2011 Team Similarities: Princeton vs. Harvard

The Ivy League during the 2010-11 season was about two teams, Princeton and Harvard. The Tigers and Crimson battled it out all season with Sydney Johnson’s team eventually prevailing after a last-second 63-62 victory in the teams’ third meeting of the season.

The two teams were almost inseparable by any metric. Princeton won 25 games, Harvard won 23. Harvard finished 83rd in KenPom, Princeton 84th. It was obvious that these were two very good, not just Ivy League, but basketball teams in general. But what do similarity scores say about the debate?

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Updates to NEC and Ivy League value added posts

The best part about the internet is that people keep building on the work that others are doing. Today on Cracked Sidewalks is a post about predicting the future using value add and there’s a lot there you should check out. Using some of those concepts I wanted to update my posts about the NEC and the Ivy League before moving on.

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Value add likes Columbia’s offense

Is it possible that after finishing right around .500 last season, and 6-8 in league play, Columbia might be a team that’s ready to make the leap in the Ivy League? Well, the one metric that seems to support that theory is offense “value add.” (For more background on the stat see this post and Cracked Sidewalks.)

A break down the Ivy League’s returnees through the lens of the statistic suggests that Harvard is going to run away with league crown. The Crimson combined for a very solid overall number of 15.1% value added when you add up all the individual contributions. I haven’t run the numbers for every school, but I bet that’s high even amongst BCS teams. That’s just another reason to watch out for Harvard next season. But it was the second rated team in the Ivy League, Columbia, that really stood out when I looked at the numbers.

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Ivies lead Public Recognition Awards

The NCAA released the Public Recognition Awards for the 2009-10 academic year today. 909 athletic teams that were in the top 10 percent of their sport were recognized for academic achievement. What’s not surprising is that Ivy League dominated the awards.

Yale (23 awards), Brown (22) and Dartmouth (21) led the way. All told the Ivy League had 135 teams recognized. College basketball had 40 teams recognized including seven of the Ancient Eight. The only one not there? Dartmouth.

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Could one prep school build a competitive Ivy League roster?

Northfield Mount Hermon is a prep school of 630 students. It also happens to be home to a number of future Ivy League athletes. This season 11 former NMH basketball players will be playing on six different Ivy League teams. Only Penn and Princeton won’t be represented. (And the Quakers had one, but Brian Fitzpatrick transferred to Bucknell before last season.)

That group of players includes guys like Harvard’s Laurent Rivard, Dartmouth’s David Rufful and Brown’s Andrew McCarthy. Which begs the question: How competitive would a team composed entirely of NMH alumni be in the Ivy League? Continue reading “Could one prep school build a competitive Ivy League roster?” →

The Ivy League’s wide recruiting world

On one hand Ivy League schools have one of the toughest sells in Division I basketball. The schools commit a lot of money to athletics, but not always to college basketball. There are no scholarships, but there is financial aid. Then there are the academic requirements. You might not have to be Bill Gates to play basketball at Harvard, but you can’t be dumb either. They want you to stay in school for four years.

Thankfully, the Ivy League has a way to combat this problem, by offering some of the best “names” in collegiate education. There are only five Top 20 News and World Reports schools that aren’t in the Ivy League and play Division I basketball. (They are: Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame.) The educational success of the league’s institutions thus gives them national appeal in education, and this year’s recruiting class shows how powerful it is.

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Best players coming to a gym near you

Recruiting is picking up steam at the moment and Justin D. Young over at the National Hoops Report recently posted a list of the top incoming players for each conference.

It’s an entertaining undertaking that probably took quite a bit of research for a few conferences where you won’t find McDonald’s All-Americans or even Top 100 recruits via any service. None of the NYC schools were represented, but here are some talented freshman that will be playing for the visiting teams next season.

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Sydney Johnson moves from Princeton to Fairfield

The movement of Princeton head coach Sydney Johnson to Fairfield appears to be a little outside of the scope of this site, but it actually brings to light something interesting about two conferences I’ll be covering moving forward. (And the schools missed being included here by about 30 minutes each.) But first let’s get one thing straight, this move isn’t about going to a “better” conference, despite what people will write.

The MAAC and the Ivy League are fairly comparable. For instance, here’s a look at the Ken Pomeroy and Sagarin ratings for both leagues this season:

Ivy: 15th conference in KenPom, 15th in Sagarin
MAAC: 16th conference in KenPom, 15th in Sagarin

Yes, the Ivy League was helped by the emergence of both Princeton and Harvard this season, but the bottom of the MAAC is really the anchor. Schools like Manhattan, Niagara and Marist totalled 11 conference wins between the three of them. The Ivy League’s Ancient Eight has a smaller pool to draw from, and thus the futility of Dartmouth failed to anchor down the conference.

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