Men's Basketball

As the men’s basketball team opens its second round of league play, the Ivy crown and an automatic bid to the Big Dance in March are within reach. The Tigers (12-9 overall, 5-2 Ivy League) are keeping their focus, however, on this weekend’s games, even with their rematch against first-place Harvard looming in the near future. The Tigers’ concentration is on a Columbia team that played them tight until the end in their first matchup and a Cornell squad breathing down their necks for second place in the league.

Not surprisingly, the Ivy League’s top-ranked team also happens to be its highest-scoring. Harvard leads the conference with 70.3 points per game, well ahead of runner-up Princeton’s 66.5. The Crimson is shooting 48.8 percent from the field and 41 percent from the three-point line — two more league bests.

The scariest thing about this year’s Crimson squad, however, is its defense. The Crimson keeps opposing teams away from the basket by racking up 4.7 blocks (6.1 in conference games) and 7.55 steals per game, both of which are — you guessed it — more league-leading numbers.

The Ivy League standings look like they did last week, but some of last weekend’s games may have been crucial in determining where teams end up. Below The Daily Princetonian fills you in on the race for an Ivy championship that may come down to a photo finish:

For the second straight week, men’s basketball (12-9 overall, 5-2 Ivy) split a pair of Ivy League contests with a convincing Friday victory and a frustrating Saturday loss. The Tigers kicked off their two-day, 705-mile road trip with a 73-55 clobbering of last-place Dartmouth (6-16, 2-6) before falling to first-place Harvard (15-7, 7-2) 69-57 less than 24 hours later. The up-and-down weekend leaves the Tigers wedged between Harvard and Cornell (13-12, 5-3) for second place in the Ivy League.

The men’s basketball team will once again make its pivotal upper New England road trip this weekend, taking on Dartmouth on Friday before rolling into Lavietes Pavilion to match up against Harvard on Saturday night in a nationally televised contest on NBC Sports Network. Princeton (11-8 overall, 4-1 Ivy League), picked to win the conference in the preseason, can put itself in the driver’s seat for the rest of the Ivy League season if it can escape from Cambridge with one in the victory column. Even though the Tigers fell to Yale 69-65 last weekend, ending their 21-game home Ivy League winning streak, the Crimson similarly stumbled against Columbia, losing 78-63 to the Lions in New York.