Penn's Huge Win

I know it may seem a little ridiculous for a team that is 4-15 overall and 3-2 in the Ivy League and fired their coach 7 games into the season, to have what I would a "Huge Win". However the ramifications of last night's shocking home victory over Cornell could possibly be felt all the way to March 15th. As most of us should know by the Ivy does their automatic selection the old fashioned way, no conference tournament, regular season champ gets the bid. And the majority of the college basketball world all just assumed that the regular season would be a coronation of the Cornell Big Red, given the fact they are a nationally ranked, senior laden team that almost went into Lawrence and beat the odds on pick to win it all in Kansas. Pretty much everyone assumed they would run the table, or end up 13-1 and cruise to the title, however, surprisingly Princeton has surged to an undefeated start and until yesterday was tied with Cornell for the lead, not Harvard who most expected to be Cornell's main challenger. The thing is, even after Princeton's hot start most expected Cornell at the worst to maybe split their games with Princeton, end up 13-1 and get their bid. Penn has changed everything with their shocking win last night, and yes it was shocking. They were a 17.5 point underdog at home to a team that hadn't lost a game to anyone outside the Big 12 or Big East all year. Why this is such a huge loss is that if Princeton can somehow run the table, not impossible in the weak Ivy as they have already won at Harvard which would be the toughest non-Cornell game on the schedule, and gather a split with Cornell they, not Cornell will take the automatic bid. This could result in an unprecedented first automatic bid for the Ivy League in the conference's history. Never before has a team warranted an automatic bid from the Ivy because they never generally have 2 teams worthy of a bid, and if they have 1 they usually dominate the league. Princeton's hot start has changed all that. Now for the tough part, winning even at home against Cornell will be tough, even in Penn did it as a fluke, Princeton will still be roughly a 5-7 point underdog most likely. But if it does play out like above, if Cornell ends up 22-5, 12-2 in the Ivy, and Princeton runs the table I don't think the committee will be able to justify keeping Cornell out with their resume, and some angry team will be sitting at home cursing and wondering why and how Penn, a 17.5 point underdog, managed to beat mighty Cornell.