Josh Hirsch: Ivy hoops could use some changes

Last Thursday, I sat and watched the Penn basketball team get taken apart by Boston College in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Two nights later, I watched back in Philadelphia as the fourth-seeded Eagles were in turn dismantled by 12th-seeded Wisconsin-Milwaukee -- a team that lost to powerhouses like Detroit, Valparaiso and Wisconsin-Green Bay.

In between, I saw Bucknell -- who the Quakers thrashed back on the first of last December -- upset mighty Kansas.

Maybe I am a pessimist, but despite their 17-6 run to start the second half against BC, I never thought the Quakers were really in the game.

And with every upset and near-upset of the weekend, I came to a very sad conclusion:

With the way things are right now, Penn's performance (or Princeton's last year for that matter) was not an aberration. I just do not see an Ivy League team ever pulling an upset in an NCAA Tournament game.

To win a game, you must have at least one star player -- someone who is capable of taking over a game with his skill and athleticism.

Tim Begley tried to do it on Thursday, but with all due respect to the Ivy League Player of the Year, he just is not the type of player who possesses the athleticism to carry a team in the Tournament.

Against Lafayette on Jan. 18, Begley was held to three points but dished out a school-record 13 assists, brought down six rebounds, had four steals, and only turned the ball over twice in the Quakers' romp.

But against Yale on Feb. 19, Begley was completely shut down by the Elis' Edwin Draughan. He did not score, had only six assists, and the Quakers lost by 18. Without his presence being felt in the game, Penn was hopeless -- and defenders even better than Draughan are the norm in the Tournament.

And in the last few years, no Ivy League player, with the possible exception of Brown's Jason Forte, fits that bill.

I do not know if scholarships are the answer to why these players are not at Ivy League schools, but they are certainly something that could convince a potential player to look beyond the Ancient Eight.

And this may or may not be a coincidence, but the Patriot League voted two years ago to allow limited athletic scholarships. One of the first prospects to get one was Bucknell sophomore Chris McNaughton, who hit the game-winning jump-hook against Kansas. The game, by the way, was the Patriot League's first-ever NCAA Tournament win.

Aside from its lack of stars, Penn looked a little surprised at how big and how good Boston College was on Thursday.

While they had prepared well and knew what they would be up against, nothing could prepare the Quakers for actually being on the court with the much bigger Eagles.

Nothing could ready Ryan Pettinella, Jan Fikiel and Mark Zoller for 250-pound Craig Smith giving them a not-so-subtle tap every time down the floor just to remind them of his respective 30-, 35- and 40-pound weight advantages on the three Penn forwards.

Nothing, that is, that the Quakers could have done this season.

I am not a supporter of an Ivy League tournament, but conference tournaments do prepare teams for the atmosphere of the NCAA Tournament and allow teams to face the best in their conference.

And I know the Ivy League teams do not have non-conference games in the middle of the league season, so as to prevent missed classes. But a late-season game against a powerful mid-major on Bracket Buster Saturday or a matchup against any of the Big 5 teams would certainly be better Tournament preparation than beating up on the Columbias of the world.

I do not know what the answer is, but if the Ivy League wants to win a game in the NCAA Tournament -- and to take home the money and exposure that come with it -- it has to change something.

Josh Hirsch is a sophomore urban studies major from Roslyn, N.Y., and is senior sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is jjhirsch@sas.upenn.edu.

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