Ivy hoops roundup – June 13, 2019

  • Per Princeton Athletics, new women’s coach Carla Berube will be formally introduced at a press conference Wednesday at noon. Princeton Athletics told IHO that there will be no live or on-demand broadcast of the press conference on ESPN+ or goprincetontigers.com.  It is possible that highlights will be made available on the the team’s social media page.
  • Lindsay Gottlieb, a 1995-1999 member of the Brown women’s team, was announced as the newest assistant coach on John Beilein’s Cleveland Cavaliers staff.  She was previously the head coach of the California Golden Bears from 2011-2019, going 179-89 overall (86-58 Pac-12), making seven NCAA Tournament appearances, and earning a spot in the 2013 Final Four.
    Gottlieb is only the second woman to be named to an NBA coaching staff and the first to join directly from the collegiate ranks.  She was hired for her new job by Cavs General Manager Koby Altman, who was an assistant coach on Kyle Smith’s Columbia staff from 2010-2013.
    Prior to taking the Golden Bears job, Gottlieb was an assistant at Syracuse (1999-2001), New Hampshire (2001-2002), Richmond (2002-2005), and California (2005-2008).  In her last year at Cal, then-coach Joanne Boyle named her the team’s associate head coach.  She then went on to her first head coaching job at UC Santa Barbara, where she would lead the Gauchos from 2008-2011.  In that time, she went 56-39 overall (36-12 Big West) with one appearance in the NCAA Tournament and one in the WNIT.
    In the January 2012 edition of the Cal Sports Quarterly, Gottlieb noted that her father, uncle, grandfather and one sister attended Cornell, while her mother graduated from Columbia and her brother went to Dartmouth.  After her mother passed away in Gottlieb’s sophomore season at Brown, she spent her junior year in Australia and returned with the desire to be a coach.  She returned to the Bears in 1998-1999 in the role of player-assistant coach.
    According to a representative of Brown Athletics, Gottlieb made the team as a walk-on during her first year on campus and finished her playing career with 21 appearances and 20 total points.  She also earned the Bears’ Heart and Soul Award in her senior year.
  • Former Cornell men’s coach Bill Courtney has been hired as an assistant coach at Miami.  This will be his third team with Hurricanes head coach Jim Larranaga, previously working together with the head coach at Bowling Green (1996-1997) and George Mason (1997-2005).  For the last two seasons, the former Big Red head coach was an assistant coach on Dave Leitao’s staff at DePaul.
    Courtney has also been an assistant at American University (1995-1996), Providence College (2005-2006) and Virginia Tech (2009-2010), as well as working on Leitao’s staff at Virginia (2006-2009).  The 1992 Bucknell grad and 2007 Bison Hall of Famer led the Big Red from 2010-2016, amassing a 60-113 overall (27-57 Ivy) record.
  • According to Jon Rothstein, former Dartmouth men’s head coach Paul Cormier has been hired in an administrative role by UMass’s Matt McCall.  Cormier was fired by Dartmouth after the 2015-2016 season, ending his second stint with the Big Green.  In his 13 seasons in Hanover, he was 147-211 overall and 70-112 in the Ivy League.  He had two second place finishes in 1987-1988 and 1988-1989, as well as a CIT appearance in 2014-2015.  Cormier also coached at Fairfield, making it into the NCAA Tournament in 1996-1997 and the NIT in 1995-1996, as well as working on the staffs of the Warriors, Nets, Grizzlies and Celtics.
  • In a recent ESPN article on underappreciated men’s college basketball coaches, Yale’s James Jones was ranked sixth in the category of those coaching at schools that lack national (basketball) brands.  The Long Island native, who just earned his fourth Ivy championship, second appearance in the NCAA Tournament and 19th straight top-four conference finish, recently was given a contract extension that will keep him in New Haven until the end of the 2025-2026 season.
  • Ashley Robinson, who was an assistant coach for the Penn women’s team in 2017-2018, has returned for her second tour with the Quakers.  She will fill the opening on Mike McLaughlin’s staff, left by the departure of Bernadette Laukaitis for the head coaching position at Holy Family.  Robinson finished playing for St. Joe’s in 2015 and then started her coaching career at HFU in 2016-2017.  After her year in West Philly, she spent the 2018-2018 season as an assistant at Northeastern, concentrating mainly on post player development, scouting, and recruiting.
  • Penn men’s basketball announced the hiring of Sarah Parks as its new director of basketball operations (DBO), replacing Brad Fadem.  Park, who graduated in May from Wharton had been with the team for three and a half years as a student manager.  She also was a member of the women’s club basketball team and its president for 2 and a half years.
    Fadem, who was Penn’s DBO for the last four seasons, worked with head coach Steve Donahue for five years when both were at Boston College.  Fadem will still be working at Penn, recently being promoted to the position of Assistant Athletics Director for Admissions and Financial Aid within the Division of Recreation and Intercollege Athletics (DRIA).
