A disheartening 0-4 night for the league on Saturday wiped out what could have been a decent week in Ivy hoops. Two of the teams expected to struggle this year are looking surprisingly good, while two preseason contenders find themselves with unsightly records after the season’s second weekend.
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| 1. | Harvard (2-2) | 5 | Following the rough start, the Crimson has turned in two consecutive sterling performances against seemingly decent opposition. Harvard’s offense was firing on all cylinders on Friday against Mercer, and Tommy Amaker has his guys playing with a lot of energy at the defensive end. |
| 2. | Yale (1-1) | 1 | The season-opening win over Sacred Heart is looking much less impressive after the Pioneers were blown out this week out by weak Army and Hartford teams. Still, giving UMass a very tough battle at the Mullins Center showed that Yale has the horses and experience to hang with the big boys. |
| 3. | Cornell (1-1) | 2 | There’s no shame in a 13-point loss on the road against a solid Ohio squad, but giving up 59 points after halftime for the second straight game is very worrisome. Even with the much quicker tempo the Big Red has been playing, the defense has allowed 1.15 points per possession in the two games. |
| 4. | Princeton (2-0) | 4 | From the very start, it was clear this Princeton team was going to go only as far this season as its trio of sophomore starters can take it. The very early returns certainly are promising, as Zach Finley has looked much improved and Lincoln Gunn drove the offense in the Tigers’ win over Iona. |
| 5. | Brown (1-2) | 3 | Two straight poor performances have eroded a lot of the optimism from the strong showing in the opener. In addition to losing the battle of the free throw line, the Bears’ defense has been trending downward, culminating in the 1.17 points per possession allowed to Rhode Island this past week. |
| 6. | Columbia (1-3) | 7 | The Lions had been looking progressively better, exerting themselves defensively to grind out a win against Delaware State, then giving Ohio State a tough game. That all changed on Saturday in a big way, thanks to an awful performance at Albany that saw Columbia get dominated in every facet of the game. |
| Dartmouth (1-2) | 6 | It’s tough to gauge how bad of a loss that was against James Madison, given the fact the Dukes had breezed by Siena so easily in their first game. The improved rebounding is an encouraging sign, but Terry Dunn needs much more than 12 points from behind the arc from his outside shooters. | |
| 8. | Penn (0-3) | 8 | Glen Miller tried to lower the expectations for this team early on, but nothing could prepare Penn fans for this. A terrible week got even worse when the Quakers lost by 15 at home against a woeful Howard program that hadn’t won a non-conference road game by a margin that big in 14 years. |
