The Ivy basketball world turned slightly askew this weekend as last year's doormats Brown, Columbia and Yale all went undefeated in League play.
The Bears and Bulldogs took turns taking bites out of Dartmouth and Harvard, while Columbia ran away with a 17-point win over in-state rival Cornell.
Only one of the two Ivy favorites, Penn and Princeton, played this weekend, and neither faced an Ancient Eight foe. The Quakers won 59-54 Saturday at Lehigh.
Yale 69, Harvard 61
Sophomore guard Onaje Woodbine scored a game-high 28 points to lead the Bulldogs over the Crimson in New Haven on Friday.
Guards Jason Williams and Chris Leanza combined for 25 points and center Neil Yanke pulled down 10 rebounds.
The Crimson suffered some foul trouble as guards Damian Long and Andre Gellert both fouled out of the game.
Center Tim Coleman led Harvard with 18 points, Long had 17 and freshman point guard Elliott Prasse-Freeman had 10 points and six assists.
Columbia 75, Cornell 58
Columbia's superior ball movement allowed the Lions to parlay a two-point halftime lead into a big win in New York City Friday night. Seven Columbia players recorded at least one assist, many of which went to forward Craig Austin, who led the team with 21 points.
Cornell's sophomore point guard Wallace Prather tried valiantly to keep his squad in the game, scoring 25 points -- 12 above his season average -- on eight-of-14 shooting. But the Big Red's biggest star, forward Ray Mercedes, fouled out of the contest after playing only 20 minutes and scoring five points.
Treg Duerksen's five assists led Columbia, and he added 14 points. Center Mike Mcbrien and forward Joe Case scored 11 points apiece.
Columbia moved to 7-7 on the year, 1-0 in the Ivy League. Cornell fell to 6-7 overall, 0-1 Ivy.
Brown 78, Harvard 68
Following its first Ivy win of the year Friday over Dartmouth, Brown tied its League victory total for the entire 1998-99 season Saturday by beating Harvard in Providence to move to 2-0. The Bears' Earl Hunt more than doubled his season scoring average, racking up 39 points, including 17-for-19 free throw shooting.
For the second straight night two Harvard players fouled out of the ballgame.
Long and Winter both left early with five fouls and Coleman and Gellert had to play cautiously with four fouls apiece.
Prasse-Freeman directed Harvard's offense well, playing 37 minutes while scoring eight points, dishing eight assists and pulling down 11 rebounds. Coleman led the Crimson with 18 points and Long had 14.
Neither team shot particularly well, as Harvard hit under 36 percent of its baskets -- and just 25 percent from three-point range -- and Brown shot at a .417 clip. The Bears' nine-of-20 shooting from beyond the arc and Hunt's heroics carried the day.
Brown's overall record is 5-7. Harvard is 2-2 in the Ivy League, 7-9 against all competition.
Penn 59, Lehigh 54
For the Quakers point guard Michael Jordan and center Geoff Owens rescued the team from an abominable shooting performance to pull out a narrow victory. Penn trailed 21-19 in an extraordinarily low-scoring first half, but came back with 40 points in the last period.
Jordan hit five of his 10 shots on the way to 17 points.
Owens led the Quakers both with 19 points and 11 boards.
As a team, however, Penn shot only 37 percent from the floor and only 51.6 percent from the free throw line. Somehow the Engineers managed to worst the Quakers in shooting. They had only one double-digit scorer.
