Starting in 1991 and 1992, the American South and Big South will qualify for automatic berths for the NCAA tournament.

So what, you say?

Since the NCAA cannot increase the number of automatic bids given to conference champions until 1998, a pair of other conferences will lose their respective automatic bids.

The Ivy League, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and other weaker conferences could find themselves short a bid to March Madness.

But the Ivy League restaked its claim in the first round of this year's tournament, when Princeton took third-ranked Georgetown to the wire. If it weren't for two last-second blocks by Hoya center Alonzo Mourning, the Tigers could still be in the tournament.

Princeton's performance bodes well for the Ivies when the NCAA Executive Committee decides which teams will lose their automatic bids.

"You never know what can happen," Princeton Coach Pete Carril said. "Hopefully, it will help the Ivy League to keep its automatic bid. It'll be unfair, it'll be insane. But like I've always said, 'If it can happen, it will happen."

"I would hope that it would," Dartmouth Coach Paul Cromier said. "It would be a travesty if the Ivy League lost its bid. One of the reasons was that we couldn't compete. Princeton has put a little damper on that argument. I was cheering for them, no question."

"I'm certainly hopeful that it would be a help to our conference," Harvard Coach Peter Roby said. "There's been some talk that the Ivy league didn't deserve an automatic bid because it couldn't compete against the stronger teams. You can't get much more competitive, losing to the number-one seed on the last play of the game."

"College athletics is about giving a team an opportunity to dream a little bit," Roby said. "We were all hoping that our league would be well represented. Princeton did a great job. They showed how good our league is and then some."

The Tigers displayed a lot of poise against Georgetown, leading for a good portion of the game and taking a 29-21 lead into halftime.

"They played well," Carril said. "We had to play a perfect game. But we played a 97 percent perfect game and the 3 percent was just enough that we lost by one point."

Princeton executed well, and its slow-down defense frustrated the Hoyas.

But the Tigers could not pull it out.

The only controversial play was when Mourning blocked Bob Scrabis at the top of the key. Scrabis thought he was fouled, but the referees didn't see it that way.