Yale started out the last week of the summer by announcing a new set of admission policies for recruited athletes in the wake of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal on Wednesday. Two days later, heading into Labor Day weekend, the athletic department followed with a posting of the women’s basketball schedule for the 2019-20 season.
Coach Allison Guth’s fifth season in charge of the Bulldogs features a strong 13-game non-conference schedule which will have her team facing nine teams that made the postseason in 2019. The Elis will challenge Mercer, North Carolina, Quinnipiac, and UCLA, which went to the NCAA Tournament, while taking on WNIT participants Fresno State, Loyola Marymount, Northeastern, Providence, and Sacred Heart.
If you missed the Ivy League’s own women’s All-Ivy awards, you can find them here. As selected by Ivy Hoops Online’s contributors, here are the IHO 2018-19 Women’s All-Ivy Awards:
On Saturday night, the Ivy League regular season ended with a co-championship, another dominant night from the third-place team and a surprise fourth-place team heading to Ivy Madness.
Harvard clinched a spot in Ivy Madness and locked down the third seed for next Saturday’s semifinal with a dominant 80-34 win over Cornell. The win, in addition to securing the Crimson’s third straight appearance in the Ivy Tournament, was the 600th career victory for Coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. Delaney-Smith is now one of 19 active coaches to reach that impressive milestone.
Banghart earns win 250, Delaney Smith sticks at 599
In a matchup of two of the Ivy’s premier teams and coaches, the Tigers (18-9, 10-2 Ivy) came out on top of the Crimson (14-11, 7-5), 61-58, on Saturday night. With the win, Princeton coach Courtney Banghart won the 250th game of her 12-year career. Harvard’s Kathy Delaney-Smith, in her 37th year there, will have to wait one more weekend to try and capture the 600th win of her storied tenure.
In a defensive battle where both teams shot under 36 percent from the field, the Tigers were able to use its inside presence (11-for-15 vs 2-for-2 in free throws; 36 to 28 points in the paint) to offset Harvard’s league-leading outside game. The Crimson, which entered the game shooting more than 33 percent from three and averaging over nine treys a game, finished the night making only six baskets at a 23 percent accuracy.
Roxy Barahman fires the three-point buzzer-beater that gave Yale a dramatic 65-62 win over Harvard on Feb. 1.. (Yale Athletics)
Hailing from Calabasas, Calif., Yale junior guard Roxy Barahman has emerged as one of the Ivy League’s most dynamic players this season, so far leading the conference in scoring, ranking second in minutes played and steals and placing among the top 10 in assists, assist-to-turnover ratio, rebounding and free-throw percentage. Yale is currently tied for second in Ivy standings at 4-2 in league play and with more overall wins (14) than any other Ivy besides Penn.
Ivy Hoops Online: Talk about last season and the impact of graduation losses.
Roxy Barahman: Last season was very memorable and I knew we had a lot of big shoes to fill for this season, with the three seniors, Jen (Berkowitz), Mary Ann (Santucci), and Tamara (Simpson) leaving. After winning the WBI, we now have the expectation that we can make it to the NCAA or WNIT tournaments, as we are a team that should be in postseason play.
IHO: Tell us about your freshmen and their impact thus far.
RB: They have certainly stepped up and filled new roles very well. With Camilla (Emsbo) jumping into the starting lineup, she has really helped us make up for Jen’s loss and also provides a large presence around the rim. It is comforting knowing you have the potential Ivy League Rookie of the Year on your team, as she is a big key to our success this year.
Cy Lippold scored 21 and Isalys Quinones added 19 to lead the Big Green to a 63-56 victory over Cornell, its first win in Ithaca in nine years. The two captains shot a combined 10-for-17 from beyond the arc with each making five three-pointers. As a team, Dartmouth ended up hitting 11 shots from three at a 50 percent rate.
The teams were close throughout with Dartmouth holding a 32-30 lead at the half and a 50-45 advantage after three. Cornell tied it at 50 on an old-fashioned three by Caitlin Smith with 8:42 left in the fourth quarter. With the Big Green up 53-52 at the seven-minute mark, Cornell shot 1-for-9 over the next 6:30 as Dartmouth went on a 10-2 run to put the game away.
In the latest episode of Inside Ivy Hoops, Ivy Hoops Online editor Mike Tony is joined by Yale coach Allison Guth and IHO writer George Clark.
Mike and George reflect on last weekend’s Ivy matchups, including a weekend to remember for the Princeton men and women, and also look ahead to a full slate of league games this weekend – including what appear to be several must-wins already:
Coach Guth walks Mike through the sequence leading up to Roxy Barahman’s buzzer-beating, game-winning three-pointer just past mid-court versus Harvard Friday, breaks down the reasoning behind adopting a pack-line defense this season, reflects on the development of Barahman and emergence of first-year standout Camilla Emsbo, discusses a scheduling committee’s ongoing review of Ivy back-to-back weekends and much more:
Sometimes you need a fiber prescriber, so Mike talks about Flannel Night:
Harvard (10-7, 3-1 Ivy) 100 at Brown (9-11, 1-3 Ivy) 83
With Brown holding a 51-50 lead one minute into the third quarter, Harvard used two separate runs of 10-0 and 15-3 over the next ten minutes to take a 78-59 advantage. The Bears battled back, going on their own 21-7 run over the next five minutes to make it a 85-80 with four minutes left in regulation. A Justine Gaziano three 30 seconds later made it a 87-83 contest, but the Crimson scored the game’s last 13 points to win going away.
Princeton (9-8, 1-1 Ivy) 79 at Columbia (5-11, 1-2 Ivy) 64
Friday evening’s action began with an all-time performance from last year’s Ivy League Player of the Year, Princeton’s Bella Alarie. Alarie scored 45 points, besting the previous record of 43 points set by Dartmouth’s Gail Koziara in 1978, while making a conference record 20 field goals. As if that wasn’t enough, the 6′ 4″ forward captured 14 rebounds and added 4 blocks, setting a new Princeton career record of 160.
