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Username Post: 2018 Ivy Tournament Back At The Palestra        (Topic#20262)
Go Green 
PhD Student
Posts: 1124

Age: 52
Reg: 04-22-10
05-15-17 12:33 PM - Post#229332    
    In response to mrjames

  • mrjames Said:


My hope is that the folks on the competitive side will respond to being fooled by the league and not be so kind and deferential in public statements now that the league has demonstrated that competitive concerns are secondary to finding an easy solution.



If not the Palestra, where then?

Again, until the league says it doesn't care about holding the men's and women's tournaments in the same place, we have to pick a venue. "It should be at the higher seed's court" is not an option at present.

 
Tiger69 
Postdoc
Posts: 2801

Reg: 11-23-04
05-15-17 04:00 PM - Post#229333    
    In response to Stuart Suss

Given the likelihood of additional serious injury, the unevenness of the competition, the differences in institutional priorities and the additional academic strain, I see little to be gained by the Ivies going to the NCAA football post season. I'm with HY on this one. While there is the occasional standout, the Ivies shouldn't be grooming football players for the pros, If we lose a standout prospect because of this policy, so what? I would say, bad choice by prospect, not university. The Ivies really made this decision when they formed back in the 50s. If the priorities of one member changes, perhaps it would be better suited for another conference like the Patriot League.

 
rbg 
Postdoc
Posts: 3044

Reg: 10-20-14
05-15-17 04:22 PM - Post#229334    
    In response to Tiger69

Sports Illustrated weighs in, with quotes from several of the men's coaches, https://www.si.com/college-basketball/20 17/05/15/i...

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
2018 Ivy Tournament Back At The Palestra
05-15-17 05:38 PM - Post#229335    
    In response to Tiger69

That's just ridiculous. Sure, the Ivy Agreement provided that "The members of the Group shall not engage in post-season games or any other contests designed to settle sectional or other championships."

Except that since that time, it has been waived with respect to every other sport but football. And in November, it has nothing to do with class schedules, it doesn't interfere with finals and there is no greater risk of injury than at any other time. The ONLY reason not to play in post-season football is to allow The Game to be the season-closer on national TV.

You sometimes make sense, but not at all with this one. Like many Princeton types of your generation, you think of yourselves as equal to the H-Ys. They don't feel the same way.

 
SRP 
Postdoc
Posts: 4894

Reg: 02-04-06
05-15-17 06:26 PM - Post#229336    
    In response to palestra38

The football issue has nothing at all to do with the Ivy tourney or the decision to locate it in the Palestra, no matter how much bitter Penn fans want to link the two.

As for the SI article linked above, it was a cheerleading puff piece that even recycled the falsehood that Harvard pioneered no-loan financial aid in the Ivies.

 
penn nation 
Professor
Posts: 21081

Reg: 12-02-04
05-15-17 06:49 PM - Post#229337    
    In response to Tiger69

  • Tiger69 Said:
Given the likelihood of additional serious injury, the unevenness of the competition, the differences in institutional priorities and the additional academic strain, I see little to be gained by the Ivies going to the NCAA football post season.



You could say the same exact thing about hockey. Heck, not every Ivy school even fields a team, and there's a great deal of "unevenness" in the level of competition and institutional priorities among the remaining schools that do.


 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
05-15-17 08:57 PM - Post#229341    
    In response to SRP

YOU should be bitter, but are so in awe of the holiness of Yale and Harvard, thinking you are part of that triumvirate, that you don't even realize you are being screwed. Princeton football is as irrelevant as the other 5 not named Harvard or Yale. This is a much bigger issue than the location of the basketball tournament. Football actually could be interesting in the way that basketball is, but H and Y say the hell with everyone else.

Go Green has asked the Princeton fans repeatedly, where else can we put the tournament if we must combine the men's and women's tournament and you cannot answer the question.

 
bradley 
PhD Student
Posts: 1842

Age: 74
Reg: 01-15-16
05-15-17 09:49 PM - Post#229346    
    In response to westphillywarrior

  • westphillywarrior Said:
All who are happy about having the tournament back at the Palestra should send Matt Howard a thank you note.

My best guess is that if we had beaten Princeton the league would have had to do the right thing and find a neutral court for next year.




Matt Howard will go down in history as the guy who kept the IL Tournament game at the Palestra in year 2 as you suggest although Penn would probably have had to beat Yale as well to move the game in year 2. Also, if Penn got trounced as the 16 seed against a 1 seed that would have heightened not only the selection of the Palestra but maybe raised issues as to the wisdom of the IL Tournament although it would probably have taken two years of disaster for the IL decision makers to wise up regarding the absurdity of the tournament.

The cat is out the bag that the IL Tournament is here to stay. I have no empathy for anyone changing positions now as it is simply too late. The entire concept of the IL Tournament and Palestra is a function of money and has nothing to do what is right or wrong. This entire discussion as to the downsides of the tournament and Palestra was very predictable prior to deciding on the Tournament.

For Tiger fans, let's hope that Cannady hits the 3 point shot at the end of the game as they may be a 2 to 4 seed. Sad but somewhat amusing.


