Even with last week’s big news (and news, and news) around former Penn men’s head coach Jerome Allen and the probable extension for current Brown men’s head coach Mike Martin, the Ancient Eight continues its many off-season story lines.
- Carla Berube has picked three staff members at Princeton, hiring Lauren Battista, Dalia Eshe and Lauren Dillon as assistant coaches. Two previously coached under her at Tufts.
Battista has previous experience as an assistant at Tufts for the 2018-2019 season, where she worked with Berube, as well as three years as a graduate assistant at Boston College. She played four years a Bentley College and was named the national Division II Player of the Year in her 2013-2014 senior year.
Eshe has been as assistant coach at La Salle from 2016-2019 and East Carolina from 2014-2016. Prior to that, she spent the 2013-2014 season as Director of Basketball Operations for Loyola, Maryland. Before entering the coaching ranks, the 2006 Florida graduate and committed vegan, was drafted by the Seattle Storm in the second round of the WNBA Draft. She was in the training camps for Seattle, Washington and Atlanta in the WNBA, but played professionally in Turkey, Russia, Romania, Czech Republic, Portugal, Germany and Ecuador between 2006 and 2013.
Dillon was an assistant under Berube last year at Tufts, where Dillon played the previous four years before graduating in 2018. Dillon was a two-year captain, NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore and earned a First-Team All-League selection as a senior.
The previous Princeton staff consisted of Carrie Moore, Addie Micir and Cinnamon Lister. Moore went to North Carolina with former Tigers coach Courtney Banghart, Micir became the associate head coach for Lehigh and Lister moved to UC Irvine.
- The Cornell women have announced the hiring of Claire Mattox and Joe Rutigliano as assistant coaches to replace the departed David Elliott and Shelby Lyman. Mattox has spent the last three years as an assistant coach at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and the two prior seasons at the University of Saint Mary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Rutigliano was with St. Francis (PA) for the last two seasons as a graduate assistant.
Rutigliano is very optimistic in his new program, choosing the Big Red for the national championship even before an injury may have impaired his judgment.
Lyman and Elliott were both on Dayna Smith’s staff for the last two seasons. Lyman, a former Cornell guard (2010-2014), has become an assistant at the Division III University of Wisconsin-River Falls of the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC).
According to Cornell Athletics, Elliott, who was a former head coach of Knox College, will be moving to Division II Cal State Los Angeles of the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA). CSLA is now coached by Torino Johnson, who will be in his first season in charge of the Golden Eagles after taking over for Hall of Famer Cheryl Miller. - Yale’s Miye Oni is continuing his solid play in Summer League action, averaging 12.5 points (on 67 percent shooting), 2.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game in his first two games in Las Vegas.
After Oni’s struggles in his first game in the Salt Lake League, Andy Larsen of the Salt Lake Tribune said, “I’ll be curious to see if he can find his NBA skill to hang a hat on.” By Sunday night, Larsen has been more impressed, noting, “He’s become a bigger and bigger influence in these games as summer league has continued, another good sign. I’m relatively encouraged, and hope to see him more next season, perhaps ideally as a two-way roster spot user.
Oni and the Jazz can be seen on Tues., July 9 at 6 p.m. EST against Portland on ESPN2 and Thurs., July 11 at 8:30 p.m. EST versus Houston on ESPNU. - Recent Cornell graduate Matt Morgan talked to Messiah Baptiste of The Hot Seat CLT about the Las Vegas Summer League. Morgan, who signed a free agent contract with the NBA Champion Toronto Raptors did not play in the team’s first game against the Golden State Warriors.
In game number two, Morgan had a typically efficient game. He came off the bench to put up 11 points, hitting two of four three-pointers and going 5-for-5 from the line, in 19 minutes. His +14 was tops for the Raptors in the team’s 93-90 loss to the Spurs.
