Get schooled.
Wednesday was yet another day with no help for Cornell, and one of its RPI allies took a bad loss and won’t be in the NCAA Tournament. We’re quickly approaching the situation where only a miracle conference tournament run by a darkhorse can bump up the Big Red.
Much like the past two seasons, the Ivy League representative is not getting any seeding help in the form of conference tournament upsets. The bad news is that the number of potential helpful upsets is dwindling rapidly, which means Cornell is closing in on a natural 14 seed — regardless of how its resume compares to that of Siena.
Most bracket predictions have Cornell as a 14 seed, and looking at the data, that makes sense. A lack of quality wins and some back losses outside the league will result in the Big Red ending up a few spots lower on the s-curve than would be expected with an RPI ranking in the high 60s. The early conference tournaments haven’t provided anything in the way of a boost, but there’s still time for that to change.
The potential Game of the Year looms tomorrow night in Ithaca, but both teams have challenging games to get through first tonight before they can turn their attention to Saturday. Meanwhile, both games in snowy New England are scheduled to go on as planned, as the picture at the bottom of the league should come into better focus.
The games were much closer than last weekend’s, but the results stayed the same, with the first division taking all four from the second division last night. What appeared to be extreme home court advantage in Ivy play turned out to be more of a scheduling quirk that had the better teams playing at home early on. The four road teams will try for a rare winless home weekend for the Ivy League tonight, and all four visitors are favored.