Check out our archive of the final On the Vine podcast of the season, in which George Clark, Michael James (@ivybball) and Sam Tydings join Peter Andrews & Mike Tony to cover the latest Ivy action and what we see as the future of Ivy basketball as we know it. Segments include reflections on Harvard’s NCAA tournament matchup with North Carolina, the growth of the league and a way too early look ahead to next season’s campaign.
Mike Tony
No. 8 Princeton's undefeated season ends at No. 1 Maryland
Maybe it ended sooner than it could have.
Previously unbeaten No. 8 Princeton was overpowered by No. 1 Maryland in the second half of the Round of 32 matchup on the Terrapins” home floor Monday night, reeling off a 17-2 run to start the second half that distanced themselves from Princeton for good and helped secure the 85-70 victory.
The Tigers (31-1) trailed 42-38 at the half and had harnessed momentum from the program”s first ever NCAA tournament win Saturday against Wisconsin-Green Bay. But Maryland (32-2) shot 12-for-20 from beyond the arc and enjoyed too many hot hands for Princeton to handle. Maryland”s Laurin Mincy led all scorers with 27 points and nbso online casino reviews seven assists, and Princeton guard Blake Dietrick notched 26 points in 40 minutes.
North Carolina ekes past Harvard, 67-65
So close. So very close.
After trailing 50-34 with 16:36 remaining in its NCAA tournament matchup with North Carolina, Harvard looked done. The No. 13 Crimson looked one-dimensional nearly the entire game up to that point, with that dimension being senior guard Wesley Saunders.
But a true team comeback propelled Harvard to its first lead of the game with 1:17 remaining, and Saunders had a chance to win the game with a three-pointer as time expired. The shot hit the glass and rim before popping out, ending Harvard’s season and giving No. 4 North Carolina the 67-65 victory in Jacksonville.
North Carolina leads Harvard at halftime, 36-25
No. 4 North Carolina leads No. 13 Harvard at halftime in Jacksonville, 36-25.
It’s been a game of many runs so far, and a whole lot of Wesley Saunders. The Harvard senior guard posted 15 points in the stanza, including the Crimson’s first 10 points. It took 10:56 for a Harvard player other than Saunders to score, and at one point, Harvard was shooting 1-for-14 outside of Saunders.
And yet the Crimson reeled off a 16-5 run in 6:04, cutting North Carolina’s lead to 26-23 before the Tar Heels in turn bounced back to finish the half on a 10-2 run driven by sophomore forward Isiah Hicks, who leads UNC with nine points off the bench.
Eight Tar Heels have scored, many of them notching easy buckets in transition off of long rebounds. Still, three Tar Heels also have two fouls – freshman forward Justin Jackson and junior forwards Brice Johnson and J.P. Tokoto.
Can Harvard ride Saunders to another improbable victory? We’re about to find out.
Should you root for Harvard?
With Harvard set to take on North Carolina Thursday in the Crimson’s fourth straight NCAA tournament appearance, Peter Andrews and I debate whether non-Harvard Ivy hoops fans should root for the Crimson to win their third straight opening NCAA tourney game.
MT: Look, I know you probably hate Harvard. And you have every reason to.
The cheating scandal that forced Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry to withdraw from the team in 2012-13 only to win another Ivy title the following year.
The loosening of academic standards for basketball players.
The sending of an assistant out on “unethical recruiting trips.”
The way Harvard teases Ivy fans every year by getting entangled in close games against underdog conference competition only to emerge victorious almost every time. (The Crimson have won five straight games this season decided by three points or fewer.)
But Harvard beating UNC wouldn’t be so bad.
Harvard-UNC: What to expect
As mentioned in Tuesday’s On the Vine podcast, pace of game will determine whether Harvard can win a NCAA tournament game for the third straight season.
The Tar Heels are 1-5 in games with fewer than 65 possessions, while Harvard has played in only eight games this season with more than 65 possessions. In other words, the slower the game, the more successful the Crimson are likely to be.
