Penn beats Harvard, earns spot in Ivy semifinals

In all of the previous seasons in the six-plus decades of Ivy League basketball, Saturday night's Harvard-Penn game at the Palestra would have meant nothing.

Because in every other year before this, unbeaten Princeton would have already clinched the championship and with it the first automatic bid into the NCAA tournament.

That was before the Ivies decided it was finally time to stop being the only conference that didn't hold a postseason tournament to determine which of its teams would get into your 68-team Madness field.

So the regular-season finale, at least to Penn, still meant everything. Because the rules insisted somebody had to finish fourth in the standings and earn a shot at Princeton in next Saturday afternoon's semifinals, which will also be played in this West Philly shrine. Even if that survivor had a sub-.500 league record.

Wonder if the Ivies were counting on all this confusion when they elected to join the rest of the world? Or maybe that's what they were hoping for, to keep the conversation stoked.

Anyway, if you asked 10 different folks to go through the scenarios you got as many different conclusions. Even the league didn't see fit to put out a cheat sheet to try and help the challenged.

By halftime, though, at which point the Quakers trailed by four, the many possibilities had been reduced to win and they're in, since Brown had lost at home to Cornell and Dartmouth had lost at Princeton. So the Quakers had to beat a team they'd lost to by 10 a month ago in Boston, or Columbia would be moving on instead.

How's that for a tiebreaker?

The Quakers (13-14, 6-8), who started 0-6 in the league, got a three-pointer from the right wing from Jackson Donahue - on his only shot in 13 minutes - with six seconds left to keep their season going, 75-72.

What else is there to compute?

"I knew it was good the moment I caught [the pass]," said Donahue, a sophomore guard. "It's been awhile since we heard those kind of chants [here]. . . . It's just about staying ready. Coach [Steve Donahue] talked about how we'd need a lot out of more guys."

The Quakers were down six with eight minutes left, and up five with 90 seconds to go.

Senior Matt Howard had a career-best 24 points on 8-for-13 shooting. He scored the Quakers' first 11, and also matched a career high with 12 rebounds.

Freshman AJ Brodeur had 15 to go with seven boards.

"I was just trying to lead the team," said Howard, the only Quaker who has been part of a win over Princeton.

The Crimson (18-8, 10-3), who'd already secured the second seed, will play defending champ Yale in the semis. They'd beaten Penn six of the last seven meetings.

Can you really have an inaugural Ivy tourney without the host school? Of course you might want to ask Princeton about that.

"It's pretty cool to wake up and know you still have a shot at this thing," said coach Donahue. "We knew we weren't out of it [at 0-6]. We had to take advantage of [that opening]."

At the Palestra

Semifinals

(4) Penn vs. (1) Princeton, 1:30 p.m. Saturday (ESPNU)

(2) Harvard vs. (3) Yale, 4 p.m. Saturday (ESPNU)

Final

Semifinal winners, noon on March 12 (ESPN2)