EDUARDO PEREZ-GIZ

On Sunday the Associated Press released its ballots for college basketball's men's and women's Player of the Year and Coach of the Year.

There was a conspicuous omission on the female Player of the Year list--Harvard's Allison Feaster.

Feaster, currently the nation's leading scorer and 14th leading rebounder, has spent her senior season rewriting the Ivy League record books. Unfortunately it appears that those who matter have not taken notice.

I will be the first to admit that the Ivy League is no ACC or SEC, but to let that fact adversely impact the potential recognition an excellent player deserves is inexcusable. Allison Feaster's name should have been put on the AP Ballot, and there are several reasons why.

The primary argument many so-called analysts of college basketball would make against Feaster's ability is that she plays in one of the weakest conferences in the nation. That may be true, but one has to look at the individual player to determine individual awards.

Feaster is one of the best players in the nation, and she would continue to be if she were at a big-time basketball powerhouse like Connecticut or Louisiana Tech. Would she still be averaging 28.5 points per game? Probably not, but she might have gotten her name onto the Player of the Year ballot.

You see, what it boils down to is that Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League get no respect on the national scene. And why should they?

The Ivy League has never won an NCAA Tournament game, and Harvard has lost to top national programs in the last two postseason tournaments. But the reason Harvard lost those games is because it received a terrible seed and faced elite teams that few teams in the nation could defeat.

I dare the NCAA Selection Committee to give Harvard a 12-seed or better. They will never do it because they know that the Crimson would have a great shot at beating whatever team it draws, just as Princeton's men's team shocked UCLA two years ago when the Tigers were seeded 12th.

In fact, the disparity between the treatment of the Ivy League in men's and women's basketball is glaring. Harvard's women, who had received a vote for the AP Top 25 last week, lost that vote this week despite two convincing road victories at Yale and Brown over the weekend.

Meanwhile, Princeton's men move up to No. 8 in the national polls by defeating two teams--Columbia and Cornell--that are worse with respect to men's basketball than Yale and Brown are to women's. Princeton is definitely a great team, but does anyone really believe they are the eighth best team in the country?

So Harvard must unfairly wallow in the disrespect afforded it by the national media, and Feaster must suffer because she chose to get a top-quality education while playing basketball.

In a similar situation to Feaster's is Maine's Cindy Blodgett, who was also left off the ballot. Blodgett, who plays in the weak America East Conference, has led the nation in scoring for the past two seasons and is third in that category this year.

"The fact that Cindy Blodgett is not on [the AP Ballot for Player of the Year] is more of a concern than my not being on there," Feaster said. "She has been one of the top players in the nation for the last three years."

Feaster hasn't been too shabby, either. Feaster was voted a Parade All-American coming out of high school as one of the top 15 rising college freshmen in the nation. She was heavily recruited by several top-10 teams, including North Carolina, Louisiana Tech, Duke and North Carolina State.

She is one of the most versatile players in college basketball, ranking 32nd nationally in steals and 25th in three-point field goal percentage to go along with her top-15 ranking in rebounding and number-one ranking in scoring. No other women's player ranks nationally in the top 35 of four different major statistical categories.

It's true that stats don't tell the whole story. In fact, in Feaster's case, they don't even begin to tell the story.

Feaster dominates games, scoring and rebounding seemingly at will. Defensively, she is all over the court, denying the pass into the low post as well as pressuring the ball on the perimeter.

She is just as likely to bully her way to the basket for a lay-up while drawing a foul as she is to spot up for a three-pointer and bury a shot in her opponent's face. She is, in nearly all respects, awesome to watch. But the AP voters would never know of her PTP-ness--as Dickie V would say--because they have not watched her play in person day in and day out.

Some will continue to argue that she is such a force only because she plays against low-quality opposition. Once again, this claim underestimates the talent in the Ivy League.

There are and have always been plenty of excellent players in the Ivies, many of whom have gone on to professional careers with the very players who graduate from Tennessee and UConn. What makes Feaster's accomplishments more impressive is the fact that she stands out so definitively from everyone around her.

Feaster has been so dominant, in fact, that this year, for the first time in recent memory, the ballot for Ivy League Player of the Year has only one name on it--Allison Feaster. No one else has approached her caliber of play.

And those who claim she cannot perform equally well against teams from the best conferences need only look at the facts. In last year's first-round game of the NCAA Tournament, Feaster scored 16 points and recorded five steals against the fourth-ranked North Carolina Tarheels.

This season, in games against Maryland (ACC) and South Carolina (SEC), Feaster scored 28 and 30 points, respectively. She also collected 13 rebounds against the Terrapins and 10 against the Lady Gamecocks.

I am not saying that Allison Feaster deserves to be voted the Player of the Year in women's college basketball; I don't think she does. That honor should go to Chamique Holdsclaw of Tennessee or Dominique Canty of Alabama.

But Feaster at least deserves the honor of having her name placed on the ballot for consideration alongside the rest of the game's greatest players. It's about time the college basketball experts stopped scoffing at the Ivy League and started recognizing talent.