Get schooled.
Only five regular season contests remain against non-Ivy opponents, and Dartmouth will look to go .500 outside the league with a win tonight. The Ivy League’s record against other conferences sits at 53-55, so the Big Green also can help out the league with a victory.
Princeton’s 0-2 start in Ivy play has inspired a new round of wailing and gnashing of Tiger teeth on Internet fan communities, complete with some calls for Joe Scott’s dismissal. While there’s no denying the program has fallen off under Scott, dropping from Top 100 to Top 200 since his arrival, it’s important to see this past weekend for what it was: a pair of road losses to teams with similar — possibly even superior — talent.
Things get going in a serious way tonight in the Ivy League, with the Ps making the first weekend roadtrip of the league schedule to New York to take on the Cs in four very important games. While that’s going on, Dartmouth and Harvard will finish off the travel partner home-and-home in a televised game in Boston. Here’s what you should know heading into Friday night.
By Sunday evening, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Yale all will have joined Harvard in completing their non-league slates, while the Crimson kicks off the Ivy League season with a visit to Dartmouth on Saturday night. The six contests scheduled for Saturday mark the final time we’ll see that many games played on one day, which is music to the ears of people who produce Gamecenters and, more importantly, their spouses who have their REM cycles interrupted by middle-of-the-night bedtimes.
Looking to kill a few minutes on a Friday afternoon? Divide up the 56 Ivy wins among the eight teams and post your predictions as a comment below. One note of caution: It’s an incredibly difficult task this year, given the strength of the league. You’re almost certain to find yourself shaving wins from your first attempt, in order to make the numbers add up. Consider yourselves forewarned.
We’ll be coming out with our forecast for the Ivy season beginning tomorrow.