Where’s the Ivy League Tourney Love?

On Jan. 15, 2009, the Ivy League made an unprecedented move as it announced that starting in 2010, there will be postseason tournaments for men’s and women’s lacrosse to decide which team will earn the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. This makes lacrosse the only Ivy League team sport to use such a tournament to determine the recipient of the conference’s automatic bid.

The reasons for this change are fairly obvious. The Ivy League is one of the best conferences in the country when it comes to lacrosse and a postseason tournament will give the top four teams from the men’s and women’s sides the opportunity to showcase themselves before selection for the NCAA tournament begins. Four men’s and women’s teams will battle for their spots in the 16-team field, and, if everything works out, maybe one of the teams that doesn’t win the playoff will perform sufficiently well and pad their Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) enough to earn an at-large bid.

This move is necessary, but I also find it to be confusing and unfair. Lacrosse is not the only Ivy League team sport that would benefit from a postseason tournament, but it is the only sport that is going to have one starting in 2010. Sports like soccer and basketball often run into the problem that was cited in the release by the Ivy League on Jan. 15 where the league’s automatic bid was decided by tiebreakers, leaving a deserving team(s) hoping to get an at-large berth at the mercy of the NCAA selection committee.

When it comes to basketball, the debate has been raging for years, as the Ivy League is the only conference in the country that does not have a postseason tournament to determine which team will compete for a national title. At most Ivy League schools, basketball is traditionally the premier winter sport. In most cases, the Ivy title is decided by a 14-game round robin in which each team plays the others twice. I say “most times,” because last year the women’s title was decided on a neutral court by a coin flip and two-game playoff between three teams—Cornell won the coin flip and therefore won a bye to the second game.

A coin flip. That’s fair, right? Due to random chance, Cornell received the best possible chance to win the Ancient Eight. Imagine if Harvard or Dartmouth—the two other teams competing in the playoff—had been so lucky. If Cornell had to play to reach the second game, it would have likely done so without Ivy League Player of the Year Jeomi Maduka, who would have had to choose between going to the NCAA track meet or taking on the Crimson or Big Green. I’m guessing she would have chosen the track meet as this year she left the Big Red basketball team to focus on track.

If the Ivy League wants to reward its lacrosse teams for being some of the best in the country with a postseason tournament, it should do the same for its strong men’s soccer teams. This year, Penn and Dartmouth tied for the league title with Harvard just a point behind in the standings. Thanks to a 1-0 win in Hanover, Penn was given the league’s automatic NCAA Tournament berth, meaning that Dartmouth and Harvard had to hope to earn at-large bids. Luckily these teams were both selected, but though each team saw time in the top 25 during the season, their selections were not a given. With a postseason tournament like the one that will take place for lacrosse in 2010, these teams and fourth-place Yale would have a chance to scrap it out and boost their RPIs before the NCAA Tournament. Who knows? Maybe Yale would have won the postseason Ivy tournament and the league could have had four teams make the NCAA Tournament.

I argued last year that a postseason basketball tournament would be the best possible thing for the Ivy League as it would increase competition throughout the season and, in the event that the regular-season champion did not win, result in berths for Ivy teams in both the NCAA tournament and the NIT. It would also likely result in the Ivy League championship game being broadcast on a major network such as ESPN, which would bring recognition and, more importantly, money to the conference.

Last year’s women’s basketball situation and the future implementation of lacrosse tournaments prove to me that the Ivy League is not against postseason tournaments. My biggest complaint is that if the league is willing to offer a postseason tournament for one sport it should do it for all of them. When Penn and Princeton were successful in the 1990s in men’s basketball, they didn’t have a conference tournament to help them.
If lacrosse has been given a tournament on the basis that its teams have been successful and could use a boost to get into the national tournament, I think that the Ivy League needs to realize that success is fleeting, and decisions that shape the future of the league should not rest on past or present success. These decisions should be based on what is best for the league and for the players within it. If a postseason tournament works for lacrosse, why can’t it work for other team sports? Shouldn’t basketball, soccer, and other team sports—including football, but that’s a column on its own—be offered the same opportunity?
The only fair answer is yes.

Matt Velazquez is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.
Sports@columbiaspectator.com