Column: Thoughts from the stands at The Palestra

What is relevant is that after the women’s basketball team took care of business by beating Penn by 51 points, the men’s team took care of its own with a 12 point win over Penn’s men’s team, making both teams Ivy League champions. The men’s win forces a playoff game between the Tigers and the Crimson, which will be played Saturday at Yale at 4 p.m.

The Tigers will be focused and ready to go for this game after losing to Harvard by 12 on their floor prior to the Penn game. After the Crimson won, Harvard students stormed the court to celebrate with the team.

What exactly they were celebrating can be debated, though. The Crimson did at least clinch a share of the Ivy League title for the first time in the team’s history, but they have not yet won an automatic bid to the March Madness tournament. While the Ivy League title is nice, the bid to the tournament is the real prize.

After Harvard’s student body stormed the court, men’s head coach Sydney Johnson ’97 instructed the Tigers to sit and watch the celebration. In a brilliant coaching move, Johnson burned the image of the Harvard players celebrating into the minds of his players, which played a major role in the outcome of the Penn game. Johnson is surely hoping it affects the game this Saturday as well, where the Tigers will get a chance to avenge their loss.

While I think this plan will certainly help motivate the Tigers, Princeton will have to deal with an athletic Crimson squad featuring guard Brandyn Curry, who played a big role in Harvard’s victory over Princeton; forward Kyle Casey, who plays both aggressively and above the rim; and Ivy League Player of the Year and forward Keith Wright.

In the game against Penn, Princeton did a great job on the defensive end. When the visitors were playing well, they were swarming the opposing players and forcing them out to the perimeter, where they had to take tough shots with the shot clock running out.

Princeton did not play as well or as consistently on the offensive end, though. At the beginning of the game, Princeton fell in love with the three-point ball, chucking up long shot after long shot without really looking inside at all.

Turnovers from the frontcourt down low and the guards’ mistakes turned into offense for Penn, which helped them go on a 17-4 run to finish out the half.

Princeton played with more control in the second half, and senior forward and tri-captain Kareem Maddox put the team on his back, scoring on isolation after isolation for the Tigers.

Those plays are going to be harder to run against a more athletic Harvard team. I don’t want to jinx the Tigers, but isolation plays will be even tougher to run against teams with more athleticism than Harvard.

I’m sure Johnson is going over the tapes thoroughly with his squad to correct the hiccups on offense that struck in the Penn and Harvard games, but the team is going to have to find a more consistent mode of scoring aside from the three-point shot.

If Princeton can bolster its post- or mid-range game for the Harvard match, the team will have a great shot to move on. And considering the Tigers’ last memory of the Harvard team celebrating on its own court, they — and we — want nothing more than to advance at the Crimson’s expense.