In what was the best possible result for the Ivy League this year, the league’s two best teams went into a one-game playoff knowing that while both teams could be cinderellas in a week’s time, only one of them would get the chance to prove it. Harvard and Yale did not disappoint, with the Crimson pulling off a huge victory at the Palestra in Philadelphia to clinch the Ivy League’s automatic bid.
I’ve long thought that the Ivy League, whose regular season champion gets the bid into the NCAA tournament, does things the right way, but there’s no doubt that the league loses out on some money (that it doesn’t need) from ESPN for not being a part of Championship Week. The league’s title game got shuttled to ESPN3 as a result. However, the lack of a tournament might make instances like this a little sweeter. Harvard pulled off a last-second win, with Yale missing a shot at the hoop in the waning moments, to claim the league’s automatic bid.
It was a game worthy of these two programs and worthy of March. Harvard led by nine with 6:22 left, but the Bulldogs chipped away and took a brief lead before tying it with 55 seconds left. Then, with just nine seconds remaining in the game, Harvard’s Steve Mondou-Missi, the league’s defensive player of the year, made a jumper to give the Crimson the lead. Yale’s Javier Duren, who finished with 12 points and six rebounds, missed a leaner that would have sent the game into overtime.
A game like this will no doubt prompt claims that the Ivy League needs a tournament. With the last two Ivy League playoffs being fantastic games, who wouldn’t want to see the top two teams in the league go at it every March? The problem, as we’ve seen, is it doesn’t always work out that way. With the league already playing a double round robin, the Ivy League establishes the best team during the regular season, and it would be unfair to the 1 seed to play a tournament, but a playoff between the top two teams could bring eyeballs to the league while ensuring that a very good team makes the tournament.
The scarcity of an Ivy League title game makes it even better when we get one, and I wouldn’t want to lose that to play a tournament somewhere. Harvard and Yale treated us to high level basketball between the league’s top two teams, both of which would be threats to win multiple games in the NCAA tournament. For the fourth year in a row, Harvard gets to try to be that team, but games like the one on Saturday reflect well on the entire league. Maybe, like with most other walks of life, everyone else can learn from the Ivy League.
