Home of the Roundball Poets
The golden era of Yale men’s basketball has taken place over the last decade under the tutelage of longtime head coach James Jones.
Playing no small part in such excellence has been associate head coach Justin Simon, who was named the head coach at Division III Carnegie Mellon University Wednesday.
“I am really fortunate to have been surrounded by so many extraordinary people during my tenure at Yale,” Simon said.
Penn basketball looks a lot different than it did when I last wrote about the program roughly three weeks ago after Fran McCaffery’s hire as head coach became official.
Where to begin? The new stable of assistant coaches? The official return of leading scorer Ethan Roberts? The ex-five-star recruit and power conference transfer who just committed? The new 7-footer coming over from the pros in Norway?
There’s an unmistakable air of optimism around the program right now, and with good reason. In the spirit of the estimable football writer Peter King, here’s “five things I think I think” about the Quakers at this juncture of the offseason:
Dear Ivy League presidents:
I have tried to warn you for almost three years.
The warning signs were there. The arrogance was pervasive. The lack of understanding of the current landscape of college athletics on your part was mind-boggling.
The Xaivian Lee era at Princeton appears to be over.
According to a report posted today by ESPN, the First-Team All-Ivy junior guard has entered the transfer portal. The report states that Lee will also enter the NBA Draft while simultaneously keeping his options open to transfer to another program for his final year of collegiate eligibility.
A year ago, Lee similarly tested the NBA Draft waters before returning to Princeton for his junior year.
Lee’s likely departure from Princeton, while not entirely unexpected, is the latest development in what already is shaping up to be a tumultuous offseason for the Princeton men’s basketball program.
March 23 marked the 50th anniversary of an extraordinary moment in Ivy League basketball history, when Princeton University’s cagers shocked the college basketball world by winning the 1975 National Invitational Tournament. I fell in love with Princeton basketball that season as a 10-year old kid growing up in Princeton, N.J.
Armond Hill, Mickey Steurer, Barnes Hauptfuhrer, Tim “Speedy” van Blommesteyn, Peter “Mugsy” Molloy, Brian O’Neill, Ilan “Spider” Ramati — these Tigers were regular topics of dinner conversation in my house that year. I collected all of these heroes’ autographs on game programs marked with the players’ sweat.
Penn men’s basketball made it official on Thursday, revealing that the school has hired Class of 1982 alum Fran McCaffery as its head coach.
At first glance, the deal looks like a win-win for both sides. The Quakers get a proven high-major winner and one of the best offensive coaches in the country to revitalize the program and the alumni base. For the 65-year-old McCaffery, the homecoming job is a soft landing after a 15-season run at Iowa. McCaffery can recruit and scheme what will presumably be his last collegiate coaching job without the pressure-cooker environment inherent to power conference basketball these days.
There will be much ink to spill about McCaffery in the coming days and weeks, but in the short term, here are a few thoughts about the hire I’ve jotted down:
With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, it appears you can go home again… even if it takes 42 years.
Former Iowa men’s basketball coach and 1982 Penn alum Fran McCaffery was named the University of Pennsylvania’s new coach in a Penn Athletics announcement Thursday.
The hire will be a homecoming for McCaffery, who grew up in Northwest Philadelphia, attended La Salle College High School and played for the Quakers from 1979 to 1982.
“I am thrilled to bring Fran back to Penn and Philadelphia as our next head men’s basketball coach,” Penn director of athletics Alanna Wren said in the press release. “Fran has had success at every level of Division I and is passionate about restoring our program to glory. His energy and enthusiasm for leading young men was apparent throughout the process and he has proven to be committed to player development and relationship-building with his student-athletes throughout his storied career.”
Princeton correspondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark reacts to a Daily Princetonian report Tuesday that associate head coach Brett MacConnell and assistant coach Lawrence Rowley were asked not to return to the Tigers’ bench after a fourth-place finish in the 2024-25 Ivy League standings despite being the preseason conference favorite:
Columbia athletic director Peter Pilling announced that Kevin Hovde, an assistant coach at Florida, has been named the Columbia men’s basketball program’s next coach Monday.
“I am honored to be named head coach of Columbia men’s basketball,” Hovde said in a statement. “Columbia is truly a special place for my family and me, and we are thrilled to be back. It’s humbling to have the opportunity to develop young men into leaders on and off the court at one of the top universities in the world. I am eager to get to work and build a program our alumni and community can be proud of. Our team will focus on having a consistent approach and an unrelenting competitive spirit as we strive for success in the Ivy League and beyond.”
This will be Hovde’s second stint in Morningside Heights, where he was an assistant to then-head coach Kyle Smith from 2011 to 2016.
Hovde will remain with the 2025 SEC Tournament champion Gators, which is in the Sweet 16 of this year’s NCAA Tournament, for the duration of the team’s run.
In a NCAA Tournament Round of 64 matchup pitting No. 10 Harvard, one of the nation’s stingiest defenses, against No. 7 Michigan State, one of the country’s most prolific offenses, it was the higher seed coming away with a 64-50 victory Saturday. But the Spartans did it by effectively shutting down the Crimson for 40 minutes.
While Robyn Fralick’s squad, which won its first tournament game since 2019, moves on to a second-round game at Reynolds Coliseum Monday against host No. 2 North Carolina State, Carrie Moore’s team will use the experiences of this week, as well as the memories of its first Ivy League Tournament title, to make another run next season after ending an 18-year NCAA Tournament drought Saturday.