PRINCETON V. CORNELL

Like all good Cornell alums, I’ll take a page out of Andy Bernard’s book and harken back to Cornell’s not-so-recent glory days. Players from the 2010 Big Red team, most notable for making the Sweet 16, are getting back together to compete in a national five-on-five tournament with $500,000 on the line. The tournament ranks teams by how many online “fans” they have, and Cornell ranks just ahead of “James and the Dudes”—which is self-described as “some friends straight outta Wallingford” and is probably made up of guys that call bank on free throws. Go crazy, Jeff Foote.

Pick: Princeton

DARTMOUTH V. BROWN

The Big Green is the argument against the Ivy League regular season format. While the 14-game season makes every contest increasingly important, teams fall out of contention early and have no last shot to make it up. Since the turn of the century, Dartmouth has entered every final conference weekend—and in all but three years, the last two conference weekends—eliminated from title competition.That said, with a program that in 2010 had its entire team sign and deliver a paper to the administration threatening to boycott a weekend game unless its coach was fired, maybe an end-of-season tournament would do little to help.

Pick: Brown

HARVARD V. YALE

On the court, the matchup between Yale junior guard Armani Cotton and Harvard junior wing Wesley Saunders could be the deciding one. Last year, Saunders averaged 14.5 points against Yale on 75 percent shooting in two wins but hit just 6-of-17 shots against the Bulldogs for a hard-earned 16 points in the teams’ first showdown this season. Cotton had his first double-double of the season in Cambridge, scoring 13 points (on just five shots) and grabbing 10 rebounds. Yale is 7-3 this season when he scores in double digits. Cotton had just one point, missing all eight field goals, in last week’s loss to Princeton. To save the Bulldogs’ season, he must step up.

Pick: Harvard

PRINCETON V. COLUMBIA

A game between two teams headed in very opposite directions. Columbia’s only graduating senior hasn’t come off the bench this year, and Princeton will lose four players, including Ivy League Player of the Year candidate T.J. Bray, after this season. The Tigers are much better than their record, having lost four of its six league games by a combined 11 points, but Columbia boasts two of the conference’s top 10 players in junior forward Alex Rosenberg and sophomore guard Maodo Lo. Under coach Kyle Smith, the Lions are on a clear upswing.

Pick: Columbia

PENN V. CORNELL

This will be the second game of the weekend with two African-American head coaches squaring off, a byproduct of the Ivy League’s uniquely diverse coaching body. By comparison, the Big 10 and Big 12 will have a combined two such matchups this year. However, Friday’s game in Ithaca matches up the only two coaches in the conference on the hot seat.

It’s rare to get fired in the Ivy League—former Harvard coach Frank Sullivan owns the distinction of owning the most wins and losses in the Ancient Eight—but both Jerome Allen and Bill Courtney have taken over powerhouses and have been unable to vault their programs back into the conference’s upper echelon. Longtime Penn Director of Athletics Steve Bilsky announced he would retire in June, and his replacement may want his own guy. A recent Daily Pennsylvanian article in which a quoted alum speculated that “it is possible that Jerome…is not the right fit to be our head coach” will not make anything better for Allen.