Seifter | One shot at NCAAs

As the Penn basketball team kicks off its Ivy League season tonight against Yale, junior guard Zack Rosen says the Quakers know they won’t get a “mulligan” if they start out poorly in conference play.

What he implied, of course, is that the Ivy League is the only conference that still chooses its NCAA Tournament representative based on the regular-season champion rather than a postseason tournament.

While the lack of an Ivy tournament in basketball has been the subject of some debate, you probably won’t see Penn clamoring for a change.

“I think it’s important that the league doesn’t have a tournament only because that’s why it’s the Ivy League,” said Rosen, who added that he played in both situations in high school while striving for conference and national championships. “That’s why it’s different from every other league — [along with] the whole scholarship thing.”

Penn coach Jerome Allen said he could argue for either side, adding that it is most important for teams to know ahead of time exactly what they must do to earn a postseason berth.

“Is the glass half-full or half-empty?” Allen said. “You have an opportunity to control your own destiny. Whether we have a tournament or not, it may be a good thing, it may not be.”

With all due respect to Allen, it is difficult to believe that an Ivy tournament would even have the potential to be good for the conference.

Normally, a postseason tournament makes sense for conferences which often have teams worthy of an at-large NCAA Tournament bid. In that case, an unexpected hot streak by a team which struggled in the regular season can give a conference an extra ticket to March Madness.

That reasoning, along with the potential to boost strength of schedule and RPI, ultimately led to the inception of the Ivy lacrosse tournament last year.

But in basketball, the Ivy League will almost always be a one-bid conference, so it’s important to send the Ancient Eight’s best representative to the national stage.

Imagine if Penn’s upset over Cornell last year had instead occurred in a hypothetical Ivy Tournament. Depriving the superior Big Red of their Sweet 16 run would have hurt the league’s reputation — and its checkbook.

Basing the NCAA berth on the small sample size of a three-round tournament would not only dilute the meaning of the regular season, but also worsen the odds of another Ivy Cinderella.

That’s why in the past, Athletic Director Steve Bilsky has rightly opposed an Ivy tournament, especially when Penn was dominating the league.

In the current structure, every Ivy game — including tonight’s — is vital.

“I don’t know what [the league is] going to do,” Rosen said. “I’m just here to play. It’s the situation that we’re in. We’ve got 14 games, and this is what we’ve got.”

ARI SEIFTER is a senior computer and cognitive science major from Ellicott City, Md., and is former Associate Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. He can be contacted at dpsports@theDP.com.

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