The Ivy League doesn’t do conference tournaments, but this year, it’ll have itself a championship game. After meeting just over a week prior, Harvard and Yale – the regular season co-champions – will go at it a third and final time this season to determine who gets that all-important automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Yale prevailed in that most recent meeting, but a traumatic loss in their regular season finale may have affected the Bulldogs’ collective psyche for the worse. It all adds to the drama that is this Ivy League playoff for a ticket to the Big Dance.
Championship Week gets more and more interesting the deeper it goes. See who comes out on top in the power conferences with our previews of the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 tourneys.
Harvard can consider itself lucky to even be playing this playoff. The Crimson had a two-game lead in the standings with just four games left to play, but somehow conspired to lose two of those four, and it was only Yale’s last-gasp loss to Dartmouth that afforded the Crimson another shot at the tourney.
[sc:NCAAB240banner ]Harvard’s loss at Cornell was particularly gruesome. They shot poorly from just about everywhere – 25 percent from the floor, 31 percent from three and 61 percent from the line – in a 57-49 loss.
Leading scorer Wesley Saunders (16 points per game) had 19 points and 11 rebounds against Cornell, but went just 6-of-21 from the floor. Saunders has also had his problems offensively against the Bulldogs in the first two meetings this season. He scored 16 points, but shot just 4-of-13 in their first meeting, a 52-50 Harvard win. But he had just 11 points on 4-of-10 shooting in the 62-52 home loss to the Bulldogs.
Senior Steve Moundou-Missi has come out of nowhere to average 14 points in his last eight games, including a season-high 21 points in the loss against Yale, but the Crimson will still need Saunders playing a little more efficiently to beat the Bulldogs.
Harvard’s excellent defense, though, could be good enough to get the win even with some subpar offense. The Crimson, who are 14th in the nation in defensive rating this season, held Yale to just three field goals in the first half of their first meeting at Yale.
Harvard is 1-4 ATS in its last five games.
Betting on the Yale Bulldogs
1.2 seconds. That’s all that stood between Yale and its first NCAA Tournament bid since 1962. But the Bulldogs blew their defensive coverage on the crucial in-bounds play, which led to Dartmouth’s dramatic 59-58 win over Yale in the season finale.
There’s really no telling what psychological impact such a heart-breaking loss will have on Yale. Conventional wisdom suggests nothing positive. In any case, the Bulldogs will have to put that loss behind them when they face Harvard.
Javier Duren will also need to bounce back from his uncharacteristically poor game against Dartmouth. The senior guard scored 11 points on 3-of-10 shooting, down from the 16 points he’d been averaging in the seven games prior. Duren ended the regular season with three-straight 19-plus point games, culminating with 22 big points against Harvard.
Yale could also look for better production from their leading scorer, Justin Sears. The junior forward is averaging 14.4 points per game this season, but has scored just 19 total points in two games against the Crimson defense. Points have been at a premium in the first two meetings between these two teams, so something closer to Sears’ normal production could turn out to be decisive.
Yale is 5-3 ATS in its last eight games.
Writer’s Prediction
Yale bounces back from its major disappointment to take the game and the automatic Ivy League bid. From mid-majors to the power conferences, create a betting account now and start profiting from all sorts of teams come tournament time.
