If Penn Can't Win, Who Can?

Penn's loss last week in the NCAA Tournament added a new link to the chain of recent Ivy postseason disappointments. The loss was predicted well in advance, and even the post-game analysis could have been read from a dusty, yellowed cue card: the Ivy team played hard, but it was just overpowered-maybe next year its luck will change.

The last time a team from the Ivy League won a game in the tournament, Titanic was the reigning Oscar winner for best picture, George W. Bush was campaigning for re-election for the governorship of Texas, and the world did not yet know the name Britney Spears (who, at just 16 years old, still possessed traces of innocence and sanity).

Nine years, in fact, have passed since an Ivy team experienced the joy of victory in March Madness. And sadly, judging by last week's performance by Penn-the reigning conference champion-the Ivy League's future tourney prospects are not getting any brighter.

By nearly every possible measure, this year's Penn team was the most talented Ivy team of recent memory. And it still lost by a double-digit margin, 68-52 to Texas A&M.

This season, Penn destroyed Ivy competition, posting a 13-1 league mark and besting its competition by a high scoring margin. The Quakers had experience. Seniors Ibrahim Jaaber and Mark Zoller had led Penn to three straight Ivy titles, and both were playing in their third straight NCAA tourney. As for talent, Jaaber was selected as the Ivy Player of the Year for the second straight year, and Zoller was the Ivy scoring leader this season with 18.2 points per game. The team even entered the tournament on a bit of a hot streak, having won 10 straight games.

But once the postseason arrived, Penn simply had no chance. As a 14 seed playing third-seeded Texas A&M in the South region, failure was nearly inevitable. Texas A&M had finished second in the Big 12 conference and had spent much of the year ranked in the top 10 of the AP poll. Comparing the two teams in terms of skill, athleticism, and depth, the Aggies were superior in nearly every category.

To the Quakers' credit, however, they kept the game competitive until well into the second half. And by doing so, they displayed traits of tenacity and character of which the Ivy League can be proud. With a little over 13 minutes to play, Penn capped off a 19-3 run to take its first (and only) lead of the game, 39-37. But after that point, Texas A&M's superior talent and depth took over.

Though Penn's top two players-Jaaber and Zoller-played well, the rest of the Quakers were unable to keep up. Penn head coach Glen Miller even admitted that beyond Jaaber and Zoller, his players seemed "intimidated."

Though Penn's loss seems to be a simple continuation of a lengthy trend, it helps illustrate the difficult position in which the Ivy champ finds itself during tournament time each year. Because the Ivy League does not play the same caliber of basketball as the elite power conferences, the Ivy champ usually receives a poor seed. Facing such difficult competition, the outcome is nearly pre-ordained.

"I think it's difficult for an Ivy League team to win because we don't have a great seed," Columbia head coach Joe Jones said before the season began. "We're always playing against a power, a Final Four team, you know, and I think that makes it tough."

In fact, the last Ivy team to win a game in the NCAAs did so as a fifth seed. Princeton, awarded an at-large bid in 1998, defeated the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the first round. No team has received such a high seed since that time, and of course, no team has won since that time either.

One way the Ivy champ could break through in the NCAA tourney again would be if it received a higher seed. However, given the recent rise of the mid-major conferences and the relative stagnation of the Ivy League in terms of improvement, it is very difficult to imagine the Ivy League receiving such a high seed in the near future.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the Ivy League sending a more competitive representative to the field of 65 than this year's Penn team. And therein lies the problem: if Penn could not win this year, how can future Ivy champs expect to win?

Most likely, they can't. Penn was a great team, and even it could do no better than a 16-point shellacking. In reward for winning the Ivy League, future Ivy champs will continue to get humbled in the Big Dance. And the chain of Ivy postseason futility, which already spans nearly a decade, will only grow larger.