This past weekend was a time of clarity for those who follow Ivy League men's basketball from a distance, and a precursor to possible headaches for those directly involved in the league. Harvard and Columbia both were mathematically eliminated as a result of the weekend, but the possibility of a four-team tie, which would result in a three-game playoff sequence, stayed alive.
What makes it all so fun is that the teams play only each other for the duration of the year. Let's look at how each team remaining stacks up.
Penn
The Quakers are tied for the league lead as it now stands, at 8-3. After surviving a scare from the Big Green, Penn hosted the Crimson at the Palestra.
Lamar Plummer, playing his last game at home, tied his career-high with 23 points, and Geoff Owens, also a senior, put up 13 points and 10 rebounds as Penn routed Harvard 70-47.
Penn opened the game with a 23-5 run, and cruised to a halftime lead of 28-16. The second half saw much of the same, with Penn dominating the paint, and Plummer killing Harvard from outside, once again tying a career-high with seven three-pointers on the game.
The Crimson never got closer than 13, and the Quakers hit 8-12 from the charity strip down the stretch to hand the Crimson their fifth straight defeat.
The Quakers travel to Brown tomorrow, Yale on Saturday and Princeton on March 6. Though many Penn fans are already looking ahead to the rematch with Princeton, coach Fran Dunphy and crew must worry about the hottest team in the Ivy League, Brown, first.
Princeton
Princeton also completed a sweep last weekend, adding their own Harvard bashing to a victory over Dartmouth. Princeton chimed in a 62-48 victory over the Crimson in improving to 8-3 in league and staying in a tie with Penn for the league lead.
The Harvard game saw a tight first half with more scoring than Tiger fans are used to. The score was knotted at 35 until Konrad Wysocki buried an off-balance bank shot in the paint to give Princeton a two-point edge at the half.
The defense would never relinquish the lead. An 18-3 run early in the half, in which Harvard shot 1-14, killed the Crimson and a total of 19 turnovers, the majority in the second half sealed the deal for the Tigers.
Princeton faces the exact same schedule as Penn, with the notable difference of their head-to-head game being at home. The Tigers defense needs to stay in peak form this weekend to contain Earl Hunt of Brown and Chris Leanza of Yale or the Tigers will have to spend March staring at a bleak New Jersey landscape instead of an NCAA Tournament Gymnasium.
Yale
The Bulldogs, the new kids on the block in the league's upper echelon, hoped to stay in a tie for first place in the Ancient Eight, but received a harsh blow from their neighbors, the Lions of Columbia.
Columbia's Craig Austin torched the Eli's for 31 points for the second time this season, and the Light Blue rode their star to a 62-59 victory. Yale led as late as 3:18, when an Austin lay-up put Columbia up for good.
The Bulldogs came back the next evening to ruin senior night for Cornell, and keep themselves in the race for a March Madness berth. Led by 27 points from shooting guard Ime Archibong, Yale dealt the Big Red a 74-61 defeat to improve to 7-4 in the league.
Yale hosts Princeton and Penn this weekend and then travels to Brown on March 7, in a game that likely will eliminate a team from the title hunt. If Leanza, the team's leading scorer, can get untracked, the Eli's will be tough to beat over the next week and a half.
Brown
The Bears brought themselves front and center into the picture with a weekend sweep in New York.
Cornell led Brown the entire game in Ithaca, until Hunt ran off a 9-3 run, giving him 23 on the game, which but Brown up to stay with 3:46 to play. They held off the Big Red down the stretch and came away with a 67-65 victory.
Columbia looked to have the answer for Hunt and the Bears and battled Brown to the wire, when Hunt got free and buried a 12-foot jumper with .5 second to play to give Brown another 67-65 victory. Brown's amazing free-throw shooting, 21-25 in the second half, doomed the Lions.
Brown has now won six consecutive games, and Hunt is as hot as any player in the league, save Austin. In addition, Brown plays out its schedule at home, where they have lost only once this year, on Dec. 30 to Holy Cross, who is likely bound for the Big Dance.
