It's Tournament Time

The Ivy League announced today that it will have a conference tournament to determine the winner of the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament in men's and women's lacrosse beginning with the 2010 season. The regular-season champion will still be known as the league champion, in keeping with Ivy League policy for other sports.

The move is mostly a reaction to the two at-large bids that the Great Western Lacrosse League got last season after having its own conference tournament, which lifted the strength of schedule and therefore RPI of its participants. ACC lacrosse has always benefited from having a conference tournament in terms of NCAA tournament factors, including quality wins.

Had there been an Ivy League men's lacrosse tournament a year ago, the league almost surely would have gotten two NCAA bids, rather than just the one that Cornell earned for winning the league. The tournament last year would have been Cornell-Penn and Princeton-Brown, with the winners to meet. Had it broken in several different ways, three teams might have gotten in from the league (for instance, had Penn won, then Penn, Cornell and the Princeton-Brown winner might all have gotten in and the GWLL would have been back to one bid).

On the women's side, the Ivy League has had two or three teams in the NCAA tournament every year this decade. For them, the conference tournament will be a good vehicle for postseason preparation, as well as a way to improve seedings.

The logical question that can be asked by Ivy League fans is whether or not this is a precursor to a league tournament in other sports, most notably basketball. TigerBlog loves the idea of the lacrosse tournament; it would hate the idea of a basketball tournament.

TigerBlog cannot stand the conference basketball tournaments for leagues who will get one NCAA tournament bid, because it totally devalues the regular season. A year ago, for instance, Cornell went 14-0 in men's basketball. Had there been a conference tournament and Cornell had stumbled, there would have been no at-large bid waiting.

This would be bad for two main reasons: 1) Cornell spent two months proving it was the best and only deserving team in the league for the NCAA tournament and 2) you want to send your best team to the NCAA tournament, because that's where the real potential for a league to make a name for itself is with a first-round win. Yes, the conference tournament final is on ESPN, but so what? So many games are televised now, that even that isn't that great of a prize anymore.

Back to the lacrosse tournament, though, TigerBlog relies on this philosophy: Anything where more lacrosse is played cannot be a bad thing.