Ivy League Conference Overview

Bradley earned MVP honors in the Ivy and deservedly so.  He is the most heralded and best player in Ivy history.  He is a great scorer but is much more than that as the Tiger faithful will tell you.  He had a great supporting cast of great layers and a coach in Carril that implemented both a great offense and defense to benefit the skills of his team.  The Tigers deserved the title this year and New Jersey has something to shout about.  But can they win again?  Well, we know Bradley, in his last year of eligibility, will take some attention so can the supporting cast play as well or even better than last year.  Junior Brian Taylor and Senior Geoff Petrie form a potent back court.  Taylor is the perfect foil to Bradley as he can handle and get to the hoop but can also hit open threes.  This 6’2 185 pounder from Perth Amboy is as well-rounded of point guard as there is on the East Coast.  Petrie is a 6’4 marksmen as this team, with their great defense and terrific long-range shooting can beat anybody on a given night.  The reason they don’t win every night is a true weakness and lack of size up front.  Senior John Hummer is tough as nails inside but he needs a sidekick who can score a little.  Fellow senior Chris Thomforde is still developing but is big at 6’9, as is Hummer, which for the Ivy is big.  Senior Peter Campbell and junior Armond Hill give Carrill depth on the perimeter but this team could really use another big body. Carril’s crew is ready to win again but man those Quakers want blood this year and it is the boys from Penn’s turn. 

The Penn Quakers also have a great program and were well on their way to winning a league title.  Well except for they fell apart at the end.  The Quakers rotate as many as 12 players into a system that works.  No superstars here but Philly is proud of this solid program that garnished a trip to the NIT.  Penn has become a juggernaut in Philly with rotating coaches who all implement the Quaker style of play but seem to be moving on to bigger things.  But while there the likes of Jack McCloskey, Dick Harter and Chuck Daly have all made a huge impact and now the reins to this great program were in the hands of Fran Dunphy who will almost assuredly keep this train rolling.  Or so we thought until Daly wanted his job back and Dunphy headed to Temple to become John Chaney’s assistant.  Dunphy left Leno er Daly some solid talent especially for this league but as good as Senior Ernie Beck or juniors Dave Wohl or Tony Price they are not exactly Dollar Bill Bradley.  The Quakers will win this year, if they do win, with team ball. Though they might not be elite in talent they sure have a lot of good talent.  The Quakers just need to figure out a way to stop Bradley.  The boys from Philly will figure it out somehow.  They always do!

If either, well or both, of these stellar programs falter both Dartmouth and Columbia have the teams to push through to the top.  Columbia has scoring machine Chet Forte as well as fellow senior Jim McMillen (best wing in the league besides Bradley) and big man Jack Molinas who has a bad reputation but a rugged inside game.  Dartmouth has arguably the best player in the league outside of Bradley in big man Rudy Larusso who is as tough as they come and will not back down from anyone.  Experience is the key for the New Hampshire program as Coach Ozzie Cowles returns a senior laden group who know how to get the job done in the Ivy wars.    

Yale and Cornell are the next best two teams but neither has enough talent to even come close to the top two though either could jump up a few places on the totem pole with good years.  Yale will be led once last time by senior stalwart Tony Lavelli who is another superb wing.  Fellow senior John Lee is a stud as well on the wing and new Coach James Jones has a nice sophomore class led by big Chris Dudley who goes 6’11 and can play but cannot shoot free throws.  The Big Red do not have any stars and did not get one preseason all-league honor.   Another new coach, Steve Donahue, has a superb incoming class but will have to rely on a deep back court to compete until the new kids come of age.  Senior guards Lee Morton, Gregg Morris and Chuck Rolles give Donahue some experience to rely upon until the transition is complete. 

Harvard and Brown will once again battle to stay out of the basement as neither program has much hope unless some unlikely hero is waiting in the wings to energize the program and their delinquent fans.  The Crimson have one up and comer in sophomore Joe Carrabino that former Duke player and 2nd year coach Tommy Amaker is going to hang his hat on.  Amaker has more coming and needs it as his upperclassmen, as he found out last year, are truly student-athletes with the emphasis on the student.  The college named for a color finished last again last year and the bandleaders’ team played, the proverbial, better than their record.  Junior posts Arnie Berman and Phil Brown got ran over on their first trip through the league last year but got some licks back on the way back through.  The guard play for Coach Glenn Miller’s Bears has been wildly inconsistent and needs to improve if this team is getting out of the basement this year. 

The Ivy is a two team race per usual and will come down to Penn or Princeton once again!  Well, supposedly but teams from Dartmouth and Columbia have hope of breaking up the streak where one of these two have won on alternating years for over a decade.  This will be harder said then done as they are the best two teams and the Tigers have a preseason All-American on their team.  Senior Bill Bradley was sixth in the country in scoring last year and could go higher but has a good enough supporting cast to get this team back to the Big Dance.  The Quakers are deep and tough and hungry.  This will almost assuredly go down to the last weekend but whoever wins one thing is for sure.  Nobody wants to draw an Ivy League team in the opening round no matter how low they are seeded.