The Ivy League sticks with tradition

There will be no free rides in the Ivy League. A team still has to win the regular season championship to earn the conference’s automatic bid. So you won’t see a Cinderella squad come from out of nowhere stealing a bid.

The league announced Thursday that it has decided not to have post season tournaments to determine its men’s and women’s basketball championships.

The Ivy League is the only conference that doesn’t have a tournament to determine its champion.

"After careful consideration of these proposals, the athletics directors decided that our current method of determining the Ivy League Champion and our automatic bid recipient to the NCAA Championship is the best model moving forward," Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris said.

So what does it mean? It means the Ivy League is the only conference in the country where the regular season is of the utmost importance. If you finish in second place, no NCAA Tournament appearance for you.

No second changes or do overs. A team either wins the conference championship and makes the NCAA tournament or it doesn’t. Last year there was nearly a one-game playoff between Harvard (26-5, 12-2) and Pennsylvania (20-13, 11-3), but the Quakers fell short after dropping its regular-season finale at Princeton.

It would’ve actually been fun to see a tournament in the Ivy League. The Ivy had several strong teams as Princeton finished 10-4 in the league, followed by Yale, which took fourth with a conference mark of 9-5. 

But the powers that be have decided to keep to its traditional roots.

Maybe it’s a good thing to see teams take their conference schedules a little more seriously. Not to say that the players and coaches don’t give a full effort, but no one can deny that a program might rest easy sometimes knowing they can still make the tournament regardless of how they play in the regular season.