The weekend is set up strangely. There are two games between upper-division teams, and both take place on Saturday night. With four “interdivisional” games on tap, tonight’s fight card definitely reads like a warm-up for Saturday’s big games. The four upper-division teams are all favored tonight — even Harvard and Yale on the road — so the bottom half has its work cut out for it.

Princeton an underdog?
The Las Vegas Gambling Degenerates have Yale as a one-point favorite tonight. The Tigers have been favored in every Ivy League home game outside of the Penn games since 1998-99, and I can’t imagine any scenario where a non-Penn Ivy would have been favored at Jadwin since 1988-89 except (possibly) the Cornell/Columbia weekend back in 1993. Speaking of 1992-93, Princeton hasn’t lost to Yale at home since that season. Talk of Princeton suddenly having its way on defense seems pie-in-the-sky at this point. The Tigers got torched to the tune of 1.21 points per possession in the loss at Davidson on Sunday and rank in the bottom third of Division I teams in defensive efficiency on the season. It sound so strange to say this about a non-P at Jadwin, but this is a game Yale should win, based on what we’ve seen so far this season out of both teams.

Harvard-Columbia best matchup of the night
These two teams have played some memorable games at Levien in recent years. Columbia won last season’s game in New York when Harvard missed a shot at the buzzer. A couple of years earlier, the 0-14 Lions suffered a narrow loss at home against the Crimson. And the year before that, Patrick Harvey won the game with a wild, desperation three-pointer that bounced high in the air before dropping through. Tonight’s game will be a battle of frontcourt-led teams and the head-to-head between Matt Stehle and John Baumann should be interesting. The Crimson is a 2.5-point favorite.

Cornell looks for some consistency
The Big Red has struggled all season with putting together a stretch of quality performances. Cornell is hosting a Dartmouth team tonight that comes in with just one win (at Army, which doesn’t really count) to show for its last 15 contests. But the Big Green isn’t getting blown out, and this certainly isn’t a game the Big Red can take lightly. The LVGDs agree that Cornell should win, favoring Cornell by 9.5

Last but not least…
Brown’s improved lately, no doubt. But this one is going to come down to whether Penn comes out angry after blowing the Saint Joe’s game or whether its shooting woes continue tonight. Vegas doesn’t seem to think Brown can handle the Quaker defensive pressure, with Penn listed as a 19.5-point favorite.