Ivy Hoops Online’s writing staff voted on where all eight Ivy men’s and women’s basketball teams would end up for the 2019-20 season. Our projected order of finish for the men (and the women’s rankings here):
Ivy League coaching carousel
After three years without any head coaching changes, things changed in a big way at the end of April. Princeton’s Courtney Banghart left after 12 seasons and seven Ivy titles to rebuild the program at the University of North Carolina. The Tigers search lasted a month, ending with the hiring of former UConn guard and long-time Tufts head coach Carla Berube.
On the men’s side, the conference almost lost James Jones to St. John’s, but the Yale coach finished as the Red Storm’s runner-up. Weeks later, Jones signed an extension that will keep him in New Haven until the end of the 2025-2026 campaign. In May, Brown’s Mike Martin was reported to be at Holy Cross interviewing for the Crusaders job, but a probable extension kept him in Providence.
Several Ivy assistants made the jump to head coaching positions with Columbia’s (and former Harvard’s) Kenny Blakeney heading to Howard, Penn’s Bernadette Laukaitis returning to Holy Family, Brown’s Tyler Simms going to Clark, and Brown’s Sara Binkhorst moving to Wheaton.
In the off-season’s strangest coaching news, Dartmouth promoted assistant coach Pete Hutchins to associate head coach on March 19th, only to see him jump to an assistant coaching position at George Mason on May 2nd.
The complete list of changes, from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020, for all 16 Ivy teams are noted below.
Columbia administrators should allow CUMB to play at home athletic events
Institutions of higher educations exist for the benefit of their students, not the other way around.
Columbia should take heed.
In case you missed it, the university has prohibited the Columbia University Marching Band (CUMB) from performing at athletic events.
The prohibition is now in its second week of effect with no end in sight, and the university attributed it to CUMB failing to meet student governing board application deadlines. Columbia is moving forward under the assumption that CUMB will not be performing at events going forward.
Ivy 60 for 60: Jeremy Lin
Ivy Hoops Online announces the next entry in Ivy 60 for 60, our series running through 60 of the greatest players in Ivy League men’s basketball history after a hiatus to continue celebrating six decades of modern Ivy League basketball. An Ivy 60 for 60 for Ivy women’s basketball will follow.
One of the few Ivy League basketball standouts known more for their professional basketball exploits, Jeremy Lin is also one of its most grateful.
Lin has given Ivy hoops fans a lot to be grateful for too.
Columbia junior guard Gabe Stefanini out indefinitely due to foot injury
Ivy Hoops Online reported Monday that Dartmouth guard Brendan Barry would miss the 2019-20 season due to injury. The Ancient Eight suffered its second major hit of the week Thursday when news broke that Columbia’s Gabe Stefanini injured his left foot and would be having surgery on Friday. Columbia Athletics confirmed the news to IHO later in the day.
Unlike with Barry’s injury, it is unclear how much time Stefanini will miss.
There is no official timetable for Stefanini’s return, but Basketball NCAA editor Riccardo De Angelis, places it at three to five months. If the timetable is correct and the junior guard’s recovery goes optimally well, he could return in time for the end of the Lions’ nonconference schedule against Maine on January 2 and Mount St. Vincent on the 9th to get ready for the Ivy opener at home against Cornell on the 18th.
Dartmouth senior guard Brendan Barry out for season with injury
Dartmouth senior guard Brendan Barry is out for the 2019-20 season due to injury, according to Dartmouth Athletics.
Barry’s plans following this season have not been determined and a decision about his future won’t be made until well after the season, per Dartmouth Athletics.
Barry has been a major focal point of Dartmouth’s offense the past two seasons, ranking second on the team and 11th in the Ivy League last season at 13.2 points per game. He also was a pivotal ball distributor for the Big Green, boasting the conference’s highest assist-to-turnover ratio for the second straight season as a junior.
But Barry is perhaps most well-known for his three-point shooting and has posted one of the top two highest three-point percentages across the league in all three of his seasons at Dartmouth, shooting 44.5% for his career.
Barry also led the Ivy League last season in minutes played after finishing second in that category as a sophomore, underscoring how significant of a loss Barry’s sidelining for the 2019-20 season will be.
Columbia University Marching Band banned from athletic events for foreseeable future
Days before the Columbia University Marching Band prepared to take the field for the Lions’ football home opener against Georgetown on Saturday afternoon, band leadership was informed by Athletics Director Peter Pilling, Associate Athletics Director Bob Steitz, and Director of Student Engagement William Lucas that the group would not be allowed to perform at upcoming athletic events. The group, which has been in existence since 1904 and battled the university administration for years, “will no longer exist in any official capacity,” it announced in an official statement Wednesday.
Ivy hoops roundup – Sept. 25, 2019
- Princeton’s Bella Alarie completed her last 3×3 tournaments with USA Basketball with a silver medal effort in Edmonton this past weekend and a bronze medal showing in Montreal in early September. Overall, her team came in seventh place in the 28-team field.
The two-time Ivy Player of the Year, who also picked up a silver medal with USA Basketball at this summer’s Pan American Games, continues to improve her stock as she heads into her final year for the Tigers. Michelle Williams of the WNBA listed Alarie as one of the 12 potential first-round picks in next years’s Draft, while Howard Megdal of High Post Hoops had her as the number five pick for the Minnesota Lynx. - Harvard men’s coach Tommy Amaker told Jon Rothstein that 2018 men’s Ivy League Player of the Year, Seth Towns, has been cleared for non-contact work. Towns, a co-captain of this year’s Crimson team, missed all of last year due to a knee injury sustained in the 2018 Ivy Tournament final against Penn.
Earlier this month, the senior from Columbus, Ohio, was one of 16 players attending the NCAA Elite Student-Athlete Symposium for Men’s Basketball in Indianapolis.
Dartmouth men’s basketball releases 2019-20 schedule
On Wednesday morning, coach Dave McLaughlin released the schedule for Dartmouth men’s basketball. The Big Green’s 14 Division I nonconference games, heavy on regional opponents and light on highly ranked rivals, will be highlighted by trips to Tampa to take on the defending College Basketball Invitational champion and Lowell for the inaugural River Hawk Invitational.
The Green have only five non-Ivy games at Leede Arena, but they will get to see neighboring Vermont, which is the three-time defending America East regular season champion and ranked in the Top-100 heading into this season. The team will hit the road for 10 games before league play, including the Nov. 8 opener at defending MAC champion Buffalo, which went 32-4 last year and made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Cornell women’s basketball releases 2019-20 schedule
Cornell head coach Dayna Smith announced her team’s 2019-20 schedule on Wednesday afternoon, unveiling a 13-game nonconference schedule that features seven home matches as well as games against teams from the Big 12 and Atlantic 10.
The Big Red’s early schedule is dominated with contests against tri-state neighbors, Albany, Binghamton, Colgate, Duquesne, Lafayette, Niagara, NJIT and St. Bonaventure, but the team will branch out with a visit from East Tennessee State and trips to TCU and West Virginia.