The Penn men's basketball team maintained its one-game Ivy lead over Princeton this weekend as both teams easily defeated Harvard and Dartmouth. The two League leviathans will meet each other tonight at Princeton to determine the Ancient Eight leader midway through the season.
Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Yale took turns knocking one another further from first place, with each team winning one of their two Friday-Saturday contests.
Penn 79, Harvard 52
Penn's Michael Jordan scored 20 points on six-of-nine shooting as his team pushed Harvard to its fifth loss in six games on Friday night in Philadelphia.
Three other Quaker starters scored in double figures and the team hit 20 of 22 free throws while outrebounding the Crimson 35-24.
Despite missing its first eight shots, the Quakers jumped out in front early with a 20-8 lead. They led 32-19 at the half and pulled away further in the final period.
In his third game back from an eye injury that was expected to force him to miss the season, Harvard's Dan Clemente could only manage two points in 29 minutes. Clemente had starred last weekend in a loss to Columbia and victory over Cornell.
Damian Long led the Crimson in scoring with 13 points and Tim Coleman had 11.
Harvard's freshman point guard Elliott Prasse-Freeman collected eight assists.
Cornell 65, Yale 57
Cornell's season scoring leader, junior forward Ray Mercedes, broke out of a small slump with 26 points to lead the Big Red to their first Ivy win of the season.
The game was close throughout, as the host Cornell led by a point at halftime, 30-29.
The Big Red's other top scorers on the year, point guard Wallace Prather and center Greg Barratt, had nine and 11 points. Prather added six assists in his 36 minutes, but shot only two of 10.
Onaje Woodbine, Yale's top scorer, plunked down 16 points and pulled in seven rebounds. Center Neil Yanke led the game with 15 boards, and helped the Bulldogs to an 11-rebound advantage.
Columbia 68, Brown 59
Entering the night tied with Brown and Harvard for fourth place in the League, Columbia briefly moved into a tie for third with Yale after its Friday night win.
The Lions led 30-24 at the half, but the Bears quickly recovered to tie the game at 30 early in the second. Then an 11-2 run, spurred by three three-pointers by Treg Duerksen -- who had gone scoreless in the first half -- put Columbia in the lead for good.
Two Lions players, sophomore captain Craig Austin and Joe Case, scored over 20 points, and Columbia outshot Brown 46 percent to 37 percent.
Case also grabbed 10 rebounds. Other than his spurt early in the second half, Duerksen hit only two free throws and finished with 11 points.
For Brown, freshman Alaivaa Nuualiitia was the only double-digit scorer. He had 21 points on nine-of-13 shooting.
The Bears committed 15 turnovers but caused 14 by Columbia.
Brown had great difficutly connecting on its three-point attempts, hitting only five of 14 to the Lions' eight for 19.
Brown 72, Cornell 71
Cornell failed to move out of last place and into a tie with Dartmouth for seventh in this double-overtime thriller at Ithaca on Saturday.
Brown's Alaivaa Nuualiitia once again was a scoring star, dropping 16 points to go with his seven rebounds. Earl Hunt led the Bears with 22 points and 10 boards.
For Cornell, the mercurial Keirian Brown ran hot for much of the night, hitting seven of nine shots to lead the Big Red with 20 points.
Ray Mercedes and Wallace Prather each had 15. However, the two shot a combined eight for 32.
Greg Barratt also endured an horrendous shooting night, making four of 13 shots.
The Cornell home loss dropped the team to 1-7 in the Ivy League. Brown got back to .500 after its Friday loss, and now stands at 4-4.
Yale 65, Columbia 59
The Bulldogs and Lions engaged in a battle of Ivy men's basketball mediocrity and witnessed a spectacular individual performance.
Yale's Chris Leanza, who scored 14 points the night before, went for 33 in New York while playing all 40 minutes of game time.
Leanza, who put home 20 of his game-high total in the second half, tied a team record with six three-pointers.
The Bulldogs also held Columbia's star scorer, Craig Austin, to only three points in 37 minutes. Austin had previously been held in check by Dartmouth last weekend, but had otherwise starred in Ivy contests.
Treg Duerksen and Joe Case led the Lions with 18 and 13 points.
Yale made 50 percent of its shots while Columbia hit 40 percent of theirs.
The game was tied at 52-52 with 5:05 remaining when Leanza was fouled while attempting a three-pointer. He made all three free throws to put the Bulldogs ahead for good.
The finish moved both teams back into a tie for fourth place at 4-4.
Princeton 73, Harvard 55
Coming off its drubbing of Dartmouth on Friday night, the Tigers should have been worried about a letdown. But thanks to star center Chris Young, who was unusually a non-factor against the Big Green, Princeton had nothing to worry about.
Young made his first eight field goals of the game, single-handedly outscoring the Crimson 20-17 in the first half.
On his final basket, which gave him 30 points for the game, Young capped his stellar performance with an alley-oop on a feed from guard Spencer Gloger.
Young was in fact better from the floor than the free throw line. He made 10 of 11 field goals and only six of nine from the charity stripe.
The Tigers started well early and led 29-17 at the half. The second half contained much more scoring, but the victor was never in doubt.
Princeton guard Ahmed El-Nokali scored 13 points in 39 minutes on the floor.
For the Crimson, Dan Clemente played the entire game and scored 11 points while pulling down seven rebounds. Damian Long led the team in scoring with 15 points on six-of-11 shooting.
Harvard fell into sixth place at 3-5 with its second loss of the weekend.
The win put the Tigers at 5-1 in the Ivies, with a chance to tie Penn in a head-to-head match-up tonight.
In a game in the same situation a year ago, Princeton came back from a large deficit to win 50-49 in Philadelphia.
