Only four times in the last 64 years has the Penn or Princeton men's basketball team not won the Ivy League title.
In the last few years, however, a new suitor to the throne has emerged.
Under the guidance of fifth-year coach Glen Miller, Brown University has gone from perennial Ancient Eight doormat to consensus pick to finally be the team to "upset the P's" and snap a 15-year run of NCAA Tournament berths for the Quakers or the Tigers.
Miller's first season, the 1999-2000 campaign, saw Brown finish second-to-last with a 4-10 conference record. But freshman guard Earl Hunt, a graduate of Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., gave warning of what the Ivy League was in for over the next three years, leading the conference in scoring with 18.8 points per game.
The next year, Miller's squad would make its first true statement that it was ready to lock horns with the league's best. Brown tied Penn for second place in the league, as Hunt made first-team All-Ivy and classmate Alai Nuualiitia -- a graduate of Lower Merion High School in the Philadelphia suburbs, where he played with Kobe Bryant -- made the second team.
Now the Bears had some clout to recruit with, and they landed their first big name in now-junior Jason Forte, the brother of former North Carolina star Joseph Forte. Both attended DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md. -- as did current Penn freshman Steve Danley --and were coached by Morgan Wooten, who has the most high school wins in basketball history. Jason, however, would graduate from The Heights School in Potomac, Md.
Although Brown would slip to fourth place in the 2001-02 season, it pulled the Ivy League's attention to Providence, R.I., last year. Forte, Hunt, and Nuualiitia all took first-team All-Ivy honors, as the Bears stormed to a second-place finish and the school's first-ever season sweep of Princeton.
But Penn would crush Brown's dreams of a first Ivy title in 17 years, dealing the Bears its two conference losses. After dealing Brown its first loss of the season in a 73-66 thriller at the Palestra, the Quakers would crush the Bears' title hopes by escaping the sold-out Pizzitola Center -- including Brown alumnus and ESPN anchor Chris Berman -- with a 69-65 victory.
Brown was almost able to go a step further this year. Although Forte, senior forward Jamie Kilburn and company were able to sweep Penn for the first time since 1991, they could not hang on to a lead at Princeton and suffered their third loss of the season. The Ivy League still has yet to see a team sweep the Penn-Princeton road trip.
Penn coach Fran Dunphy has watched Brown's rise to prominence with mixed feelings, especially since one of his former assistant coaches, Steve Donahue, has done at Cornell this year much the same thing Miller -- who could not be reached for comment -- has done in Providence.
Dunphy, who came to Penn while Princeton was in the midst of winning four straight Ivy League titles, knows that the first step to building a winning program is recruiting good players.
He described the sales pitch to potential recruits thus: "Just trust us, that we're trying to make our program better and you'll be part of a winning tradition that we're trying to start here."
And Dunphy believes that these efforts are paying off.
"I think that's evidenced by a lot of programs out there that are working very hard to get the best possible student-athlete to come to their school," he said. "And I think some programs are changing even their nonconference scheduling, to allow them to participate and play against some very good basketball teams, some higher profile teams."
But what's good for the Ivy League is not necessarily in Penn's best interest.
"No, we don't want anybody to get better in terms of our interest," Dunphy said. "But in terms of the league's interest, yeah, the better the league is the better everybody is."
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