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2018 Ivy League conference tournament preview (March 10-11)

03/08/2018, 12:30am EST
By Owen McCue

Ryan Betley (above) and Penn come into this year's Ivy League tournament as one of the favorites. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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The first year of the Ivy League tournament was a success with two highly entertaining semifinal games before a competitive championship contest ended with Princeton, the conference’s regular season champ, walking away with a title and representing the league in the NCAA Tournament.

Entering this season, it felt highly likely that the four teams in last year’s tournament field would be back at the Palestra in year two. It almost worked out as Penn, Harvard and Yale are all back. Cornell is the fourth team in this year’s tourney, making its first appearance in the Ivy postseason.Noticeably absent from this year’s field is Princeton. The inaugural Ivy League Tournament champs finished 13-16 overall and 5-9 in the league.

The tournament starts on Saturday as No. 1 Harvard plays No. 4 Cornell at 12:30 p.m. and No. 2 Penn plays No. 3 Yale at 3 p.m. in Philadelphia. The two winners will meet on Sunday at noon with an NCAA Tournament appearance on the line.

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Here is a look at the teams in this year’s Ivy League Tournament:

Favorites

Harvard: The Crimson earned their first share of the Ivy League regular season title since the 2014-15 campaign with a 12-2 finish in conference play. Even without sophomore guard Bryce Aiken (14.1 ppg) for its last nine games, Harvard won eight of nine down the stretch with the lone loss coming to Penn. While head coach Tommy Amaker and company certainly miss Aiken, the Crimson have a multitude of other talented sophomores. Seth Towns, a 6-foot-7 forward, leads the team in scoring at 15.8 ppg to go along with 5.4 rpg. Chris Lewis, a 6-foot-9 forward, is another dangerous threat. He is second on the team in scoring (12.7 ppg) and has four 20-point contests to his name, including a 28-point outing in a 98-88 win against Cornell in the second to last game of the regular season. The Crimson won their only other matchup with the Big Red, a 76-73 victory on Feb. 3. Harvard is a very young team with four sophomores and a junior in the starting lineup and three freshmen and one sophomore averaging 10 or more minutes off the bench.

Penn: It’s been a long time since the Quakers have gone to the NCAA Tournament. Penn won a share of the regular season title for the first time since the 2006-07 campaign with its tie with Harvard at the top of the league standings. Third-year head coach Steve Donahue moved his team from fifth, to fourth, to a tie for first place in his first three seasons. After an 0-6 start to conference play last season, Penn won six of eight down the stretch to sneak into the tournament as the No. 4 seed before an overtime loss to Princeton. This year has gone much different as the Quakers have been one of the conference contenders all season long, improving from six to 12 victories in the Ivy. Wing Ryan Betley (14.7 ppg, 5.0 rpg) and forward AJ Brodeur (12.6 ppg, 6.9 rpg) have followed up stellar freshman seasons with impressive sophomore campaigns. The emergence of senior Caleb Wood as a scoring threat off the bench has made Penn tough to stop. The 6-foot-4 guard is fourth on the team in scoring at 10.1 ppg.

Contenders

Yale: The Bulldogs are in a very similar spot as they finished the regular season last year when they advanced to the conference championship as the No. 3 seed. However, that didn’t look like it was going to be the case early on. Yale started its season as bad as possible when star guard Makai Mason went down with injury for the second year in a row. The Bulldogs struggled in the non-conference and got out to a slow start in Ivy League play with a 2-4 record before rattling off wins in seven of their last eight games to lock up third place. One of those wins was an 80-79 win against Penn in their second to last game, which should give the Bulldogs some confidence heading into their semifinal matchup with the Quakers. Yale has a matchup nightmare in 6-foot-7 guard Miye Oni. The sophomore is averaging 15.5 ppg, 3.7 apg and 6.1 rpg, which all lead the team. Junior guard Alex Copeland (11.4 ppg) and junior forward Blake Reynolds (10.7 ppg) are the team’s other two double figure scorers. Like Harvard, Yale lacks a veteran presence with forward Noah Yates (5.3 ppg) as the only senior in the rotation.

Dark Horse

Cornell: There is clear separation in the standings between the other three teams and the Big Red. Cornell clinched a spot in the conference tournament with a win against Dartmouth in the regular season finale paired with Princeton’s overtime loss to Yale to finish a game ahead of the Tigers and Columbia. Cornell hasn’t beaten the other three teams in the tournament, combining to go 0-6 against the top three teams in the league, although they did have two close ones against Harvard and Yale. Don’t sleep on Cornell though. The Big Red have two of the top players in the Ivy League in juniors Matt Morgan and Stone Gettings. Morgan, a 6-foot-2 guard, led the league in scoring at 22.6 points per game. He has scored in double figures in every game he’s played. Morgan scored 20-or-more points 18 times, which includes four games of 30-or-more points. Gettings, a 6-foot-9 forward who can knock down shots from outside is quite dangerous as well. He is averaging 17 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. The junior forward scored 39 points on Dec. 28 against Delaware.


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