    Penn Athletics told IHO that Fadem will be taking over the liaison role between athletics, admission and financial aid that was previously held by Jake Silverman, the current Associate Athletics Director of Operations.  Fadem will work closely on admission and financial aid issues with current Associate Athletics Director for Student Development Matt Valenti, who served in the liaison position from 2012-2015.
  • 2011-2015 Princeton guard Blake Dietrick was named to the the Eurobasket.com All-Spanish LFB First-Team.  She played for the Lointek Gernika of the Liga Femenina League in Spain, averaging 13.7 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game in 15 contests. In eight games in the EuroCup, she put up 15.1 points, 5.0 assists, 3.3 rebounds per contest.  Dietrick, the 2015 Ivy Player of the Year, was signed as a free agent by the Seattle Storm of the WNBA.
  • Former Cornell center Jeff Foote was recently inducted into the Spencer-Van Etten High School Athletic Hall of Fame.  Foote started his college career at St. Bonaventure in 2006-2007, but looked to transfer when the coaches who recruited him left for other programs.
    Former Cornell player Khaliq Gant suffered a serious neck and spinal cord injury in January 2006 while diving for a ball in practice and ended up at the Elmira, N.Y., hospital where Foote’s mother was the head nurse in the intensive care unit. She watched the bond between the Cornell players and their injured teammate, later suggesting to her son that he look into Steve Donahue’s program.
    The 7-footer would go on to play from the winter of 2008 through the end of the 2009-2010 season for the Big Red, winning Ivy titles in all three years.  In that time, he would be named first team All-Ivy in his senior season and second team All-Ivy in his first two years in Ithaca.  He would also be selected as the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010.  Foote averaged 11.0 points and 7.3 rebounds a game, while totaling 159 blocks (3rd all-time at Cornell) and 637 rebounds (12th all-time).
    After his senior season, where the Big Red made it into the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet Sixteen, Foote played professionally in Israel and Spain in 2010-2011 and the NBA Development League in 2011-2012.  During the spring of 2012, he played four games in the NBA with the New Orleans Hornets.  Foote eventually went to law school from 2014-2017 at the University of Miami, and worked as a graduate assistant coach for Jim Larranaga’s Hurricanes.  He is presently working as an attorney and the assistant to the owner of Gator Investments, a real estate development and investment firm, in South Florida.
  • Another former member of the Big Red men’s team, Cody Toppert, was recently hired as an assistant coach by Memphis’ head coach Penny Hardaway.  Toppert played in 108 games and started 96 contests for Cornell from 2001-2005.  He finished with 237 made three pointers (3rd all-time at Cornell), 1,232 points (12th all-time), and 3,476 minutes played (7th all-time).
    The Albuquerque native played for his hometown team in the NBA’s developmental league in 2005-2006, winning the league title.  He then spent eight seasons playing professionally in New Zealand, Portugal, Germany, Spain and England before beginning his coaching career in 2015.
    He was an assistant with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers in 2015-16 and 2016-17, followed by a head coaching role with the Northern Arizona Suns in 2017-18.  Last year, Toppert joined the Phoenix Suns as an assistant and Director of Player Development.
  • The 6th edition of The Basketball Tournament, a 5-on-5, two million dollar, winner-take-all tournament held in late July and early August announced its teams and brackets this week.  Three of the teams have four former Ivy Leaguers on their rosters.
    The Big X team includes Yale’s Justin Sears and Princeton’s Amir Bell.  Sears was the 2015 and 2016 Ivy League Player of the Year, as well a three time All-Ivy, a two time honorable mention AP All-America, a two time Ivy champ and a one-time guest on IHO’s On The Vine podcast.  He has been playing professionally in Germany the last three seasons.  Bell was the 2018 Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year and a member of the undefeated conference and Ivy Tournament 2017 championship team.  He finished his career with 118 games played, 93 starts, 1,043 points and 313 assists.  He spent last year playing in Italy.
    Harvard’s Keith Wright, the 2011 Ivy League Player of the Year, is on Team Everyday.  In addition to his POY Award, he won two Ivy titles in 2011 and 2012, was named an honorable mention All-America in 2011 and was selected to the All-Ivy second team in 2012.  Wright has played professionally in Sweden, Poland, the Phillipines and Canada, as well as spending three seasons (2014-2017) in the NBA Development League with the Austin Spurs and Westchester Knicks.
    Cornell’s Jonathan Gray is a member of Tampa 20/20.  Gray started his Big Red career as a student manager in the fall of 2009 and joined the team as a player that December.  After ending his first season in Ithaca averaging 2.3 minutes and 0 points per game in four contests, he would go on to play in 79 games over the next three seasons, averaging 20 minutes and 7.8 points a game. In addition to being a part of Cornell’s historic 2010 Sweet Sixteen team, Gray was named to honorable mention All-Ivy in his junior year.
