whitakk
Masters Student
Posts: 523
Age: 32
Reg: 11-11-14
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03-04-17 04:10 PM - Post#224740
In response to HARVARDDADGRAD
On the other hand, I believe that Holy Cross qualifying more likely undercut the respect for the quality of basketball at the top of the PL. Nationally, people remember that at 14-20 Holy Cross was an entertaining outlier, not that Bucknell (14-4) and Lehigh (13-5) battled for the regular season title.
For instance, if Dartmouth can win the Ivy Tournament and enter the NCAA's at 10-19, then the likely conclusion will be that Princeton, Harvard and Yale must not have been that good. That's a risk associated with the tournament. Dartmouth (and probably Penn or Columbia) are less likely to be celebrated outside Ivy fans as opposed to the league being minimized.
The thing about this argument is that Lehigh and Bucknell actually weren't all that good last year. The entire Patriot League was a mess in the past two seasons (seems to have rebounded this year), which is a big part of the reason teams like Lafayette and Holy Cross were able to win the tournament.
That's not to say Princeton couldn't lose to Dartmouth or whoever -- it's a real risk of the tournament setup. But it's less likely, because Princeton is way better than those PL leaders were.
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