For the first time since the 1945-46 season, the Harvard men’s basketball team will be heading to a postseason tournament.
But it won’t be competing in either the NCAA Tournament or the National Invitational Tournament.
Since Cornell clinched the Ivy League’s only guaranteed NCAA tournament bid well before spring break, the Crimson were forced to wait until Sunday to learn that they had earned a spot in the second-annual CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT).
After receiving national attention early in the season following a narrow loss to then-No. 13 Connecticut and a win at then-No. 17 Boston College, Harvard seemed poised to challenge defending League champions Cornell for a berth in the Big Dance.
Meanwhile, the strong performance of powerhouse guard Jeremy Lin and the early success of high-profile coach Tommy Amaker — who led Michigan to the NIT title in 2004 and the tournament’s runner-up spot in 2006 — added to the team’s allure.
But the buzz surrounding the Crimson nearly vanished with the start of conference play.
Losses to Cornell and Princeton destroyed their chances of reaching the NCAA Tournament as conference champions. And though it seemed feasible for the Ivy League to receive an at-large bid to the tournament when Cornell cracked the top 25, the Big Red’s 79-64 loss to the Quakers erased that possibility.
So after finishing the season in third-place in the Ivy League, Harvard (21-7, 10-4 Ivy) must settle for the CIT — one of two postseason tournaments that invites mid-major teams that have been excluded from the NIT.
The Crimson will play their first round match of the tournament tomorrow night against Appalachian State in Boone, N.C. The Mountaineers recently finished second in the Southern Conference tournament, falling to Wofford, 56-51.
Tigers pounce into the CBI After a six-year drought, Princeton will round out the trio of Ivy teams making postseason appearances.
The team’s second-place finish in the Ivy League was good enough to earn it a spot in the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) tournament.
The Tigers have participated in 23 NCAA tournaments and have five appearances in the NIT, but this is their first time competing in the CBI, which began in 2008.
The team will enter tomorrow’s match riding a four-game winning streak. Its 20 wins this season was Princeton’s highest total since 2004, the same year that it last attended a postseason tournament.
Princeton will host Duquesne at Jadwin Gymnasium tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the tournament’s first round.
The Dukes (16-15) finished eighth in the Atlantic 10 conference and recently suffered a loss to St. Bonaventure in the first round of the A-10 tournament.
Princeton and Duquesne have only faced off twice in history, with Princeton emerging victorious from their last meeting in the 1973 Eastern College Athletic Conference Holiday Classic at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The winner of tonight’s game will face either Hofstra or IUPUI March 22 in Hempstead, N.Y.
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