    Big X has the #4 seed in the Columbus Regional and will open TBT play against the #4 West Virginia Wildcats on Friday July 19th at 5:00 pm EDT.  The Greensboro Regional’s #7 seed Tampa 20/20 will face #2 seed Team CP3 on Friday July 19th at 6:40 pm pm EDT.  Team Everday, the #7 seed in the Memphis Regional, will have to face the hometown #2 seed Bluff City on Friday July 19th at 9:30 pm EDT.  All three first round games can be viewed at ESPN3 or the WatchESPN app.
  • The Sports Video Group (SVG) held its annual College Summit in Atlanta at the end of May.  One panel, “A Platform To Call Home: The Ivy League’s Migration to ESPN+focused on the first year of the Ivy League/ESPN+ partnership.  The SVG posted videos of the panel, which featured Kevin Copp (assistant executive director, digital content and communications, The Ivy League), Imry Halevi (assistant director of athletics, multimedia and production, Harvard University), John Lukach (director, multimedia and production, Cornell University), Shawn Murphy (senior coordinating producer, ESPN), and Kristian Hernandez (Assistant Editor and Social Media Coordinator, SVG)
    The techincal-based panel focused on the history of the Ivy League Digital Network, the benefits of its merger with ESPN+, the challenges and compromises in the new partnership and the improvements going forward as the ten-year deal enters season two.
  • The Memphis Grizzlies have hired Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach Taylor Jenkins as their new head coach.  Jenkins graduated from Penn’s Wharton school in 2007 with a degree in Economics but never played or worked for the Quakers’ basketball teams.
    After his junior year, Jenkins did an internship in the front office of the San Antonio Spurs. According to Geoff Calkins of the Daily Memphian, the internship came about because the then-student’s grandmother knew Spurs owner Peter Holt.  On his graduation day, the Preston Hollow People website noted that Jenkins was contacted by San Antonio GM R.C. Buford offering a full-time internship with the then-NBA champs.  A year later, he found himself on Quin Snyder’s coaching staff for the Spurs NBA Development League team in Austin.
    After two years working for Snyder and two more with Brad Jones, the 28 year old Penn grad was named head coach of the Toros for the 2012-2013 season.
    When Spurs assistant coach Mike Budenholzer was named the Hawks head coach in 2013, he brought Jenkins onto his staff.  Jenkins would spend five seasons in Atlanta, where the team made it to the 2015 Eastern Conference Finals.  Following the 2017-2018 season, Jenkins followed Budenholzer to Milwaukee and helped the Bucks to the league’s best regular season record.  The now-34 year Quaker alum will take over a Grizzlies team that has missed the last two playoffs and hold the #2 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft.
  • The Cornell Daily Sun sat down with school president Martha Pollack for a lengthy interview that touched on many subjects affecting the Big Red student body.  Included in the discussion was her thoughts on the recent national college admission scandal and her administration’s response to prevent it from it hitting too close to home. (The authors did not ask Pollack her thoughts on the recent controversy, reported by the Sun, on allegations of mistreatment by the softball coach from current and former members of the program.)
  • Finally, a fantastic trip down memory lane for the fans of the Red & Blue as Bazooka Entertainment has produced “One Ivy Moment: The Original Cinderella Story”, the story of Penn’s improbable 1979 Final Four run.  The 28-plus minute video features highlights of #9 seed Penn’s wins over Jim Valvano’s Iona (#8 seed), Dean Smith’s North Carolina (#1 seed), Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse (#4 seed) and Lou Carnesecca’s St. John’s (#10 seed), as well as the National Semifinals loss to Magic Johnson’s Michigan State.  Among the best of the many interviews of coaches, players, journalists and basketball historians are head coach Bob Weinhauer, assistant coach Bob Staak, Tony Price, and James “Booney” Salters.
  • The Daily Pennsylvanian is beginning a series on the school’s greatest teams with a profile of the 2000-2001 women’s basketball team.  That Quakers team was 22-6 overall and 14-0 in the Ivy League, giving Penn its first-ever Ivy title and appearance in the NCAA Tournament, a 100-57 loss to Texas Tech.  The Red & Blue were coached by Kelly Greenberg and led by senior Diana Caramanico, who finished the season with 21.7 points and 10.0 rebounds per game.  The Quakers all-time leading scorer (2,415) and rebounder (1,207) would go on to capture her third straight Ivy and Big Five Player of the Year awards, as well as a spot on the All-America first team.
    The team’s 21-game winning streak, as well as its 10 straight home victories still stand as program records.  Co-captains Caramanico and Erin Ladley were unanimous selections to the first team All-Ivy, while Julie Epton was named to the league’s second team and Jewel Clark was picked for the All-Rookie team.
    Caramanico would go on to play professionally in France from 2001-2003, before being chosen as a member of the Big Five Hall of Fame in 2007, the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012 and the inaugural class of Legends of Ivy League Basketball in 2017.  Jewel played overseas for a short period of time, and was elected to the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame in 2019.  Ladley was inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.  After winning the program’s second Ivy title in 2003-2004, Greenberg would leave for Boston University.  She coached the Terriers for the next 10 seasons, until she resigned following accusations of “emotional bullying” by several of her players and an internal investigation by the school.