The future of Ivy League basketball

I know most of our section’s columns have shifted away from talking about Ivy sports (often towards the Big 12), but Cornell enters the top 25 and it takes a kid in Spain to write about it?

I would say everyone thought our news story was an analysis piece or a column since it didn’t have a quote, but then our section doesn’t run many news stories. 

Maybe everyone figured they’d have time to write about it given that Cornell doesn’t plan to lose again. The Big Red must travel to Harvard, but last I checked Cornell beat the Crimson by 36 in the first meeting, and Harvard has been killing the rest of the league. There’s always Princeton, but does anyone really think the Tigers will sneak up on the Big Red again?

That being said, I don’t plan to use this column space to rave about Cornell, Steve Donahue, or, God forbid, Ryan Wittman. I did that at the beginning of the season. I could have done it again after they took out teams from the SEC, Atlantic 10, Big East and CAA, a strong conference this year. I had another chance after the game against Kansas, the nation’s top team, in which Donahue’s crew looked every bit as good as the Jayhawks. No other team in the nation has come as close to winning at Allen Fieldhouse.

Yet, each of those columns would have violated a cardinal rule of Ivy basketball: Wait until Ivy play starts. Every Ivy coach will tell you that it’s usually hard to gauge a team’s abilities until it starts the league’s grueling schedule.

That does not apply to Cornell this year, since it didn’t take Cornell beating St. John’s or Columbia losing to St. Francis to make us all realize those two league-openers would be bloodbaths. 

I also would have fallen into the trap every other journalist has, all of them foaming at the mouth to write about Cornell and missing a key part of the story. They have all focused on how the team’s dominance means that a school other than Penn and Princeton will be elite, giving the Ivy League some much needed credibility. While this is true, that credibility will soon be due to more than Cornell. Cornell’s ascension, paired with that of other rising programs around the league, means that the Ivy League is no longer one of Division I’s weakest conferences and may soon be a regular contender for at least two NCAA bids.

Yes, Cornell is the first ranked Ivy team since Princeton in 1998. They’ve also got a good chance at the NCAA Tournament should some freak incident cause Princeton or Harvard to take the title.

However, Cornell will graduate the class that put it on the map after this season, and though much talent remains, more than half the league is loading up to seize the first opportunity in three years. Cornell is the first in a wave of teams that will make the Ancient Eight about more than the killer P’s.

Harvard has clearly taken great strides under Tommy Amaker with signature nonconference wins each of the past two years, and another star-studded recruiting class is on the way next year.

Princeton, which has already started with two impressive conference road wins, will return all four of its leading scorers next year, three of whom are freshmen or sophomores.

Columbia and Yale, despite weak starts, are both doing a better job of bringing in talent to help their young rosters.

Even Penn, which has reached a new low this season, has had no problem convincing players that this is still just a momentary blip. The Quakers have landed the conference’s highest-rated recruit for next year—Miles Cartwright—despite an interim coach and a New Jersey Nets-like record of 2-14.

The result will be a very deep and talented Ivy League for years to come. Experience is invaluable, and a big factor in Cornell’s success. Yet, the Ancient Eight has always had experienced teams. What it lacked was a proliferation of talent.

When you recruit talent to a league where no one leaves early, that talent grows together and as a result, in a few years we could be looking at a few Ivy teams like this Cornell squad.

For now, we can all root for Cornell to win a game or two in the tournament, starting a wave of such performances. I just hope Spec is around to write about it, with quotes.

Lucas Shaw is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science.
sportseditors@columbiaspectator.com