AROUND THE IVIES: Upset Potential in Ivy Men's Basketball Matchups

Though our Eli friends haven’t lacked for bad press in the past couple of years, I would like to open the spring term’s first edition of Around The Ivies with the, well, bad press currently coming out of New Haven.

Last Friday night, Yale’s men’s basketball team traveled to Cambridge to take on its sworn enemies in Lavietes Pavilion and left predictably humbled. As Crimson fans reveled in the Bulldogs’ defeat, punctuated by Yale forward Nick Victor’s thunderous failure of a dunk attempt, I wondered what my compatriots at the Yale Daily News had to say about the affair.

Not much of anything, as it turned out. The Yale Daily News produced one article for the basketball team’s two weekend games against Harvard and Dartmouth. The author of the article, Alex Eppler, did a fine job concisely capturing each of Yale’s faceplants over the weekend, but come on, YDN, you couldn’t get the guy a train ticket? Perhaps they’re onto something; eschewing coverage of “popular” sports like football and basketball, they will be better able to focus their pens on trendy, buzz-generating topics like yoga competitions or Ph.D. funding policy.

This brings me to that curiosity of the Ivy League social media world that is @YDNsports, the Yale Daily News sports section’s Twitter account. Its live coverage of Friday night’s rivalry showdown between Harvard and Yale consisted of retweets of the Harvard Athletics, THC Sports, and Ivy Hoops Online Twitter feeds, all occurring in the final five minutes of regulation. I imagine the good people at the YDN were adhering to one of their two cardinal rules of basketball coverage: “we step up when it counts” or “what time is the game?"

But the most thrilling moment of the week in @YDNsports was undoubtedly its performance on Feb. 5, when it officially went rogue. Astutely noting the lack of Tuesday midday Ivy sports activities, the P.R. wizard operating the account deemed it prudent to “live tweet [his or her] field trip to the Yale cogen plant.” For those of you who didn’t receive this month’s issue of Electrical and Thermal Energy Quarterly, a cogeneration, or “cogen,” plant is a power plant where electricity, heat, and steam hang out and save energy, or something. Inexplicably, the phrase “cogen plant” did not begin trending worldwide, despite the broad appeal of such a topic with all of @YDNsports’ 234 Twitter followers. I can assure you that the six current Crimson staff writers that proudly count themselves among the “Lucky 234” were riveted.

HARVARD V. CORNELL

It’s Tommy Amaker’s annual challenge: how to keep his players away from the sensual attractions of the Ithaca nightlife, most of all Kuma Charmers, the premier gentleman’s club in all of the Finger Lakes National Forest metropolitan area. There are even dark rumors of one Harvard team’s boozy late-night trip to the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. Ithaca, baby.

Pick: Harvard

DARTMOUTH V. COLUMBIA

According to Ken Pomeroy’s college basketball rankings, which are based on Pythagorean expectation, Dartmouth is the 286th best team in Division I basketball, the worst in the Ivy League. Yet the Big Green has performed relatively not awful in conference play thus far, playing Harvard tough twice and defeating Yale by nine. I’m giving this one to the Lions, but don’t think I’ve forgotten you, Gabas Maldunas. Your delightful fragility at the free throw line helped preserve the Crimson’s undefeated Ivy record.

Pick: Dartmouth

YALE V. PENN

For me, the most stunning moment of Harvard’s triumph over Yale on Friday was when I glanced at the game program and noticed that the Bulldogs featured a player named Armani Cotton on their roster. I guess it’s most likely that this was an intentional move on the part of his parents, but I choose to believe Mr. and Mrs. Cotton put their son’s christening in the hands of a random word generator and were blessed with a smooth, cosmopolitan-sounding name. Their other children, Minute Fertilizer and Stampede Moustache, were not nearly so fortunate.

Pick: Yale

BROWN V. PRINCETON

The coolest thing by far about Brown’s basketball program is that its associate head coach is TJ Sorrentine, the Vermont graduate best known for sealing the Catamounts’ 2005 NCAA tournament upset of Syracuse with one of the most arrogantly awesome three-point attempts I’ve ever seen, a 30-foot intercontinental missile of a shot with eight seconds left on the shot clock. Sorrentine might have to throw on a jersey and launch a few of those bombs if the Bears are to have any shot in Jadwin Gymnasium.

Pick: Princeton

HARVARD V. COLUMBIA

This has the potential to be the most competitive game of the weekend. The Lions’ three conference losses have come by a combined 13 points, and they battled to a respectable six-point defeat at Princeton last Saturday. The Crimson hasn’t exactly been convincing in their last few games, either. Columbia took Harvard to overtime in New York last year, and on the back end of a long road trip, I foresee some serious upset possibilities.

Pick: Columbia

YALE V. PRINCETON

Early on, it’s looking like a two-horse race for Ivy League Player of the Year between Harvard’s Wes Saunders and the Tigers’ Ian Hummer, who is averaging 15.9 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game, good for second, fifth, and third in the conference, respectively. Hummer is also probably evil, given that he scowls a lot and wears an arm sleeve. I hope both teams lose this game.

Pick: Princeton

BROWN V. PENN

At 4-16, the Quakers have already exceeded their loss total in each of the past two seasons. As members of the nouveau riche class of Ivy men’s basketball, it’s fun for the Crimson faithful to watch old money teams like Penn trade in their Audi for a 1997 two-door Chevrolet Cavalier. Oh, by the way, the passenger-side window doesn’t work, Quaker. And you’re going to lose to Brown.

Pick: Brown

DARTMOUTH V. CORNELL

It’s the first installment of the battle of the Big Colors, and I couldn’t be more indifferent to the result. I know it’s questionable for a fellow chromatically-nicknamed institution to throw stones, but think of the other verdant things Dartmouth bypassed on its way to “Big Green”: dragons, snakes, lizards, all much more vicious than a hue that evokes “springtime” or “envy.” They deserve to lose just for that.

Pick: Cornell

--Staff writer Andrew R. Mooney can be reached at mooney@college.harvard.edu