Heading into the first real weekend of Ivy play, the race has shaped up exactly as most had expected.
Cornell and Harvard immediately hopped out ahead of the field, though in completely different fashions Saturday night, while Brown, Yale, Columbia and Dartmouth all sit at least one game back. Penn and Princeton will finally kick off their Ivy seasons on Friday night, during the first full Ivy weekend of the year.
MOURNING-SIDE HEIGHTS
How far has Columbia fallen?
Turns out not as far as most Lions fans would expect.
After hanging tough at DePaul to start the season and returning home to knock off Longwood and Bucknell, Columbia partisans thought they were watching a clear upper division Ivy team. The close road losses at Sacred Heart and Stony Brook did nothing to deter people from that perception.
Then the Lions’ current six-of-seven losing streak happened, prompting folks around the league to question what caused this precipitous drop in Columbia’s caliber of play.
Maybe, however, the Lions just weren’t that good to start with.
Looking back, Columbia’s best win of the season was at home against Pomeroy No. 220 Lehigh and its only other top 300 win was at home against No. 280 Bucknell. Meanwhile, those impressive, tight road losses at DePaul and Stony Brook – both around the top 100 at the time – look much less so as the season has carried on, as the two are ranked No. 188 and No. 206 in the Pomeroy Ratings, respectively.
During the 1-6 skid, Columbia’s three-point shooting percentage has fallen over six percentage points, dropping the Lions from a clear first to sixth in the nation. Given Columbia’s abysmal two-point shooting percentage (42.1 percent, 322nd nationally) and its below-average shooting from the line (66.2 percent, 247th nationally), the Lions are pretty much out of ways to score points.
Columbia is 7-1 when posting a 48.0 percent or better EFG shooting mark, meaning that it’s likely less about the Lions inherent talent and more about whether the long ball is dropping. Lately, that just hasn’t been the case, and Columbia has been struggling mightily.
ALL HAIL GRAUPE
There are lots of moving parts in this equation, but adding the interim head coaching tag to Mark Graupe’s title has sparked an eerie renaissance in Hanover.
After getting stomped in Cambridge 76-47 in Graupe’s impromptu coaching debut two weeks prior, the Big Green returned home to stun St. Francis (NY) at the buzzer and then jumped out to leads of 13-2 and 20-10 on Harvard. Ultimately the Crimson flexed its muscles with an 18-2 first half run and a 13-1 second half spurt to eek out the victory, but clearly something has changed for Dartmouth over that past fortnight.
Part of the change has come from the players, as the squad seemed rejuvenated on offense with far more confidence than it played with over the first half of the season. And part of the change has come from the coaching staff, as Graupe successfully game-planned to shut Harvard’s potent offense down. Dartmouth gambled that the poor-shooting Crimson wouldn’t be able to knock down open looks from three, and Harvard couldn’t, going just 2-for-17 from behind the arc.
Harvard guards Christian Webster and Jeremy Lin combined to go 1-of-12 from behind the arc, and while Lin did get his 19 points, it took him 17 shots to do so, a far less efficient output than the 6’3 senior is used to.
The Big Green did get a little help from Harvard, as the Crimson went just 14-for-26 from the line – well over 20 percentage points lower than its season average.
Make no mistake about it though, Dartmouth once again looks primed to make Leede Arena into a nightmare for Ivy opponents.
THE RACE, AS IT STANDS
While Cornell and Harvard are tied atop the Ivy standings, it’s clear through the first two games of the league slate which team is the two-time defending champion.
The Crimson struggled through its worst shooting performance of the season to claim a narrow 62-58 win at Dartmouth, while the Big Red breezed to its second-consecutive 20-plus point victory over Columbia.
The disparity in the results makes Harvard the clear underdog in the race at this point, but luckily the debate can finally gain some hard evidence, as the Crimson travels to Ithaca on Saturday night. With a win, Harvard would leave upstate New York with at least a share of the Ivy lead, but by no means is it guaranteed that the Crimson would be 4-0, as its meeting with Columbia on Friday night could trip Harvard up if it gets caught looking ahead to the Saturday showdown. Cornell could make a huge statement if it can comfortably defend its home court this weekend.
As for the rest of the league, the Yale/Brown likely lowers both teams’ goals from league title to a .500 record in league play. Neither team was considered a real threat to compete, but with a sweep the Bears could have hung around the top of the standings for a couple weeks.
Preseason consensus No. 3 Princeton gets underway next weekend with a tricky trip to New Haven and Providence. If the Tigers want to be taken seriously, they need to find a way to sweep the weekend.
