This was after Yale snapped Harvard’s 20-game winning streak at Lavietes earlier in the year—prompting the Yale Daily News to declare that the Bulldogs had slayed the “Crimson goliath."

The rivalry is arguably nastiest in print. James Jones told the New York Times in 2008 that “there seems to have been a drastic shift in restrictions and regulations with the Harvard admissions office,” arguing that Yale “could not get involved with many of the kids that they are bringing in.” Eighteen months ago, Jones fired another shot around the league, noting that a team can meet the Athletic Index eligibility standards by recruiting high-AI athletes who may not play and saying, “It is done. Not here at Yale, but it is done.”

On the court, the teams each boast their own Ivy League Player of the Year candidate. For Harvard, it is do-it-all senior and last year’s winner Wesley Saunders—Harvard’s best playmaker and wing defender. Saunders leads the team in points, steals, and three-point shooting accuracy, ranking second in rebounds and assists. Before the season, Crimson coach Tommy Amaker noted that he has a chance to “become one of the best to ever put on this uniform.”

Yale answers with Justin Sears. The junior leads the league in field-goal percentage, ranking fourth in points and rebounds per game and second in blocks per contest. In conference play, he’s putting up scathing averages of 22.3 points and 8.3 rebounds a game. Jones declared before the season started that “in my mind, it’s hard to make an argument that he is not the best player in the league.”

The Elis come in with the little brother chip squarely on their shoulder. While Harvard has made three straight tournaments, Yale hasn’t made March Madness since 1962. Jones has tirelessly built a program that staked its claim as the best team in Connecticut when it beat in-state rival UConn earlier this year. His team mirrors Amaker’s, from the sparkplug point guards (Bulldog junior Jack Montague versus Crimson junior Siyani Chambers) to the cadre of senior big men (Greg Kelley and Matt Townsend for Yale, Jonah Travis and Steve Moundou-Missi for Harvard).

The football teams played a game for the ages in November. The spring-cap shapes up to be as good; though with 10 games to go, a win won’t settle the race—it will write the story for the rest of the year.

PRINCETON AT COLUMBIA

The winner of this game will grab the inside track to joining the Harvard-Yale duo at the top of the Ancient Eight. Each has three games remaining against the duo, with star young players (Princeton’s Steven Cook, Columbia’s Kyle Castlin) that are nightmare matchups for both teams. If you needed any more reason to watch this one, take a hint from the Columbia Spectator. Not only did the staff see it fit to put two writers to co-write the preview for this week’s games, but Thursday’s page also featured a column comparing Columbia’s loss to Yale to the Super Bowl.

I must say, Howard, those boys seem awfully worked up.

Pick: Princeton

PENN AT CORNELL

In what passes for bulletin board material in the Ivy League, Daily Pennsylvanian columnist Steven Tydings noted that this weekend “the Red and Blue have the chance to rebound against two decidedly less talented squads in Cornell and Columbia.” Oof. But let’s remember that the Quakers are being outscored by nearly five points a game this season. They have won consecutive games just twice this year and failed to put up any semblance of a fight Saturday night against Harvard. By contrast, Cornell led Yale midway through the second half and just made tofu out of mealworms. Don’t sleep on these guys.

Pick: Cornell

DARTMOUTH AT YALE

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Hear that? It was the sound of this game going on and nobody paying attention.

Pick: Yale

HARVARD AT BROWN

In its first games since standout sophomore forward Leland King (14.6 PPG, 7.8 RPG) left the team, the Bears dropped a pair of road contests to the Gentleman’s C’s. King’s abrupt leave—for which the always-ambiguous “personal reasons” label has been attached—is the fourth in less than a year for the Bears. Per Ivy Hoops Online, senior guard Zeve Sanderson left the team earlier and current sophomores Aram Martin and Matty Madigan left the program after their freshman campaigns last year. Brown will go only as far out of the cellar as Rafael Maia and Cedric Kuakumensah take them, and the pair doesn’t have enough to turn away a motivated Crimson squad here.

Pick: Harvard

DARTMOUTH AT BROWN

Fact 1: Dartmouth announced a ban on hard alcohol last Thursday.

Fact 2: Dartmouth Athletics went a combined 6-11-1 over the weekend.

Causation? Correlation? I don’t feel comfortable saying. But with Brown recently announcing that it will ban registered events with alcohol in all residential areas—and the loser of this game likely dropping to last in the Ivies—I feel pretty confident that one school is going to be drowning its sorrows in Mike’s Hard after this one.

Pick: Dartmouth

PRINCETON AT CORNELL

With 13 minutes to go last week, Cornell led Yale 37-35 at home. With a win, the Big Red would have forced a three-way tie atop the Ivy League and stood a fair chance this week to surge into first place with a sweep. Of course, Yale dominated the rest of the way, as Armani Cotton finished with 13 rebounds in 28 minutes and the Elis crushed everyone not named Shonn Miller on the glass by a 46-20 margin.

In fact, Miller made just one of his six treys, putting him at 3-for-23 shooting on the year in conference play. After shooting 30 percent in nonconference play, I anticipate Miller having a nice reunion with the Law of Averages against Princeton’s feather-soft defense.

Pick: Cornell

PENN AT COLUMBIA

In the midst of a gut-wrenching loss to Yale, I wondered what the Lions had done to upset the sporting gods over the summer. Since school began, a Columbia basketball team laden with talent has seen top player Alex Rosenberg leave with injury. After competing well throughout nonconference play behind the emergence of Castlin and junior “Chariman Maodo” Lo, the Lions were handled consecutive gut-punch losses by Cornell and Yale. And that’s without mentioning the second consecutive winless football season and the resignation of a coach who allegedly told his players that they were “terrible [expletive] people.”

It’s been a tough season in Morningside Heights. However, playing Penn is usually a good way to turn things around.

Pick: Columbia

HARVARD AT YALE

At this point in the article, dear reader, I wouldn’t dare bore you with more details of Saturday’s gladiatorial class in New Haven.

Instead, I present the Yale Daily News answer to Datamatch: The Valentine’s Day Blindest Date contest. For those of you aiming to venture into Connecticut to pay homage to Cupid, the YDN has courteously assembled a group of 20 eligible dates. The article, sadly filled with even more excessive exclamation points than a YDNSports live tweet, presents a number of interesting candidates. A personal favorite, Bachelorette #7, declares one of her celebrity spirit animals to be “The Taco Bell Dog.” Sign me up.

Pick: Harvard

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com.