Donald Fleming was a rare force on multiple fronts as a student-athlete at Harvard. He was a husband, father and three-time first-team All-Ivy selection. (Harvard Varsity Club)
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.
It’s hard to be an Ivy League student. It’s tough to be an Ivy League athlete. It can be a challenge to be a devoted husband. It’s an incredibly difficult responsibility to be a father at a young age.
Jerome Allen was inducted into Class X of the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017. He’s no longer in the Hall of Fame now, and understandably so, But the good he did for Penn shouldn’t be shunted aside either. (Penn Sports Network video)
It was one year ago today that allegations that Jerome Allen took bribes were first reported by Bloomberg and the Miami Herald.
But the passage of time didn’t make Sports Illustrated’s deep dive last week into how Jerome Allen became guilty of bribery, wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion any easier to digest.
Most Penn basketball supporters will find it an uncomfortable read, but its revelations are simply too many to ignore.
They reconfirm what we already knew – one of Penn basketball’s most admired figures used his head coaching position for personal gain at the expense of the program.
But taken as a whole, the article’s revelations paint a far more holistic portrait than that.
Allen is and will always be more than an implicated figure on a witness stand, and his story as told by SI merits closer examination – as do the institutions and forces that shaped it. As someone who covered Allen and Penn basketball extensively for the Daily Pennsylvanian from 2012 to 2014, I thought I’d do a closer read of SI’s story, portions of which are italicized below.
The Utah Jazz announced Monday that the team signed Oni to a contract, giving Oni an opportunity to keep his momentum toward a NBA career going after the Jazz got him in the NBA Draft last month with the No. 58 pick via a trade with the Golden State Warriors, becoming the first player drafted from the since Penn’s Jerome Allen.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Andy Siegel of Early Bird Rights reported on Twitter the contract was a three-year deal with only the first year guaranteed.
Miye Oni excelled for the Utah Jazz in its third and final Salt Lake City Summer League game Wednesday night, breaking out with an impressive performance after contributing little offensively in the Jazz’s first game and not playing at all in the second.
Oni contributed 17 points, six rebounds, two assists, two steals and a block as the Jazz posted an 84-81 win over the San Antonio Spurs at Vivint Smart Home Arena.
“The coaches gave me a lot of confidence to just go out there and play my game,” Oni said according to the Deseret News. “I was a little passive in Game 1. I thought I was just trying to let the game come to me maybe a little too much, so I wanted to take the opportunities I had still within the offense and just play good team basketball. I felt like we did that tonight.”
Cornell graduate Matt Morgan announced on Twitter Friday that he signed with the Toronto Raptors to play in the NBA Summer League after going undrafted in the NBA Draft:
“To be able to go back and prove that I’ve gotten better with time, to be able to go out in the Summer League and actually play for a team that just came off of an NBA championship, is surreal,” Morgan told Ithaca.com.
Miye Oni was not only selected in the NBA Draft but is headed to a team in the Utah Jazz that has roster space.
KSL.com noted in an article Friday that the franchise is in need of players to fill its roster after dealing Grayson Allen, Kyle Korver and Jae Crowder to the Memphis Grizzlies for Mike Conley two days prior.
A 2016 study by SLC Dunk, SB Nation’s Utah Jazz community, found that for the 20 years between the 1996 NBA Draft and the 2015 NBA Draft, 401 of 600 second-round picks saw at least one game at the NBA level.
Miye Oni took game MVP honors after Yale’s 77-73 win over Miami on Dec. 1 Hoophall Miami Invitational at American Airlines Arena, impressing NBA scouts with his performance. (Next Ones)
The wait felt interminable.
For Miye Oni and supporters, it stretched five hours throughout nearly the entire NBA Draft; for Ivy League basketball at large, it lasted 24 years.
But early Friday morning, the wait ended as Oni, who chose last month to remain eligible for the NBA Draft and leave Yale after his junior season despite an uncertain draft stock, became the first Ivy League hoopster selected in the NBA Draft since Jerome Allen was taken 49th by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1995.
Oni was selected 58th by the Golden State Warriors but was picked for the Utah Jazz, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Carla Berube was named the 10th head coach in Princeton women’s basketball history Wednesday night after being the head coach at Tufts for the past 17 seasons. (FIBA)
The wait is over.
Twenty-nine days after former Princeton head coach Courtney Banghart took the same position at North Carolina and with just two full days left until June, Princeton named Banghart’s successor Wednesday evening.
Carla Berube has been named the 10th head coach in Princeton women’s basketball history, succeeding Banghart after serving the past 17 seasons as head coach at Tufts, a Division III university.
Berube led Tufts to the NCAA Final Four in four consecutive seasons from 2014 through 2017, reaching the championship game in 2016 and 2017. Berube was the 2015 United States Marine Corps / Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) NCAA Division III National Coach of the Year.
Princeton’s two-time reigning Ivy Player of the Year Bella Alarie has found out who her draw for the start of the Pan American Games will be as a member of the United States Pan American Games Team.
FIBA announced Thursday that the USA will play at the 2019 Pan American Games women’s basketball competition in preliminary round Group B, along with Argentina, Colombia and U.S. Virgin Islands. Playing in preliminary round Group A will be Brazil, Canada, Paraguay and Puerto Rico.
The 2019 Pan American Games women’s basketball competition will take place August 6-10 at the Coliseo Eduardo Dibo in Lima, Peru, but tip-off times, the order of games and competition format are yet to be determined.
Also still to be determined is who Princeton’s next head coach will be, even as the list of sensible possibilities gets smaller while the coaching staff for Princeton’s last head coach gets bigger.