 
Tiger69 
Postdoc
Posts: 2801

Reg: 11-23-04
Re: 2018 Ivy Tournament Back At The Palestra
05-16-17 03:16 AM - Post#229348    
    In response to palestra38

I often find your posts thoughtful and interesting. So, I will I forgive your childish parting insult about Ps of my generation and their feelings about other schools including HY. That is ancient history. Quite honestly, today many of us on this site would be unable to gain admission to our alma maters. I'm quite certain that a much brighter person, perhaps female or non WASP, would get my spot.

But that simple truth neither diminishes my appreciation nor my affection for Nassau.

Nor, does it change my concern for college football players or my contempt for the commercializing of college athletes.

 
digamma 
Masters Student
Posts: 466

Loc: Minneapolis
Reg: 11-27-11
05-16-17 06:52 AM - Post#229349    
    In response to mrjames

  • mrjames Said:


Homecourt is a pretty massive advantage relative to having the higher seed host (7-8 points) and still a sizeable advantage relative to a neutral floor (3.5-4 pts). You could think of it as if Team A was even with Team B on Team B's home floor and would be a 7-8 point favorite over Team B on its own home floor that it would be 50/50 to win at Team B, but around 75% to beat Team B at home and about 60% on a neutral floor.

What's more is that we've seen this exact scenario play out in other one-bid tournaments - most notably the AmEast. Albany picked off the 1-seed as a four two years in a row and the 2 as a 7 another time it got to host the pre-finals. Those two 1-over-4s finally convinced the AmEast to abandon the one-site prelim round and move those to campus sites, before the higher seed hosted the final. To pretend like that almost just didn't happen to us last year was insane and at this point I wish it had.





So, obviously a lot of different things go into creating a home court advantage: Fans and environment, not having to travel (sleeping in one's own bed, eating more familiar foods, staying on regular schedule), and familiarity with one's own gym, among others. I think most people would point to the first factor, the fans, as the home court advantage. That simply wasn't a big deal in March. Princeton fans were at least as loud as Penn fans at the game and weren't outnumbered by very much. I don't have the same knowledge of the American conference games, but the hypothesis here is that the edge isn't as big in tournament games because of the relatively larger, more enthusiastic crowd size of the favorite.

No way to really quantify that at this time, I realize. And I grant that Princeton may have been a bit unique due to their proximity and their team quality and the advantage more obvious if Yale or Harvard had been a higher seed versus Penn.


 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: 2018 Ivy Tournament Back At The Palestra
05-16-17 09:03 AM - Post#229350    
    In response to Tiger69

I'm sorry if you took my post as a personal insult--it was not meant that way nor to denigrate Princeton in any way as an academic institution. I have long said that it offers the best undergraduate education in the Ivies and I mean that.

I am talking about the kind of clubbiness that allows Harvard and Yale to get away with imposing rules on the other 6 schools with an assist from Princeton even though the post-season ban doesn't help Princeton in any way. While we can disagree as to whether there is any basis for the post-season ban (other than to protect the brand of "The Game"), your rationale for not allowing the league champion to enter the FCS tournament really is a call to eliminate football altogether. Because one game or two isn't what creates the risk--it is the game of football itself. And having waived the post-season ban in the original Ivy agreement for all other sports, there is no analytical basis to do so for football.

 
Go Green 
PhD Student
Posts: 1124

Age: 52
Reg: 04-22-10
05-16-17 10:15 AM - Post#229355    
    In response to palestra38

  • palestra38 Said:


Go Green has asked the Princeton fans repeatedly, where else can we put the tournament if we must combine the men's and women's tournament and you cannot answer the question.



It's not just Princeton--no one has proposed a viable alternative so long as we're picking out a single venue. Barclay's and the Mohegan Sun are pipe dreams. And do you really want to have it at a non-Ivy campus?

As I've said earlier, if people want to argue that showcasing the men's and women's at a single venue is not worth giving up HCA, then go to town. But so long as the league disagrees, the only left thing to REALLY argue about is where to have the tournament.

 
mrjames 
Professor
Posts: 6062

Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
05-16-17 11:02 AM - Post#229356    
    In response to digamma

The really surprising finding around home court has been that it's *not* fan driven. Home court remains pretty consistent across sparsely attended games or rabidly attended games.

Frankly, the biggest move on HCA recently is that 3pters tend to be less sensitive to HCA, so teams that shoot a ton of threes tend to see less benefit at home and less of a penalty on the road. The thought behind this continues to point toward the theory that the more you do in the 50/50 world (specifically with contact), the more decisions will slightly tilt your way regardless of whether there are fans in the stands or not.

Certainly KenPom found as much when looking at offense versus defense control, teams shoot about 0.7% better than average from three at home, but 2PT shooting goes up by 1.4%, FT Rate rises by 2.8 pp, block rate goes up by 1.2%. As KP says, offensive control over shooting decreases as you get closer to the basket, so if you're at home and your defense at the hoop is given more of the benefit of the doubt (more blocks, fewer fouls) and vice versa on the other end, that's how HCA is generated.

