With almost all its teams jumbled together in the middle of the conference standings, there is no doubt that the Ivy League has shown much more parity this season than in the recent past.
And while most Ivy teams seem to be doing a good job of beating each other, the conference as a whole is improving its standing with the rest of the nation.
The Ivy League currently ranks 18th in RPI out of 31 conferences in Division I men's college basketball. This is a notable step forward from last season, when the Ivy League finished 23rd.
Last season, Ivy doormats Dartmouth and Harvard were among the lowest teams in the nation in RPI. The Big Green finished the season ranked 324th out of 326 teams.
But this year, Dartmouth has moved up to No. 265, and is still the lowest-ranked Ivy team. Penn is the highest at No. 76.
Since Ivy schools still have a combined losing record of 46-58 outside of the conference, the improvement in RPI is partly due to the increase in strength of the Ivy teams' non-conference schedules.
Tigers right ship?
The Princeton Tigers, last year's Ivy League champions, broke their four-game losing streak with a 63-53 victory over Columbia on Saturday at Jadwin Gym.
The win helped Princeton avoid its worst Ivy League start in history, but the Tigers still lie in the Ivy cellar with a 2-5 record.
What surprised the 4,512 in attendance the most was that the Tigers were able to secure a win without much help from senior center Judson Wallace.
Wallace, who dominated the inside in Princeton's previous losses to Penn and Cornell, played only 12 minutes against the Lions and fouled out after scoring only two points.
But Wallace's lack of production was compensated by guards Scott Greenman and Will Venable, who tallied 17 and 15 points, respectively.
The Tigers were also helped by 20 Columbia fouls -- including a technical foul on coach Joe Jones -- which led to 40 Tigers free-throw attempts, enough for them to put the game away in the second half.
After the game, Princeton coach Joe Scott credited the victory to his team's defense, which stepped up when its big men were in foul trouble.
Ivies feeding Ivies
Three players from the Ivy Prep School League in New York City are now making names for themselves -- on three different Ivy League teams.
Harvard junior Michael Beal and Cornell freshman Will Scott both went to the Collegiate School, while Princeton senior Andre Logan attended Brooklyn's Poly Prep.
Scott became Collegiate's all-time leading scorer in his senior year, finishing with a 40 percent three-point percentage while shooting a blistering 55 percent from the floor. The 6-foot-4 guard played at Blair Academy in New Jersey the year before he began his career at Cornell.
Scott currently holds the Big Red's third-highest three-point percentage, despite averaging less than 10 minutes per game.
Beal was a two-time first-team All-Ivy Prep League selection at the Collegiate School, where he captained his team as a senior. In his final year, he was selected as the New York Private School Most Valuable Player by the New York Daily News.
However, the guard is having a subpar year as the Crimson's sixth man, averaging only 2.5 points per game off the bench.
Logan was probably the least noteworthy of the three in high school, averaging 20 points in his last three seasons at Poly Prep.
But the Brooklyn native is now the Tigers' first man off the bench, shooting just under 50 percent from behind the three-point line in conference play.
