The Princeton and Cornell men had disappointing exits from the Ivy Madness semifinals, but their seasons aren’t over. The Tigers and the Big Red have both earned bids to the National Invitational Tournament.
Princeton, which went 24-4 after losing to Brown on Saturday, earned the No. 2 seed in the top left region and will host 19-12 UNLV on Wednesday. The Runnin’ Rebels won 10 of their last 12 Mountain West regular season losses with losses only coming to Nevada. They lost in the quarterfinals of their conference tournament to San Diego State, last year’s national runner-up, in overtime.
The Tigers went into Selection Sunday at No. 66 in KenPom and No. 55 in the NET. They boast a 2-3 record against quadrant one teams but apparently didn’t do enough to earn an at-large to the NCAA Tournament. The five teams directly in front of Princeton — Virginia, Northwestern, James Madison, South Carolina and Grand Canyon — all earned March Madness bids.
The winner of the game will play the winner of Providence and Boston College.
Cornell went 22-7 and lost to Yale in its Ivy semifinal. The Big Red went unseeded and drew No. 2 seed Ohio State in the bottom left bracket. The Buckeyes won their final four Big Ten games after firing coach Chris Holtmann, who’s since signed on to lead DePaul. Ohio State beat Iowa in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament before losing to Illinois, the eventual champion, in the quarterfinals.
The Big Red come in at No. 103 and Kenpom and No. 95 in the NET. Cornell won just one game in the top two quadrants but went 19-1 against teams from the bottom two.
The winner plays the victor of Virginia Tech and Richmond. A Cornell vs. Richmond second-round game would square up Princeton graduates and good friends Brian Earl and Chris Mooney for the first time as head coaches.
No other Ivy, including tournament runner-up Brown, earned a postseason bid outside of champion Yale.
Cornell’s game against Ohio State is set for Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2. Princeton’s game against UNLV is set for Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN+.