Cornell Still Undefeated, Brown and Columbia Sweep

As Ivy League play reached its midpoint this past weekend, three teams came up with sweeps, all on the road. Cornell, Columbia, and Brown all picked up two wins on their latest trips.

Cornell improved its record to 8-0 in the league by coming back to defeat Harvard by one and holding off Dartmouth for a 73-63 victory. The Big Red’s 16-5 overall record landed the team a vote in the most recent AP Division I basketball poll, something relatively unusual for an Ancient Eight team in recent years. With its thus far perfect record, the Big Red is in control of its own destiny, as it is ahead of Brown by two games with six games to go.

At this point in the season, it seems that the battle for the league championship is only a two-horse race comprised of Cornell and Brown. The Bears and Big Red meet again this weekend, and the results will either solidify the conference championship for Cornell or open the race up with four games to go.

Brown is coming off a historic weekend, as the Bears defeated both Penn and Princeton on the road for the first time in school history. Senior guard Mark McAndrew scored 20 points in both contests and was the game’s leading rebounder against Princeton, pulling down 10 to give him a double-double for the night. Aiding McAndrew in this notable road sweep was freshman Peter Sullivan, who was especially influential in the Bears’ overtime win against the Tigers. Sullivan scored 13 of his 15 points in the second half of the game, helping the Bears to force overtime and eventually win the game. Yesterday, he was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week for the third time this season.

Penn’s 24-game league home winning streak was snapped Friday night after the Quakers’ loss to Brown. The last time that the Quakers dropped an Ivy League game at the Palestra was on March 9, 2004 in a 76-70 overtime loss to Princeton.

Columbia, the Ivy League’s third-place team, is not mathematically eliminated, but the Lions would need to win their final six games and the Big Red would have to lose four of its last six for the Lions to take the crown. This is all assuming that Brown loses at least two of its final games, with one of its losses coming to the Light Blue.

Columbia’s position is not due to a lack of effort from forward John Baumann, who has been on a tear of late. The senior helped the Lions to their third and fourth straight wins this weekend by scoring over 20 points against both Dartmouth and Harvard and racking up a double-double against the Crimson. For his work, Baumann was awarded Ivy League Player of the Week honors for the second time in three weeks.

As the Ancient Eight season winds to a close, teams will be jockeying for atop position. Some will be playing for a higher spot in the standings, while a select few are aiming even higher than that—for a chance to play on the biggest stage of them all, the NCAA Tournament.