Covering The Ivy: Part VI

In The Running For Player Of The Year When I started doing these updates a few weeks ago, Jeremy Lin was the clear-cut favorite to take home Player of the Year honors. Things don't look quite so clear now. Lin has gone from outstanding to merely good as Harvard has begun to look like a third-place team over the last two weekends. He did have his best scoring game in two months against Cornell on Friday, but the gap between him and his closest competitors is narrowing. The two players most likely to challenge Lin for Player of the Year honors seem to be Zack Rosen and Ryan Wittman. (The names below are ranked in statistical order according to my own rudimentary "Points + Rebounds + Assists = Awesomeness!" formula. That's why Matt Mullery isn't included in the same category as Rosen and Wittman: though he's deserving of consideration, I don't think he will receive much.) Last week, I found a blog post from late January where the writer suggested that Rosen is more valuable to his team than any other Ivy League player. He was immediately shot down by a number of commenters. The prevailing opinion seemed to be that since Penn was bad, how valuable could Rosen actually be? I took the liberty of looking back at a few recent Ivy League Players of the Year, and for the most part, the winners have played for the team that wins the conference. Since 2000, however, there have been three exceptions: Columbia's Craig Austin (2000-01), Brown's Jason Forte (2003-04), and Dartmouth's Alex Barnett (2008-09). I don't know the Ivy League's history nearly well enough to attempt an explanation of why this happened, but there is one fact that I can put forth: the only one of those three who played for a winning team was Forte (and just barely - the Bears were 14-13). Columbia was 12-15 in 2000-01 and Dartmouth was 9-19 last season. While Rosen's Quakers are just 5-18 with five games to play, one of those wins was huge, a 79-64 beatdown of a nationally ranked Cornell team that ranks as one of the biggest upsets of the season. And it wouldn't have happened without the play of Rosen (22 points, 5 assists, 3 steals). The case for Wittman kinda goes in the opposite direction. Most of the time, the Player of the Year comes from the conference's best team. That was the case in 2007-08, when Wittman's current teammate, Louis Dale, won the award as a sophomore on a Cornell team that went 14-0 in the conference. Despite the aforementioned stumble against Penn, the Big Red is once again the Ivy League's best team, and Wittman is its best player. More importantly, he is one of the best scorers in the history of the conference with 1,908 points, just 56 away from passing a guy who played for Yale in the 1940s for fifth all-time. Despite that four-year consistency and two appearances on the All-Ivy League First Team, he has never won Player of the Year, losing out to Dale and Barnett the last two seasons. It's not entirely crazy to imagine that Harvard's fall in the final standings, combined with Wittman's key performances against Kansas and in the second head-to-head matchup against the Crimson, could make him an attractive candidate in the eyes of the voters. All that being said? It's still Lin's award to lose. He hasn't been transcendent as of late, but he hasn't exactly been bad either. His steals and blocked shots have declined the last two weekends (three steals and one block in four games), but those defensive numbers are still far and above any of the other contenders. 8.Jack Eggleston, junior, Pennsylvania (LW: 8) - 29 points 19 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks in 67 minutes7.Noruwa Agho, sophomore, Columbia (LW: 5) - 25 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals in 74 minutes6.Alex Zampier, senior, Yale (LW: 6) - 30 points, 8 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals in 64 minutes 5. Jeff Foote, senior, Cornell (LW: 4) - 21 points, 12 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 blocks in 54 minutes4.Ryan Wittman, senior, Cornell (LW: 7) - 50 points, 11 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, 2 blocks in 69 minutes3.Matt Mullery, junior, Brown (LW: 3) - 37 points, 19 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, 3 blocks in 69 minutes2.Zack Rosen, sophomore, Penn (LW: 2) - 54 points, 5 rebounds, 15 assists, 5 steals in 75 minutes1.Jeremy Lin, senior, Harvard (LW: 1) - 35 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists, 1 steal in 68 minutesGames of the Week Cornell 79, Harvard 70 (Friday) - Aside from the recent loss to Penn, the Big Red has been unbeatable in conference play. After finishing off the season sweep of Harvard, Cornell is now 9-1 against the Ivies. Brown 57, Princeton 54 (Saturday) - Princeton and Cornell are playing Friday night in a game that was supposed to give one team the edge going into the final weekend of the season. Now, Cornell can virtually clinch with a win, while Princeton needs a victory just to have a chance. This Weekend's Games Friday, February 26 Brown @ Harvard Yale @ Dartmouth Pennsylvania @ Columbia Princeton @ Cornell Saturday, February 27 Yale @ Harvard Brown @ Dartmouth Princeton @ Columbia Pennsylvania @ Cornell Conference Standings Team Overall Conference Behind Remaining Magic # Pomeroy RPI Cornell23-4 9-10 4468 (+4)50 (+3) Princeton16-7 7-21.555 128 (-8)161 (-38) Harvard18-67-3243103 (-3)97 (-7) Penn5-18 4-54.552309 (+/-0)305 (-14) Yale10-17 4-654Eliminated258 (-19) 280 (-4) Brown10-17 4-6 54Eliminated266 (+22)254 (+28) Columbia9-15 3-764Eliminated297 (-3)251 (-8) Dartmouth 5-19 1-9 84Eliminated339 (-1)328 (+3)