dperry
Postdoc
Posts: 2215
Loc: Houston, TX
Reg: 11-24-04
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02-10-18 11:48 PM - Post#247419
In response to penn nation
Before the advent of the IL tourney, the 2nd Princeton game was that Tuesday, but that was it--no five games in nine days. The IL bid was usually among the very earliest of the NCAA bids, and there was a nice week+ break before the next game to be played.
No longer.
Actually, now that IL tourney has done away with Penn-Princeton being the last IL regular season game of the year (which, God forbid, they would never do with Harvard-Yale Football), I'm actually all for precisely what you suggest since there's no longer any special status attached to P-Pr games.
Penn and Princeton SHOULD play each other early on twice, before the rest of the IL games take place. Otherwise they get into the kind of situation they just faced--5 IL games in 9 days--that no other IL team has to contend with. Both Penn and Princeton suffered from this, especially Penn with that ridiculous 4 pm start today.
1. Even when the second game was the last of the season, it still made three games in five days, which was bad enough, particularly when it was often important--see 2012 for an example of that.
2. Also, always having that game at the end of the season was a relatively recent phenomenon--it really only started after I graduated ('92). There were many years before that where both games were in the middle of the week.
3. The scheduling of the two games is still at the discretion of the two teams; the SEA hasn't changed that--the women played each other the last Tuesday last season. They've chosen to move it to get the rest before the SEA, but they weren't required to.
4. It would be very difficult to have both games at the beginning of the league season with Princeton's current calendar, unless you wanted to do what Harvard and Dartmouth used to do and play one game in December, which is way too early to play any league game, much less one against a program that is generally one of the better ones in the league. However, even if Princeton does move their exams before Christmas, I still want to reserve one game for later, both because it's still a big rivalry, and it would be a shame for it to be over before the rest of the season even begins, and also because they're one of the better programs, and even with the SEA, I don't want to take the chance of losing both games and being behind the 8-ball that early. (May have more to say about this after the women's game on Tuesday.) Furthermore, it would make it even harder to schedule Big 5 games than it already is.
David Perry
Penn '92
"Hail, Alma Mater/Thy sons cheer thee now
To thee, Pennsylvania/All rivals must bow!!!" |
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