We’re only halfway through but the playoff picture is surprisingly clear.
Yale is far and away the best team in the league and a lock for the #1 seed. 14-0 is very possible, verging on probable. Outside of 7 minutes against the Tiger bench, they’ve looked invincible.
Cornell and Princeton are good not great and will be #2 and #3. Or #3 and #2. Cornell would probably beat Princeton in the ILT semis, but Princeton would have a better shot of upsetting Yale in the ILT final.
Dartmouth has a surprising 2-game lead on the #4 seed. I’d love to see the Big Green make their first ILT and join the playoff party. And hey, anything can happen once you get there.
Brown, Harvard and Penn aren’t out of it at 2-5, but I think only Brown has the talent and experience to pull off an extended hot streak.
Columbia had an epic comeback vs. Brown today, but it’s probably too little too late. They had the toughest schedule - first 3 games vs. Yale, Cornell and Princeton. Then Rubio De La Rosa got injured. Brutally bad luck and I feel for them.
Luke Benz gives Brown a 16% chance based on their metrics. I would probably give them a better chance then that just because Kino Lilly is that good, and if they manage to stop shooting themselves in the foot, I like them better than any of the other non-CPY teams. Their margin for error is pretty much gone, though.
I agree that Cornell and Princeton will meet in the ILT semis. The only game on the remaining schedule that means much is Princeton at Cornell. The Tigers need to play well regardless of who wins. They laid an egg last year in Ithaca and did not show much against Cornell last month. 9-5 easily gets in the ILT which is what they are competing to do at this point. Regular season title seems out of reach now. Henderson honestly believes his team will improve going forward but one can reasonably wonder why it is taking so long. They may have peaked in December.
When Abdullahi is on the floor, the opposing big can sag on D and clog the lane against Lee and Pierce. Byriel has only the 3 point shot; no post moves. Hence Happy must improve as he is the best option.
I saw a comment about this on the old board, but I was reminded of this weird bug in NCAA data I pull schedule from that was mischaracterizing Princeton/Dartmouth game later this month as @ Hanover rather than Princeton. That’s fixed now and the updated #'s are on my site.
Dartmouth is still favored of course but a little less than before, with Brown picking up a few % points.
There’s little question in my mind that Brown is the 4th best team in the league. More a matter of if Brown has enough in the tank to overcome the current 2 games (+ H2H tiebreaker) deficit to Dartmouth.
Brown’s path to the 4 seed probably requires them to go at least 5-2 including beating Dartmouth. Doable but not much margin for error, and 5+ more wins requires a win against at least one of Yale/Princeton/Cornell (that latter of whom they did already beat)
From Pomeroy, Yale is +12.9, Cornell +3.0 and Princeton +2.4. That’s per 100 possessions so for the full season Yale is estimated to have so far been about 7 points better than Cornell and 7.5 better than Princeton (about 70 possessions per game). From the Ivy league sports website, conference only games, Yale has outscored their 7 opponents by 17.3 ppg, Cornell is +5.9, Princeton is +2.1, so Yale has been 11-12 ppg better than Cornell and 15 ppg better than Princeton- and that’s with Yale’s games against those two being road games. I’m almost certain this is the largest difference between first and second place teams in many years. Yale’s offense against Cornell yesterday was terrific, Poulakidas, Townsend and Mbeng all have a decent chance to be first team all-Ivy and Poulakidas seems to me to be the leading candidate for POY.
