Hanover
The top two overall finishers will now meet in a best-of-three championship series to determinate the recipient of the league’s automatic berth to the 64-team NCAA tournament. Rick Bender, Dartmouth’s director of varsity athletics communications, said the change was voted on and passed by the Ivy athletic directors last year, but did not become public until last week.
“It’s not like the basketball tournament, which was a national-interest story,” said Bender, referring to the Ivy League this year becoming the last NCAA Division I conference to go to a postseason tournament for men’s and women’s hoops. “They weren’t trying to keep it from the media, but they weren’t publishing it, either.”
A Connecticut television station produced a May 2 online article noting the change, but incorrectly describing a four-team tournament. Dartmouth coach Bob Whalen said the idea of a four-team tournament has come up repeatedly, but that proposals have been rejected.
“It’s usually shot down because ‘Now’s not the time for expansion,’ ” Whalen said. “I’ve been here 28 years, and it never seems to be the time for expansion.”
The driving force behind eliminating the Red Rolfe Division (Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, Harvard) and the Lou Gehrig Division (Cornell, Pennsylvania, Columbia, Princeton) seems to be competitive balance. Teams have been playing non-divisional foes twice each season and those inside their division four times. Now, they will face each league team three times, alternating home sites every year.
While the setup had been a seven-inning and a nine-inning game on Saturday, followed by a nine-inning contest on Sunday, that shorter game also will be nine innings. Bender points out that Ivy Leaguers were often featured among national leaders in complete games, which was an artificial result of the seven-inning clashes.
Ivy squads now need only three starting pitchers, meaning they can trot out their strongest hurlers seven times during league play. It seems likely the conference season, which has started the first week of April, will be moved up a week and have a bye weekend installed for each team. Whalen’s wary of that scenario, pointing out that if Dartmouth and Cornell host games so early, the conditions could be poor.
“It’s tough for kids to leave Florida or California or Texas (on team spring trips) and play conference games in 20-degree weather that they work for all year,” the coach said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s what was decided.”
Extending the Ivy season and moving it up a week means teams could lose a few games from their spring trips, giving their frontline pitchers fewer starts in warmer weather. Having a pitcher make his second or third start of the season in a cold climate creates worry over arm and shoulder health.
“On paper, it all sounds good, but how it’s actually going to work out, I’m not sure,” Whalen said. “Anything that causes you to play fewer games is tough to take. People say this is what all the other leagues do, but I’m not interested in that, because we’re never going to be like all the other leagues.
“I want our league to be as good as it can for the players, but this is what we’re doing and I’m going to be positive about it.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.