The long, long odds

It should be pointed out that I – Mr. I Haven’t Watched a Game All Year and I Have No Intention of Starting Now – was perfect in selecting Thursday’s opening games in the NCAA Tournament. Yep, that’s right… a perfect 16-for-16. That’s the first time I pulled that off and I seem to be headed for my best picking since I went 14-for-16 in choosing the Sweet 16 over a decade ago. In that year Old Dominion went to the Round of 16. I think they beat Villanova, too.

Regardless, like most people I filled out two pools. One was based on probability as determined by a mathematician who crunched the numbers and the other was based on what I knew about college hoops. Guess which one was perfect?

Left to my own devices I came up with Oregon, Kansas, Georgetown and Texas A&M for the Final Four, though a Penn alum told me A&M was a trendy pick and after its inconsistent showing in the opening-round victory over the Quakers, it was hard to think they were going to be in the tournament for the long haul…

Yeah, exactly. Sour grapes.

On another note regarding Penn and its basketball team, Stephen Danley, the starting forward for the Quakers, had been contributing to The New York Times’ college basketball blog called “The Bracket.” In his first entry, Danley wrote about how he and his teammates deal with cliché questions from reporters on their Ivy League pedigree and how they are so-called true “student-athletes.” Needless to say, it was pretty funny including the parts where Danley revealed the fun they have to the dim reporters doing those pad Ivy League stories.

But reading it I was struck by the clichés within the clichés. Like a riddle wrapped in an enigma covered in a conundrum. Or whatever.

How’s this for a cliché: Penn, or any other Ivy League school, in the NCAA Tournament. There, I said it. What’s the point of having those teams in the “Big Dance” when all we get to read about come March is how no Ivy League school has won a tournament game since Princeton beat UNLV in 1998 or how Princeton upset UCLA in 1996 and almost beat No. 1 Georgetown and Patrick Ewing.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Penn made it to the Final Four, and I think I know the reason why. Ready? Because it was nearly 30 years ago!

Here are some handy dandy facts from the same blog Danley contributed to:

But in the eight seasons since Princeton beat the Rebels, Ivy teams have lost by an average of 14 points and haven’t been seeded high than No. 11. That doesn’t bode well for Penn.

And:

Here are the results of the Ivy’s eight-game N.C.A.A. losing streak:

2006
No. 2 Texas 60
No. 15 Penn 52

2005
No.4 Boston College 85
No. 13 Penn 65

2004
No. 3 Texas 66
No. 14 Princeton 49

2003
No. 6 Oklahoma State 77
No. 11 Penn 63

2002
No. 6 California 82
No. 11 Pennsylvania 75

2001
No. 2 North Carolina 70
No. 15 Princeton 48

2000
No. 4 Illinois 68
No. 13 Penn 58

1999
No. 6 Florida 75
No. 11 Penn 61

Just once I’d like to see Penn – or any other Ivy League school – tell the NCAA Tournament, “thanks, but no thanks. We’re not going to travel across the country to be a first-round hors d’oeuvres for a potential national title contender. We’re going to take our chances in the NIT where we have a chance to win. We don't need to play the No. 3 seed and lose so everyone can call us 'scrappy.'”

Yeah, I know this probably isn’t a popular sentiment, but I can’t understand the logic of a team going to tournament that it has no chance of not just winning, but also being competitive. Sure, Penn could get lucky and win a game, but the thing about the NCAA Tournament is that those No. 13, 14 and 15 seeds don’t last too long after the first upset. In fact, I’d like my odds of winning the Powerball over Penn’s (or Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell or Dartmouth... not Harvard -- they have it all figured out) chances to win two games in an NCAA Tournament.

But then again, what do I know. Obviously those smart kids from Penn know what's going on.

Hold on: didn’t they let Penn into the Ivy League because they were good at sports or was that Cornell?

Come on Penn folks, laugh for once. Everyone else is.

Anyway, my mathematician (an Ivy Leaguer, but not from Penn) claimed that the Quakers had a 3.8 percent chance to win a game in the tournament this year and only six other teams had worse odds.

His Final Four? Kansas, Florida, North Carolina and (ahem) Texas A&M, with Carolina beating Kansas for the championship.

Then again, he had Duke in the Sweet 16.