So, arguably, the better way to neutralize a road game is to be a team heavily weighted towards taking threes rather than bringing a bunch of your own fans.

 
Tiger69 
Postdoc
Posts: 2801

Reg: 11-23-04
Re: 2018 Ivy Tournament Back At The Palestra
05-16-17 11:08 AM - Post#229357    
    In response to palestra38

P38. I concede that I regard football as a special case. I have long been a fan, though not a player, of Ivy football. My views of how the game is played have changed over the years as has, I believe, the game itself. I never gave much thought to the long term effects when I was younger. As a kid growing up in the town of Princeton I got to know many undergraduates like big brothers who worked in the ticket office where my mother was employed seasonally. I was an early Princeton fanatic. I went to lots of football, basketball and hockey games as a town brat, and got to know a few athletes. One football player was nicknamed "Bumpy" by friends and roommates. The joke was that Bumpy never remembered much of anything except the physical contact from the games he played.

Years later, as a freshman in 1965, I had a dorm mate from rural Virginia whose entire life was playing football. He worked out VERY hard (I recall trying to run with him our freshman fall while I briefly was an eight oar crew member). Sadly, Bob was his name, though talented and hard-working, was a little too small for the linebacker role he coveted. After practice he was always a little fuzzy and welcomed being included in study sessions with his roommates. But, with little else to identify, he dropped out after freshman year and transferred to a small Baptist school where he felt more at home.

Finally, we had a very good defensive back during my undergrad years whose nickname was "Cheapshot" for the hard hits he made to opponents, often as they were falling out of bounds. We all cheered "Cheapshot" and much admired his work.

Now, years later, I wonder about how some of those less fortunate hard hitters have fared. They played only nine games then, the time demands, though great, were less than today and college sports were much less specialized. We had no illusions of National Championships. The Ivy League Championship and (sorry, P38,) a Big Three Championship were as good as it got. And, that was plenty. I don't think that a post season loss to East Georgia Aggie Tech would have Improved things.

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: 2018 Ivy Tournament Back At The Palestra
05-16-17 11:53 AM - Post#229363    
    In response to Tiger69

All I'll say is that things have changed. And back in the day, a Penn-Cornell football game (which always has concluded the schedule for those two schools) really had meaning too. But it doesn't in 2017, and (sorry, Tiger), neither does the "Big 3"--only The Game matters.

I hear your questions about the sport of football and, yes, there are health issues which are being dealt with to some extent, but you'll never take the risk of brain injury completely out of the game (happens a lot in hockey too).

But if we're not doing away with the sport, let the teams try to compete at their level to be the best as all other sports do.

 
Streamers 
Professor
Posts: 8141
Streamers
Loc: NW Philadelphia
Reg: 11-21-04
05-16-17 12:04 PM - Post#229367    
    In response to palestra38

I might be willing to give up football if they brought back hockey ;-)

Seriously, the league has been at the forefront of protecting its football players and the program draws some impressive students who would play elsewhere if we dropped the sport.

 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
Postdoc
Posts: 2685

Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
05-16-17 12:37 PM - Post#229371    
    In response to Streamers

No matter how you explain it away, home court advantage in college basketball is worth almost 4 points over a neutral court matchup. If Penn plays at the Palestra in the tournament, it's a roughly 4 point advantage. Compared to giving the regular season champion home court advantage, Penn would be receiving a boost of about 7.5 pts against that same team. That's a HUGE difference and the price of playing in the Palestra. Please don't suggest that isn't likely, as it already happened in the inaugural tournament.



 
penn nation 
Professor
Posts: 21081

Reg: 12-02-04
05-16-17 12:44 PM - Post#229373    
    In response to mrjames

  • mrjames Said:

So, arguably, the better way to neutralize a road game is to be a team heavily weighted towards taking threes rather than bringing a bunch of your own fans.



We should start training P38 and other Palestra regulars to shoot threes for the halftime festivities during the tourney, which presumably would negate this parry.


 
Go Green 
PhD Student
Posts: 1124

Age: 52
Reg: 04-22-10
05-16-17 12:51 PM - Post#229375    
    In response to HARVARDDADGRAD

  • HARVARDDADGRAD Said:
No matter how you explain it away, home court advantage in college basketball is worth almost 4 points over a neutral court matchup. If Penn plays at the Palestra in the tournament, it's a roughly 4 point advantage. Compared to giving the regular season champion home court advantage, Penn would be receiving a boost of about 7.5 pts against that same team. That's a HUGE difference and the price of playing in the Palestra. Please don't suggest that isn't likely, as it already happened in the inaugural tournament.





Mr. HARVARDDADGRAD--

That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out objection.

But unless you come up with a viable alternative venue--and not "the higher seeded team's court"--it's overruled.




 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
Postdoc
Posts: 2685

Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
05-16-17 12:51 PM - Post#229376    
    In response to penn nation

First hand accounts from generations of Ivy shooters suggest that the lighting in Jadwin may be deceiving for visiting shooters. If true, does that apply to the Palestra, thus exacerbating the difference?

 
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