All four underdogs won on Friday night, then as if that weren’t enough, Saturday brought another pair of upsets. There was also drama, with the two games in Manhattan decided at the buzzer and Princeton and Cornell playing two overtimes on Friday. When the smoke cleared, Penn was still atop the standing with a two-game lead on its closest competition, but pretty much everything else had changed.
Penn no longer undefeated in Ivy play
The Quakers’ offensive befuddlement against a 2-3 zone (14 assists, 15 turnovers) and poor execution down the stretch (no points in the last 4:42) resulted in a shocking end to their run at 14-0. But aside from an imperfect league mark, the loss at Columbia probably only made it much tougher for Penn to get a 13 seed — which was going to require some help anyway. Saturday’s game at Cornell was looking like a repeat of the previous night, but this time Penn was able to take over in crunch time and pull away for an 11-point win. Still, Fran Dunphy is going to need to work extensively with his team on its zone offense, because you can bet the Quakers will be seeing a lot of it after this weekend.
Columbia ends a five-game losing streak in style
It’s been a tough season for Lions fans after seeing their team go south again after another fast start, but this weekend gave the Levien faithful something to feel good about. Columbia rallied from a double-digit second half deficit on Friday and outplayed the more experienced Quakers down the stretch for the stunning upset. But after pulling off possibly the upset of the year in college basketball, the Lions didn’t get complacent. Columbia came out the next night, led almost all the way against Princeton, and did it again. This one wasn’t quite as shocking — and barely registered as an upset, given the fact Columbia was an early favorite before the line shifted to Princeton by one. Now optimism is back in Morningside Heights, though it would be a wise move to see how the young Lions fare this next weekend against Brown and Yale before dramatically adjusting expectations like some have done.
Princeton’s luck runs out
The Tigers led a charmed life on their first swing through the league, beating Columbia in double-overtime after Dalen Cuff’s infamous timeout call, rallying in the final minute to win on a shot in the final second at Harvard, beating Dartmouth at the buzzer. But that was nothing compared to what happened on Friday, when Princeton rallied from a nine-point deficit with less than three minutes left, forced a pair of overtimes on miraculous shots by Scott Greenman, and eventually won after 50 minutes of basketball. The Tigers’ record stood at 6-2, but with some slightly different breaks, it could have very easily been 2-6. The trend of Princeton pulling out close games ended the next night in the city, when Noah Savage’s jumper wouldn’t go down.
Cornell out of the hunt
Things looked great for the Big Red at about 9:00 pm on Friday. Columbia had stunned Penn and the Big Red appeared to be on its way to beating Princeton. This would have moved the Big Red into sole possession of second place, just two games behind Penn with the Quakers coming to Newman Arena the next night. Instead, Cornell lost in hearbreaking fashion for the second time this season at home, then fell apart late against Penn to eliminate any chance of contending for the Ivy title this year.
Yale wins on the road
The Bulldogs won away from home for the first time in league play this season, breaking an eight-game Ivy road losing streak with Saturday’s win at Harvard. The bad news is that it almost certainly came too late for Yale, who had already dropped games at Brown and Dartmouth that the Bulldogs definitely should have won. After the game, James Jones refused to admit there was anything to the losing streak — citing a variety of reasons for the individual losses — but he did at least acknowledge the streak had been a proverbial monkey on his team’s back.
