For out latest Bracket Rundown podcast, CLICK HERE.
Yale at Columbia, 8:00 PM Eastern, American Sports Network
At long last, the Ivy League moves into its regular season conference play tonight, being the last conference in the country to truly do so. While almost every Ivy team has played two league games so far (other than Penn and Princeton who have only played one), those games are against their “travel partners”. Beginning tonight, and lasting for six weeks, the Ivy begins its normal Friday-Saturday schedule of conference games. Our UTR Game of the Day heads to New York City as the Columbia Lions host the Yale Bulldogs as the battle to see if anyone can dethrone Harvard (which already has one conference loss, at Dartmouth) begins.
Heading into the season, tonight’s two opponents appeared to be the most likely candidates to take a run at the Crimson. Yale enters tonight’s game with a 13-6 overall record and a 2-0 mark in conference, having swept their games against Brown. Yale most notably picked up a huge road victory at defending national champion Connecticut on December 5. While have lost six games, one was a double overtime loss to in-state rival Quinnipiac, another was a double overtime loss at Vanderbilt, and they were competitive in losses at Providence and at Albany. We can also certainly forgive the Bulldogs for their loss at “the people’s team”, NJIT — a game that yours truly attended. Yale’s best player, Justin Sears, suffered an injury very early in that game and did not return.
Tonight, Yale takes on the Columbia Lions, who split their first two Ivy League games of the season with Cornell. The Lions are 9-7 overall without any wins of true note. They also have a couple of bad losses, including the Cornell game and a loss at home to Loyola-Maryland. Columbia did take on the same UConn team that Yale beat, but lost that game by 15 points. Perhaps the best game the Lions played all season was a 56-46 loss at Kentucky — a game that the Lions hung around in, perhaps mostly because UK seemed to sleepwalk through the first 30+ minutes of it. If the Lions are going to take a shot at contending with Harvard this season, they will need a win at home tonight over Yale, and may need to win their return trip to Yale later this season as well. If either of these teams can actually dethrone the Crimson and capture the Ivy League’s automatic bid, it would break one of the longer NCAA tournament droughts in existence. Columbia has not been in the field since 1968, while Yale has danced since 1962.
Bracket Projections: January 30th
Below are our most recent Bracket Projections. As is the case every week, we are not unanimous on all of the teams or seedings, but have managed to come to this consensus.
-For our most recent video podcast where we collectively build the seed list – CLICK HERE
-For our most recent Under the Radar Video Podcast, where we discuss most of the teams outside the bubble seeded #13 through #16 – CLICK HERE
BRACKET NOTES
A few notes about this field:
– Utah was moved down to #16 overall on the seed list after losing at UCLA Thursday night. This loss occurred after we recorded the Bracket Rundown podcast. No other changes were made based on Thursday Night’s results.
– All teams were placed on their “natural” seed line. While a few teams needed to be switched around to a less optimal region for the team within its seed line in order to accommodate the bracketing rules, noone needed to be moved up or down a line this week.
– A switch also had to be made among teams on the 4 seed line in order to obtain “region balance”. The sum total of the Seed List rankings for the top four teams of each region has to be added up after bracketing the top 4 seed lines. If there is more than a 5 point difference between the highest and lowest of these, the regions are considered out of balance and have to be adjusted. This occurred and required me to send Butler to the East Region instead of the Midwest, with Louisville heading out West and Utah to the Midwest. Utah was not allowed to play in the West Region because Arizona was already there. The net loser in these moves was Louisville, which ended up having their entire tournament on the West Coast. If they had been one or two spots higher on the Seed List, they would have stayed in the East or Midwest. This is why, especially among the top 16 teams on the Seed List, even moving up one spot within a seed line can be very important.
To discuss this, and other matters concerning college basketball, check out our relatively new and currently not very busy message boards. There aren’t many people at the party , but there’s plenty of beer for everyone!! – CLICK HERE