Josh Hirsch: Ivies must act to toughen schedules

It seemed to me Saturday night that Penn thought it was better than Yale and did not have to exert the maximum effort to beat the Elis on the road.

That turned out to be false, as Yale gave the Quakers a wake-up call with a 77-68 win. But it was not so far from absurd.

Yale went 4-9 in its nonconference schedule -- a schedule that was ranked 99th in the country according to ESPN.com's InsideRPI. And that was the strongest slate in the Ivy League.

Ratings guru Ken Pomeroy has the Ancient Eight, as a whole ranked 29th of 31 Division I conferences in terms of strength of non-league schedule.

The league's record against teams in the RPI top 25 is 0-4, not surprising for the Ivies. Against the teams ranked by ESPN between 26-50, the Ivies are 1-4, with the lone win coming courtesy of Brown, against Providence.

But what is most disturbing is the conference's record against teams ranked between 51 and 100. Against those mediocre squads that top Ivy teams should do relatively well against, the Ivy League is 2-17 - the wins were Penn's over No. 55 Drexel and Harvard's over No. 99 Vermont.

Only 28 games against the top 100? An average of less than four per team of about 15 nonconference matchups? An average nonconference schedule strength (not including Penn) of 219?

Not coincidentally, the three teams with the best nonconference schedules - Yale, Penn and Harvard - find themselves in the top half of the league standings.

Columbia, which had the 14th-worst nonconference schedule in the country, just pulled its way into the top four with its sweep of Harvard and Dartmouth, while Cornell at schedule No. 287 (of 336) could not stay in a first-place tie by losing at Harvard Saturday night.

The Lions were a hot pick to unseat Penn as champions coming into this season, and had a respectable 9-5 nonconference record.

But playing such bad teams day in and day out did not even prepare them for the Ivy League, and Columbia started 1-3.

Ivy coaches are doing the league a disservice.

While I understand some teams (like Texas-El Paso and Syracuse, for example) may end up being worse than originally thought when the schedules were made, there is no excuse for cupcake schedules. The Ivy teams have too few chances for quality wins and not enough opportunities to grow as a team and see what they're made of.

There is no reason to sit and collect wins. No one in the Ivy League is going undefeated. And if getting enough home games is a concern because no one will play Ivy teams on the road, then play all the road games against good teams. They'll be happy to have the easy wins.

Maybe a team will win one of those games, which can lead to increased confidence and more success, and ultimately a stronger league as a whole.

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

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