While the Semifinals featured the Yale versus Harvard showdown that draws the attention of everybody when they shift their eyes to the Ivy League, the first every Ivy League Conference finals will feature the Yale Bulldogs against the top seeded Princeton Tigers with the NCAA automatic bid on the line. Princeton has been playing amazing basketball all season long and hasn’t lost a game since December. Can Yale be the first conference team to beat the Tigers this year here in their third meeting?
At 12 p.m. ET, tune into ESPN2 for live television coverage of this inaugural Ivy League Tournament Final game on Sunday, March 12, 2017, at the Palestra in Philadelphia, PA.
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Can Princeton really lose this game? They destroyed the entire Ivy League in the regular season. They’ve got a 14-0 conference record and ran off 17-straight wins prior to the tournament.
Of course, Penn did make it a close one on Saturday afternoon, pushing the Tigers to overtime in a game that Princeton was an eight-point favorite at tip-off. Princeton ended up pushing the spread thanks to a big performance in overtime, but we saw that the Tigers may not be indestructible.
Nevertheless, Princeton is still in the midst of a momentous winning streak and has even performed well against some seemingly lofty odds during its conference games. They’re 9-5 ATS in Ivy League play.
On the flip side, Yale squeezed by Harvard by two points in their semifinal bout giving the team four straight wins. They’re 3-1 ATS in those four games, but had a string of four straight losses SU and five straight defeats ATS prior to those most recent games.
Princeton will be sizeable favorites when BookMaker releases the odds for this game.
Coaching Angle
Sure, Ivy League teams are part of the NCAA tournament and a number of them have had surprising upsets in recent past, but this playoff style of basketball is a bit of a foreign concept to these elite houses of learning.
After finally giving into years of pressure to form a conference tournament, the Ivy League picked a year where it had a team go undefeated in Ivy League play and beat any other team in the conference standings by four games. If ever there was a clear cut best team in the conference without the need for a tournament, this was that year. Nevertheless, Mitch Henderson had to lead his Princeton Tigers into battle against Penn at the Palestra on Penn’s campus in an in-effect road game to kick off the first ever tournament.
After barely pulling even in regulation, Henderson got his team going in overtime. They came out and went on a nine-point run and the rest is history.
It took some time, but Henderson got his team to get over the mental hurdle of still needing to prove themselves the best team in conference to get the NCAA bid. This team now just needs to maintain that focus they found late against Penn into Sunday’s final.
Of course, if symbolism means anything having Henderson at the helm is apropos. He was a captain of the last Princeton team roll through the Ivy League undefeated. His team did that in the regular season and needs just one more win against Yale to get back to the Big Dance.
Last Meeting
Being conference foes, these two teams are, of course, extremely familiar with each other. This will be the third game between them this season.
The Tigers were triumphant in both meetings, both at home and on the road, taking the first game 66-58 and the second 71-52.
This year we’ve seen five different Princeton players reach double-digit scoring numbers against Yale, but only one Tiger has done it in both meetings against the Bulldogs: Myles Stephens. In fact, the sophomore even put up 20 in the second meeting, though that was just second on the team in that contest after Devin Cannady’s 29.
While a difference of just five points scored by Princeton in the two games. The first game was much more of a grind-it-out type of performance as the Tigers shot under 40-percent from the field. The second game was a much better one for the Tigers offense. While it resulted in just a few more points, the team shot a staggering 59-percent overall.
Obviously, the Tigers will be hoping for an offensive performance more like the second meeting, though reality will probably fall somewhere in the middle. At least there was one consistent from the previous meetings this year: Princeton’s defense against Yale. The Bulldogs were held below 40-percent shooting in both games and really struggled to get any sort of run.
Free College Basketball ATS Picks
This is uncharted waters for both programs here in the inaugural conference tournament, but we’ve seen plenty of Princeton outclassing the rest of the Ivy League this year to doubt their ability to beat Yale one more time.
The Bulldogs haven’t looked good against Princeton in either of their other two games and there’s no reason to expect anything different this time.
Look for the Tigers defense to once against stifle the Yale offensive attack, keeping them under 40-percent shooting from the floor. Meanwhile, you can count on Princeton having the advantage against the boards and outshooting Yale inside and out. Princeton wins this one like they did the other two games against the Bulldogs: with relative ease.
College Basketball Odds: Princeton 72, Yale 57
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