The Raptors have upcoming games against New York on July 9th (9:30 p.m. EST, NBA TV) and Indiana on July 11th (6 p.m. EST, NBA TV). - While Morgan, Cannady (Oklahoma City), Oni and Columbia’s Luke Petrasek (New Orleans) compete in the Summer League for a chance to make it onto an NBA roster, former Yale Bulldog Makai Mason has signed a two-year contract with ALBA Berlin of the German Basketball League (Bundesliga) and EuroLeague. Mason (2014-2018) was a first team All-Ivy guard in the Bulldogs’ 2015-2016 Ivy championship season. He led Yale with 31 points on 9-for-18 shooting from the field and 11-for-11 from the line in the team’s first-round upset of Baylor in the NCAA Tournament.
With injuries limiting Mason to only one game over his last two years at Yale, Scott Drew of Baylor recruited him to Waco for a graduate transfer season. Last season, he averaged 4.9 points, 2.5 rebounds and 3.4 assists in 28 games.
ALBA Berlin has eight German League titles and nine German Cup championships. The last two years, they have been runner-up in both competitions. - Banghart was interviewed by the Carolina Insider podcast (18:30 – 39:00 minute mark) to discuss her time at Princeton and the start of her job at Chapel Hill. Some interesting nuggets – Banghart was taught by former UNC Chancellor Carol Folt during her first year Evolutionary Biology class at Dartmouth; she was choosing between being a contestant on The Amazing Race and the Princeton women’s basketball job in May 2007; and she interviewed UNC women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance while she was a Dartmouth assistant coach and writing her Master’s thesis in Writing and Leadership Development.
- Penn women’s head coach Mike McLaughlin has been elected to the Holy Family Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2019. McLaughlin, who was the head coach of Holy Family from 1995-2009, finished with a record of 407-61 (.870). His teams won six Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference (CACC) Tournament Championships and qualified for the NCAA Division II Tournament six straight seasons (2004-2009), while he earned eight CACC Coach of the Year honors.
Since coming to Penn in 2009, McLaughlin is 179-116 (.607) overall and 93-47 (.664) in Ivy competition. The 2018-2019 Ivy League Coach of the Year has led the Quakers to won four Ivy championships, including 2019, and two Big 5 titles. - Penn rising sophomore Michael Wang played for China’s national team at the U19 World Cup in Greece. His team came in third place in Group D, finishing behind Serbia and France in the four-team group. In the bracket stage, China came in last place in the 16-team field, losing to Russia, 96-83, in the Round of 16, as well as Latvia, the Philippines and Senegal.
Wang played in three of the team’s seven games, with his missed games being listed as a coach’s decision instead of an injury. He averaged 2.3 points and 1.3 rebounds in 6.7 minutes per game. He shot 1-for-7 (14%) from two, 1-for-5 (20%) from three and 2-for-2 from the free throw line. - Princeton Athletics has announced that the men’s team will take on Iona as part of the Air Force Reserve Basketball Hall of Fame Invitational triple-header at Brooklyn’s Barclay Center on Tues., Dec. 17. The timing has not been finalized, but it is likely that the game will be the opener with Temple and Miami and Providence and Florida following.
For those interested in playing hooky from work or finals, tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster.com for internet presale and Citi card members from 10 a.m. Wed., July 10 through 10 a.m. Thurs., July 11. Tickets for the general public go on sale on Fri., July 12 at 10 a.m.
Last year, the Tigers beat Iona, 85-81, at the HoopHall Boardwalk Challenge with Princeton overcoming a 13 point second half deficit on the strength of Devin Cannady’s 22-point and Jaelin Llewellyn’s 22-point, eight- assist efforts. - Christine Clark, a former All-Ivy member of the Harvard women’s team, has been named to the Pima County (AZ) Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2019. Clark, a native of Tucson, was a three time first team All-Ivy during her 2010-2014 career. She is fourth in program history with 1,711 points, fifth in average with 14.9 points per game and second in made free throws with 447.
After two years of professional basketball in Italy, she became a graduate assistant at the University of Arizona for a year and then worked as an assistant coach at the University of Florida for the 2017-2018 season. Since the spring of 2018, she has been on the coaching staff at Belmont University in Nashville. - Former Brown women’s assistant coach Sara Binkhorst, was interviewed by Noontime Sports in New England about starting her head coaching career at Wheaton College.