Ivy ADs discuss possible tourney

Of the 31 automatic bids given to the NCAA men's basketball tournament, 30 are determined by postseason conference tournaments. Since the Ivy League is the only Division I conference that gives its bid to the regular season champion, the issue of a possible postseason tournament was raised last Thursday during a meeting of athletic directors from each school in New York.

No decision was made during the meeting, but the issue is still hotly contested among the different schools.

"[The meeting] just came about because the coaches had been talking amongst themselves about the issue, and because of that the athletic directors decided to have discussions," head coach Joe Scott '87 said.

Each of the past 18, and 38 of the past 40, Ivy automatic bids have been awarded to either Penn or Princeton. A postseason tournament would provide a better chance for the league's other six schools to win a bid. While the current system rewards the most consistent team, a tournament would allow for a streaking — or even lucky — team to steal the berth.

As it stands now, should two or more teams tie for the regular season crown, a playoff involving the teams will determine who gets the automatic bid. This has not occurred in the men's league since 2002, though Princeton's women tied for the Ivy crown last year, eventually losing the NCAA bid to Dartmouth.

A possible concession is to give the regular season winner a berth in the National Invitational Tournament, Division I's second — but much less lucrative — postseason tournament. An Ivy League team has not been in the N.I.T. since Brown participated in 2003, while Princeton's 1975 squad remains the only Ancient Eight team to win the tournament.

No team from the Ivy League has ever been awarded an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, despite the recent trend of awarding berths to so-called "mid-major" conferences over power conferences like the ACC and Big 12.

Proponents of an Ivy League tournament, including many Ivy League coaches, say that a tournament would provide more incentive for teams to work hard for the entire season. Penn clinched last year's berth with two games remaining in the regular season, so the only postseason implications of Princeton's dramatic season-ending, overtime win against the Quakers involved Penn's NCAA tournament seed.

Even last season's third and fourth place teams — Cornell and Yale — finished the regular season four and five games behind Penn, respectively. Each team's tournament hopes were dashed well before the season's final weekend.

Scott, however, perceives things differently. The regular season crown, as he sees it, does reward consistent hard work throughout the season. But even Scott — at the helm of one of the two institutions that have benefited the most from the current system — is not unflinchingly against a tournament.

"I might be for a tournament if it was done the right way, if it was formatted to reward the teams that played the best in the regular season," Scott said. "We go too hard and too long, and it seems kind of ridiculous to have all that hard work come down to three days [of a tournament]."

"So it's a matter of how it's going to happen and where it's going to happen and what we're going to do to make sure to recognize the regular season."

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While Ivy League coaches — notably Cornell's Steve Donahue and Columbia's Joe Jones, who were quoted in a New York Times article and whose teams are picked to finish third and fifth, respectively, behind Penn and Princeton — are the ones pushing for the tournament, Scott tried to view the issue from his players' point of view.

"These kids work really hard to play all these games," he said. "So, am I for it or against it? Well, the regular season is what [you spend] your time doing. But it's one of those issues where it's easy to say, 'Hey, you should do something,' but there's a lot that goes into it."

With supporters on both sides of the issue at Thursday's meeting, no change was made in the current system. But given that the Ivy League is the lone exception among Division I conferences, the contentious issue isn't likely to fade away any time soon.