City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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The Cathedral of College Basketball is getting its own tournament. Well, at least for next year.

The Ivy league made some waves on Thursday when it announced it will begin holding four-team conference tournaments on both the men’s and women’s side starting in the 2016-17 season. The Ivy was the only Division-I conference that did not have a conference tournament, giving its automatic NCAA Tournament bid to the regular season champ. The league will also shorten its regular season by one game to accommodate this postseason.

But that will change next year when the Palestra will host the semifinals (1 seed vs. 4 seed, 2 seed vs. 3 seed) on Saturday, March 11 and the finals on Sunday, March 12. The Palestra will be the site of the 2017 tournament, though conference Executive Director Robin Harris did not guarantee the tournament will be in Philadelphia every season.

The Palestra was the site of last year’s Ivy League one-game playoff between Harvard and Yale, who finished as co-champions in the regular season, and that was part of the reason for the storied gym being the place for next year’s two-day tournament.

“Our athletic directors talked at length that it is obviously Penn’s home court. But the majority in the group felt very strongly that we have a historic and venerable environment within our own league and we should fully take advantage of having our tournament there,” Harris said in a conference call with reporters. “Having the playoff there last year was really the capstone in that decision, because we had a fabulous, fabulous atmosphere.”

Harris added that the means of getting the school presidents to agree on the tournament was a multi-year process and she added they considered many formats. This included a three-team playoff in the eight-team league, which would have given the No. 1 seed a bye until the title game.

But ultimately, they settled on four teams, which would’ve left 5-9 Penn just one game out of a tournament spot this season.

“The sense was that a four-team tournament has worked well in men’s and women’s lacrosse and frankly, the strength of our basketball – both on the men’s and women’s side – is quite good and we’re comfortable with the fourth team representing us in the tournament,” Harris said.

Added Council of Ivy League Presidents Peter Salovey in a statement: “This decision was based on enhancing the overall experience for our basketball student-athletes, while also paying attention to time demands by shortening the regular season.”