Athletic directors: No postseason basketball tournament
Today, the athletic directors of the Ivy League released a statement dismissing the idea of a postseason basketball tournament to decide which team from the Ancient Eight would get a bid to the NCAA tournament.
“After careful consideration of these proposals, the athletics directors decided that our current method of determining the Ivy League Champion and our automatic bid recipient to the NCAA Championship is the best model moving forward,” said Robin Harris, the Ivy League executive director.
The proposal, written by Columbia men’s head basketball coach Kyle Smith, had unanimous support from the men’s coaches in the conference, but will not be discussed further by the athletic directors whose approval was needed to continue the process in executing a tournament.
I can’t imagine why the athletic directors of all people would be against this – and vote against the idea? I thought it was the presidents!!
Now that Harvard appears headed for the kind of dominance that Penn and Princeton previously enjoyed, its not surprising that the new runner-up group would like to improve their chances of making it into the Dance by lucking it out in a one game playoff.
A better approach is for the other Ivies to keep on improving against the day – not far off – when the league will get a second entry via the wildcard route.