A regulation basketball court is 94 feet long. Finally, Ivy League teams are starting to use all of it.
Last weekend, Penn found its transition game.
Freshman Ibby Jaaber gave the Quakers a lot more than just 16 points when he stepped onto the court at Columbia's Levien Gym. The gutsy 6-foot-2 guard provided the spark for a Penn transition game that has been absent from the Quakers' offense.
In the opening eight minutes, the Quakers had put the ball in the basket only three times from somewhere other than the free-throw line. At the same time, the Lions had already racked up eight fouls, in what looked to be a glorified high school game.
But in just six seconds on the floor, Jaaber stole the ball from Columbia's Tito Hill and was on a fast break for the hoop.
Although junior Eric Osmundson could not convert Jaaber's pass at the other end of the floor, it was clear that the game had shifted into high gear. In the next 12 minutes, the Quakers scored 34 points, and secured an 11-point lead going into the intermission.
Penn did more than just put up a win at Columbia, it put on a clinic for first-year coach Joe Jones' new-look Lions. Playing Penn was the best practice that team has probably seen in a long time.
Columbia watched from the bottom of the standings as Penn ran away with an undefeated Ivy season a year ago. But Jones has implemented a new agenda for the Light Blue. He figured out what was not working for the Lions of the past, and quickly scrapped former coach Armond Hill's game plan. First order of business: no more Princeton offense the new Lions would run and gun.
Over the last five games, Penn has been much more aggressive on the court. Cornell and Brown have been playing the up-tempo game all season. Now even Columbia a team once famous for 50-49 barnburners has decided to play a full-court game.
The Bears from Providence are leading the league with 81.1 points per game, followed closely by Penn with 78.3.
Princeton, on the other hand, deliberately posts only 61.6 points per contest. And that's the game plan all along.
Keep in mind this is the same Princeton team that scored 58 points in 50 minutes of basketball against a Harvard squad coming off a 104-69 cheesesteaking by the Quakers.
It's hard to argue with the Tigers' 6-1 start this season. But there are still a lot of games to be played, and the Ivy race is far from decided.
Jason Forte and company will have another shot at Princeton this weekend, and there is a lot to be said for their plan of attack. The fast-paced Bears are averaging 71 possessions per game and converting for 1.14 points on each of them. By comparison, the Tigers get their hands on the ball just over 58 times in 40 minutes.
While John Thompson III's Orange and Black do a fine job of taking and making high-percentage shots, they leave points on the table by only using 47 feet of the floor on offense.
It's refreshing to see Ivy teams that can put pressure on the ball from coast-to-coast. I would much rather watch a track meet than a game in which the words "shot clock violation" are heard more frequently than "media timeout."
More than just the entertainment factor, though, a full-court game has become a requisite for the coveted Ivy crown. If the Tigers are going to wrestle it away from Penn, they are going to have to play with a lot more energy than they showed last week at Jadwin Gym. The Quakers outran Princeton for 40 minutes and had a 15-point victory to show for it and they can do it again.
The Red and Blue showed they can run with a 79-52 pummeling of fast-paced Cornell and its star Ka'Ron Barnes, the league's top scorer. Sharpshooters Jeff Schiffner and Tim Begley need no invitation to launch a three-ball, and have been doing so with deadly accuracy as of late. The Quakers are averaging a league-high 1.22 points per their 64 possessions a game. Look for the latter figure to increase if Fran Dunphy keeps his foot on the accelerator in the final stretch of the Ivy campaign.
The fact of the matter is that teams in this league are picking up the pace.
This week's announcement from Dartmouth that head coach Dave Faucher one of the few remaining Ivy purveyors of the Princeton offense outside of the Garden State would be leaving after this season, opens the door for another Ancient Eight program to receive a makeover. And the Big Green could use a change of pace even with Ivy League Rookie of the Year candidate Leon Pattman, the team manages a mere 50.9 points per game and has just one notch in the Ivy win column. Fresh talent in Hanover could do for Dartmouth what Jones is working toward in New York: build a contender that can run.
Do not write off the Princeton offense entirely, though. The Tigers have made their system work well against nonconference opponents who have only just seen it on TV. It's one thing to entertain Mike Krzyzewski's Blue Devils with a sequence of 12 passes followed by a three-point attempt, but don't expect an Ivy team to fall for the same tricks. Coaches like Dunphy and Brown's Glen Miller have been down that road before. They know how to turn the tables on the snail-paced Tigers offense, and it's not by fighting fire with fire.
Save the Princeton offense for the televised games the commentators always seem to get a kick out of it. But if teams are serious about winning games in this league, they had better learn to run.
