Tonight at the Palestra, Ivy League men's basketball fans will be treated to the first round of a de facto conference tournament, as Yale and Princeton square off for the right to play Penn on Saturday for the league's automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.
The Quakers beat the Tigers, 62-48, Tuesday night to force the league's first-ever three-way tie. Penn got the top "seed" in this playoff by virtue of its 3-1 record against the other two schools. Whoever the Quakers play, the game will be at Lafayette's Kirby Sports Center in Easton, Pa.
"I think it's great for the league," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said after that game. "I think it's terrific for both Yale and Princeton to have another opportunity."
As for which team he'd be rooting for tonight, though, Dunphy wasn't saying.
"I wouldn't even know how to go about answering that question," Dunphy said. "It's not something we have any control over. We're just going to have to wait until about 10:00 [tonight], and then we should probably have a sense of who we're playing."
After a rocky start to the Ivy League season, Dunphy is happy just to be in this position.
"When we were sitting at 2-3, [a playoff] was about the only hope we had," Dunphy said. "We feel like we survived another game and we can live for another day. It'll be a tough match for us either way on Saturday."
Tonight's matchup should be a big step in the development of a young and talented Yale team. The Elis were all alone in first place for much of the season, having swept the Quakers and the Tigers the weekend those two teams traveled to New Haven, Conn.
The next night, Yale coach James Jones indulged in a bit of hubris he later may have regretted. "It's good to be the king," Jones said after the Elis beat Princeton.
Despite the fact that then- 9-1 Yale suffered back-to-back losses when it visited Penn and Princeton, the Elis ended up with a share of their first Ivy title in 39 years.
"I didn't set a timetable, but I knew it was going to happen," Jones told the Yale Daily News yesterday. "I feel like we have some more work to do."
Princeton could have grabbed its second-straight outright Ivy title had it defeated Penn on Tuesday night. Instead, the Tigers suffered their second double-digit loss to the Quakers this year.
The Tigers split with the Elis on the season, suffering their loss that weekend in New Haven when the Elis knocked off both traditional Ivy powerhouses. Princeton got that win back -- and retook the Ivy lead -- by beating Yale, 59-46, at Jadwin on Feb. 22. The difference seems to have been three-point shooting. The Tigers shot 26 percent that night, compared to 19 percent in the first game.
Whoever wins tonight, the Quakers are just happy to be back in the mix, after their 83-78 loss at New Haven gave the Red and Blue their first losing Ivy League record since the 1991-1992 season.
"I think it speaks a lot to our ability to bounce back after the adversity," Penn junior forward Koko Archibong said. "This whole season we've thought there was something special about us.
"It means a lot for us to have battled back into the position that we are in now. But we aren't done yet."
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