Q&A with Yale men’s basketball coach James Jones

by
(James Jones’s Twitter page)

Ivy Hoops Online caught up with James Jones as he begins his 26th year at Yale with early-season September workouts to prepare his team for the 2024-25 slate:

IHO: What are the strengths of your team this season?

JJ: Confidence, which comes from our success. We are smaller than we have been with a higher work ethic. Everyone on the team has it. Last season we had a good work ethic, but not like this.

IHO: Talk about John Poulakidas and Bez Mbeng, both seniors.

JJ: They are comparable to any of our top two seniors over the years. Like Brandon Sherrod and Justin Sears.

IHO: Who are some guys that you think might have breakout seasons?

Read more

Princeton women’s basketball releases return matchup-heavy 2024-25 schedule

by
Non conference schedule
(Princeton Athletics)

The Princeton women’s basketball team, winner of five consecutive Ivy League Tournament championships, released its schedule this week for the 2024-25 season.

For the Tigers, it’s déjà vu all over again. Of the 27 games included on the schedule, only four involve new opponents compared to a season ago. That’s largely due to Princeton playing return matchups against nine nonconference opponents from the 2023-24 campaign.

Read more

Check out The Madness of Ivy Basketball

by

Ivy Hoops Online contributor Richard Kent has a new book out that entertainingly excels at making sense of its own title:  The Madness of Ivy Basketball. The work includes thoughtful recaps of the 2023-24 seasons for individual Ivy programs, a primer on Dartmouth men’s basketball’s historic unionization effort, reasons to be excited about the 2024-25 campaign and contributions from fellow IHO contributor Rob Browne and a bevy of other Ivy roundball experts. It’s available at Amazon here.

 

Princeton’s Kaitlyn Chen on choosing UConn for grad transfer season

by

Kaitlyn Chen is University of Connecticut-bound. (Kaitlyn Chen Instagram page)

Next week, Kaitlyn Chen will graduate from Princeton University as one of the most decorated basketball players in the history of Old Nassau.

The senior point guard and former Ivy League Player of the Year recently announced she will enroll next fall at the University of Connecticut to play for the legendary Geno Auriemma as a graduate transfer.

Chen told Ivy Hoops Online she will pursue a master’s degree in sports management at UConn.

Read more

Five things I think I think about Penn men’s basketball, post-Ethan Roberts commitment

by

The great Peter King, dean of football writers in America, retired earlier this year. I would put King — the longtime Sports Illustrated columnist and reporter — right up there with Lawrence Taylor, my father and Steve Sabol among the people who helped spark my lifelong love affair (obsession?) with sports.

In honor of King, I have a few more thoughts than usual on Penn’s position in the Ivy League landscape — and college basketball at large — after it picked up a high-upside transfer in the form of ex-Drake guard Ethan Roberts, a sophomore, last week.

Read more

Q&A with Yale men’s basketball transfer Matt Knowling

by

Matt Knowling is headed for Southern California to be a Trojan. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Yale senior Matt Knowling, from Ellington, Conn. recently announced his decision to continue his basketball career as a graduate transfer at USC. Knowling was a First Team All-Ivy selection is 2022-23.

Read more

Danny Wolf to transfer from Yale men’s basketball to Michigan

by

Danny Wolf averaged 14.1 points and 9.7 rebounds as a sophomore forward in 2023-24 before entering the transfer portal. (Yale Athletics)

Danny Wolf is bound for Michigan.

The 7-foot sophomore entered the transfer portal on March 30 with a do-not-contact notation, six days after his breakout campaign ended in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32. Wolf visited the University of Michigan last weekend and had a visit to the University of North Carolina scheduled for Thursday. It was unknown as of Saturday afternoon if he actually made that visit.

Wolf was at Yale’s end-of-season banquet at BAR New Haven on Wednesday night and won the team MVP award. At the time, Wolf said that he was conflicted and had not made up his mind on a destination. The unanimous First Team All-Ivy selection also indicated that staying at Yale was still a possibility.

Read more

Three Ancient Eight stars selected in the 2024 WNBA Draft

by

McKenzie Forbes, Abbey Hsu and Kaitlyn Davis each heard their name called during Monday’s WNBA Draft in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Ivy League)

While most of the nation’s attention was focused on Caitlin Clark being selected by the Indiana Fever at the top of the WNBA Draft, Ivy League fans celebrated the selection of Columbia’s Abbey Hsu and Kaitlyn Davis and Harvard’s McKenzie Forbes in the third round of Monday night’s event.

Hsu was a senior guard for two-time regular-season champion Columbia and the 2023-24 Ivy League Player of the Year, while Davis, who played with Hsu at Columbia for three seasons and was a two-time First-Team All-Ivy forward, spent her graduate transfer season as a starter for Southern California. Forbes, a 2021-22 Second Team All-Ivy guard/forward who started her career at California before transferring to Harvard for her final three undergraduate years, joined Davis in the starting lineup for the Trojans. 

Read more

Emily Garner chosen as new Cornell women’s basketball head coach

by

Emily Garner, who went 124-55 in eight seasons at Trinity College, hopes to bring the same level of success to Cornell. (photo: Trinity College Athletics)

After a month-long search, Cornell athletic director Nicki Moore announced the hiring of Emily Garner as the new women’s basketball head coach on Thursday afternoon.

Garner, who becomes the eighth head coach in Big Red history, arrives in Ithaca after leading Trinity College to a 124-55 record over the last eight seasons, including a 96-35 mark over the last five years.

Read more