The Ivy League will never be found among the elite conferences in college basketball. Yet those power conferences never have to deal with an Ivy weekend. What is that? It is playing games on Friday and Saturday nights. One of the toughest things to do in sports is to go on the road and sweep and Ivy weekend. Why is it so difficult? The travel is what makes it so hard to do.
For example, look at the Pennsylvania Quakers. They traveled from Philadelphia to Ithaca, New York to play Cornell last night. The Quakers pulled off a dramatic, last second comeback for the victory. They then had to travel from upstate New York to New York City today to play Columbia. The result was somewhat predictable. A tired Penn team got crushed by the rested Lions 83-56.
The Lions jumped all over the Quakers right from the opening tip and never looked back. It was raining threes at Levien Gym, with Columbia hitting 15-26 for 57.7% while Penn shot just 8-21 for 38.1% from behind the arc. Columbia led 46-19 at the half and cruised to the victory. The Lions were led by Maodo Lo with 16 points, while Kyle Castlin added 13.
Penn was led by freshman Sam Jones with a career-high 23 points. Jones was 7-12 from three point range and was the only Quaker in double figures. Penn falls to 7-12 on the season, 2-3 in the league while Columbia improves to 11-9 and 3-3 in league play. Penn hosts Yale and Brown next weekend while Columbia travels to Harvard and Dartmouth.