When David fought Goliath he had an easier time than when Ivy League teams play in the NCAA basketball tournament. In the first round of the 1988 tourney, the score was Arizona 90, Ivy League Champion Cornell 50. The year before, North Carolina crushed Penn, 113-82. In 1986, Syracuse beat Brown by 49 points.

During the regular season, Ivy teams were regularly crushed by stronger non-league opponents. Duke 121, Harvard 62. Indiana 94, Penn 54. Temple 84, Penn 50. Wyoming 92, Columbia 56. Ivy League basketball teams are simply outmatched by teams from stronger basketball conferences like the Big East, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 10.

It hasn't always been that way. In 1942 and 1944, Dartmouth played in national championship games. Even as recently as 1979, Penn went to the Final Four before falling to Magic Johnson and Michigan State. But now, according to league coaches, the Ivy League is unable to compete with the stronger conferences. Ivy teams are invited to play major teams which are looking for easy wins to pad their records.

"Everyone knows that there are two levels of basketball in Division I," Columbia Coach Wally Halas says. "One is a pre-professional program, and the other has college basketball as something that happens on a college campus. Schools have chosen different routes, and there certainly is a wide gap between them."

The decline of Ivy League basketball in relation to the top conferences has been self-inflicted, some coaches say. By refusing to award athletic scholarships or stipends and by holding extremely rigid academic standards, the Ivy League keeps itself out of the bidding for the top athletes in basketball.

In many ways the Ivy League more closely resembles a Division III conference than a Division I conference. Division III teams do not offer scholarships, can schedule a limited number of games and are forbidden to begin practicing before a certain date, three characteristics unique to the Ivy League in Division I.

"All I know is that if you quack and you waddle you're a duck," Brown Coach Mike Cingiser says. "We can pretend we're really Division I schools, but in reality we're still a duck. If you look at what we are, we're a Division III school. The first round of the NCAA tournament is the first day of duck hunting season. We are a quack in Division I."

Halas, who just completed his first year at Columbia after coaching at Division III Clark for 13 years, agrees. "There's not much difference between the Ivy League and Division III]," he says. "It's entirely the same regarding the lack of scholarships. All financial assistance is need-based."

The main difference is that Division III schools do not cost $18,000 per year. Some outstanding student-athletes are faced with a difficult choice when they consider their college educations. They can risk bankruptcy to go to an Ivy League school or they can accept an athletic scholarship from a school with lower academic standards.

"The financial situation is very difficult," Dartmouth Coach Paul Cormier says. "Tuitions are continually going up. As it becomes economically infeasible, parents have to look away."

Fortunately, the Ivy League schools give a great deal of financial assistance to those students who are in dire economic straits. Sometimes, that aid is enough to match the scholarship offers coming from other institutions. But the assistance is frequently not enough for those who come from middle-income backgrounds.

"I find myself being able to recruit the very rich or the very poor," Cingiser says. "The middle income kids get killed."

The lack of scholarships is not the only hinderance coaches face when trying to recruit athletes. The student-athletes must be expected to perform in the classroom as well as on the court. To facilitate the determination of whether the student is a legitimate Ivy League student, an Academic Index (AI)--composed of class rank, Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and Achievement Test scores--has been devised for athletes. Anyone falling below the cutoff point of 161 may not be recruited by Ivy coaches.

"I think the premise is a good one," Harvard Coach Pete Roby said.

But while the principle behind the Al may be noble, some coaches claim that the results are not.