Wait, What? The Incredibly Weird Tiebreaker Scenarios In Men's Lacrosse

Try to wrap your logical brain around this:

Should Brown beat Dartmouth in men's lacrosse Saturday, then Cornell would qualify for the Ivy League tournament with a win over Princeton, or a loss to Princeton by one or two goals or by a loss to Princeton by six or more goals. On the other hand, Cornell would be out with a loss to Princeton by three, four or five goals.

How does that sound?

Let's start with the easy stuff. Penn will be the No. 1 seed for the Ivy tournament. Yale will be the No. 2 seed. Harvard and Dartmouth are mathematically eliminated. That leaves Princeton, Brown and Cornell for the last two spots.

Right now, Cornell is 3-2, while Princeton and Brown are 2-3. Should Dartmouth beat Brown, then Princeton would be in with a win over Cornell by any margin. Also, a Cornell win over Princeton puts the BIg Red and Brown in the tournament, regardless of the Dartmouth-Brown outcome.

But should Brown beat Dartmouth, then all the crazy stuff comes into play. It starts with the fourth tiebreaker:

If a tie still persists, add the goals for and against in the games between the tied teams; teams with the greatest goal differential gets higher seed (6-goal maximum differential per game). Once a highest seed (amongst the tied teams) is determined, the remaining seeds will be determined on the basis of head-to-head competition.

Should Brown win and Princeton win, then Brown, Princeton and Cornell would all be 3-3, with losses to Yale and Penn, wins over Harvard and Dartmouth and a 1-1 record against each other, which renders the first three tiebreakers useless.

Princeton lost to Brown 14-10, and Cornell defeated Brown 12-9. That leaves Brown at plus-one, Cornell at plus-three and Princeton at minus-four. The goal-differential determines the third seed and then head-to-head would then break the last tie.

So with that, a Princeton win over Cornell by one or two would leave the Big Red at either plus-two or plus-one, which would make them the third seed and Brown then the fourth seed because it beat Princeton. Should Princeton win by three goals or more, the Tigers would definitely be in the tournament, since Brown would now be ahead of Cornell in goal-differential, so Brown would be the third seed and then Princeton the fourth by virtue of the win over Cornell it would need to make all this happen.

Ah, but this is where it gets even more nuts. If Princeton wins by three, four or five, then Brown is still in first in goal differential among the three. But if Princeton wins by six or more, then the Tigers go from minus-four to plus-two, Brown stays at plus-one and Cornell now goes to minus-three. Princeton would be the third seed, but Cornell would be the fourth seed because head-to-head now comes into play instead of goal-differential and the Big Red have the win over Brown.

In other words, with a Brown win over Dartmouth, then:
* Cornell win over Princeton = Cornell is the third seed and Brown is the fourth seed
* Princeton win over Cornell by one or two = Cornell is the third seed and Brown is the fourth seed
* Princeton win over Cornell by three, four or five = Brown is the third seed and Princeton is the fourth seed
* Princeton win over Cornell by six or more = Princeton is the third seed and Cornell is the fourth seed

One more thing - Princeton would be in with simply a win over Cornell, and not a win by at least three, had the Tigers lost to Brown by six instead of four (or would need to win by only two had the Tigers lost by five instead of four).

What's weirder about this whole situation? That losing by more would have helped Princeton, or that that fact isn't even close to the wildest part of all this?

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