PHILADELPHIA — Yale may always be, as its fictional alumnus C. Montgomery Burns once put it on “The Simpsons,” first in gentlemanly club life, but its men’s basketball team has not been alone in first in the Ivy League at the end of a season since 1962.
Putting aside the five teams that have never appeared in the N.C.A.A. tournament, Yale’s 53-season tournament drought is, according to the N.C.A.A., the second-longest in Division I (bested, if that is the word, by its conference rival Dartmouth).
But this year, that dry spell could end.