done

contrary to reporting in the Columbia Spectator, it wasn’t until penn’s jackson donahue drilled an nba distance trey to seal the quakers win over harvard on saturday night that the columbia lions men’s basketball season ended.  columbia’s valiant rear guard effort  in new haven was irrelevant.  only a penn loss could have altered their fate. unfortunately, though unsurprisingly, given how well they had played for the last month, pennsylvania did what they had to do and in defeating the cantabs grabbed the fourth and final place in the inaugural ivy league men’s basketball tournament.  whatever the results on the last weekend of regular season play, the lions were not league tourney worthy.  they had been a disastrous 1 – 7 for the last month of the campaign.  the only victory – an exhilarating win over the quakers – was bracketed by their two worst ivy losses of the season – a nineteen point fail against princeton at levien and a twenty point disaster versus brown in providence.  the saturday before the princeton loss, they had managed to squander a four point overtime lead at dartmouth and fall by a point at the buzzer.  and, truth be told, the writing was probably boldly on the wall back in mid january when they fell at levien to cornell – a home court loss  to almost certainly the league’s weakest team that would haunt them for the rest of the ivy campaign.

as the lions spiraled to earth and a 5 – 9 ivy finish, the quakers rose from an 0 – 6 start to post a 6 – 8 league record.  their 6 – 2 sprint over the last four weeks of the season included victories over both harvard and yale (whom they dominated in new haven).  steve donahue’s crew is very hot right now, scoring both inside and out.  they feature some very confident frosh – the aforementioned jackson (no relation to coach) donahue and a. j. brodeur are the most productive of their class – and a talented senior leader in matt howard who can drop 20 points and grab 10 rebounds from an inattentive opponent.  they have the unenviable task of taking on undefeated (in league) princeton on saturday afternoon.  they have already lost twice to the tigers, by double digits both times.  allgame expects they will be somewhere around ten point dogs in the ivy playoff’s first round.  though princeton will prevail,take the points, say we.  penn will be eager spoilers at tip off.

we take second seed harvard in the other semi-final versus a yale team clearly running on fumes.  they have made it this far largely on the outstanding work of (allgame’s) ivy league rookie of the year miye ohni and the usual relentless man to man work of coach james jones’s teams.  two years ago these teams met at the palestra in a one game playoff for the league champeenship and wesley saunders led the cantabs to the ncaa tourney berth.  tommy amaker’s current ensemble should have enough to move on to the tourney final against the princetons, if there is a god of ivy  league hoops supervising this monstrosity.  the prospect of sub .500 penn squad upsetting the tigers and dropping the cantabs for the second time in a week and thereby going on to the big dance is too disgusting to contemplate.  to reward a team with so rich a prize for a single month of terrific play over a long season is the greatest single example of grade inflation this writer can imagine.  a simple one game play in for the second and third place teams before meeting the rightfully gifted with a bye first placers has been suggested as a much fairer format if the ancient eight insists on bathing with the hoi polloi in the cesspool of league post season tourneys.  an change, other than an expansion of the tourney to all eight teams in the league, seems very unlikely.  our god is mammon.

forgive the gloomy gus-ism and please enjoy any and all college hoops you may view from now until the end of the season.  we are pulling for arkansas, california and whatever ivy league team represents the league.

peace out and d up,

paulie b