Reform Movement

Robin Harris

Columbia basketball’s first road Ivy test is tomorrow and the Lions certainly should have what it takes to beat Cornell in Ithaca and run their record to 2-0 in the Ivies.

But as The Columbia Spectator’s Myles Simmons points out today, Columbia is beginning the most brutal test any conference can offer in college basketball: a five game road trip comprised of all conference games in the midst of a 14-game conference game stretch.

Believe it or not, this is better than it used to be when Penn and Princeton dominated the league. One of the factors that kept those two teams in command for about 40 years was the fact that every other team had to play them on back-to-back nights. 

I know we love traditions in the Ivy League, but the billed “14 game tournament” which is not a tournament at all is really tough to swallow. Anything but a perfect record over the next five games puts the Lions in a tight spot. Even if Columbia is the best hoops team in the Ivies, a slip up here could easily cost them a title. And that’s true of any team that happens to be the best.

And this is all why we need a postseason Ivy basketball tournament, (a real tournament), to help build excitement and assure the best teams that they will be given every possible chance to prove they’re the best.

Many of us have proposed a six-team tournament, excluding the bottom two finishers in the regular season and giving the top two finishers a bye. So, the third place team would host the sixth place team in one game, while the fourth and fifth place teams would face off at the #4 team’s home court in another. The winners of those two games would play the #1 and #2 teams in the semifinals, and so on.

And if there was a dominant Ivy team that someone lost the tournament in this format, then there would be at least a chance that it would still get a NCAA tournament bid. As it stands now, one team gets to dance and one team only.

I would put this proposal for a postseason Ivy basketball tournament in my list of four simple demands true Ivy sports fans should present to Executive Director Robin Harris and continue to do so until some of the demands are met.

They are:

1)      Lift the postseason ban on football

2)      Institute a postseason tournament for men’s and women’s basketball

3)      A.I.: either eliminate it altogether, or relax the rules for the lowest finishers every season. For example, I would give the 8^th place finishers in football and basketball two additional lowest band recruiting slots, the 7^th place finisher would get one.  

4)      Award each football team an additional week of summer training camp

Just about every one of the above demands are negotiable, but some movement really needs to be seen if we want to have the two major college sports continue to be any kind of draw for the Ivy League.

Until then, best of luck to the basketball team.