Harvard ranks 34th in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency, and North Carolina has been a turnover-prone team all season, prone to poor passing and occasionally pushing tempo at the expense of smart offense.
On the Vine – March 17
Check out our archive of the latest On the Vine podcast, in which David Freed of the Harvard Crimson and Aaron Dodson of the Daily Tar Heel join Peter online casino Andrews & Mike Tony to cover the latest Ivy action. Segments include a preview of and predictions for No. 13 Harvard”s NCAA tournament matchup with No. 4 North Carolina, a discussion of Yale”s unfortunate season fate and much more:
Undefeated Princeton absurdly gets No. 8 seed in NCAA tournament
The Princeton women’s basketball team was awarded a No. 8 seed in the NCAA tournament Monday despite a 30-0 regular season – the best by any women’s or men’s team in Ivy history, a No. 13 ranking, a 3-0 record against the RPI Top 50 and an average margin of victory of 24.9 points per game.
This is a squad that bIew out Pitt, Drexel, Wake Forest, Charlotte and Georgetown, and beat Michigan 85-55 in Ann Arbor. A No. 8 seed shows that the selection committee does not know how to evaluate midmajor teams whatsoever. As Graham Hays of espnW.com writes in his No. 1 Burning Question for the committee:
“In the entire history of the NCAA tournament, Princeton is just the fourth mid-major to enter the event undefeated. There have been a lot of soft schedules and a lot of weak conferences over the course of those 30-plus seasons. Perfect seasons still didn’t happen.
Four times teams from beyond the elite did it. Four. The same number of times No. 8 seeds reached the Sweet 16.
Some reward.”
The Tigers will play Wisconsin-Green Bay in College Park, Md. on Saturday at 11 a.m. on ESPN2.
IHO 2014-15 All-Ivy Awards
Ivy Hoops Online founder Ian Halpern, On the Vine host Peter Andrews and I combined to determine the 2014-15 All-IHO selections:
IHO PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Justin Sears, Yale (Jr., F – Plainfield, N.J.)
Sears snared IHO POY honors for his yeoman’s work in the Yale frontcourt, registering 14.3 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game, pushing the Bulldogs just short of their first NCAA tournament berth in 53 years. Sears eclipsed 25 points in four Ivy contests and anchored a stout Yale defense all season long. (For the record, I voted for Wesley Saunders for POY based on his second-half heroics in the Ivy playoff game, but I was outvoted 2-1. It’s a good problem to have several legitimate POY candidates, though, that’s for sure.)
IHO ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
Kyle Castlin, Columbia (Fr., G – Marietta, Ga.)
Castlin made an immediate impact in the Lions’ dynamic backcourt, posting 18 points in 30 minutes in just his second collegiate game and displaying levels of body control and offensive awareness that most players in this league never attain. He scored in double figures in 14 of 28 games and was one of the few constants in a Columbia offense that struggled to find options beyond Maodo Lo.
IHO DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Shonn Miller, Cornell (Sr., F – Euclid, Ohio)
Miller anchored Cornell’s gritty and physically large defense, posting 1.8 blocks and 1.3 steals per game while notching a 28 percent defensive rebound rate that was good for seventh in the country. Cornell doesn’t beat Harvard late in the season without Miller’s defensive chops, and it certainly doesn’t finish third in the league in scoring defense without him either.
Penn to hire Steve Donahue as next head coach
Dick Jerardi of the Philadelphia Daily News reported this afternoon that Steve Donahue will become the next head basketball coach at Penn, replacing Jerome Allen, who Donahue coached at Penn as an assistant, a position he held from 1990-2000.
The Springfield, Pa. native was an assistant coach at Monsignor Bonner High School near Philadelphia under current Lafayette head coach (and fellow former Penn assistant) Fran O’Hanlon from 1987 to 1988 before serving as an assistant at Philadelphia University from 1988 to 1990. Donahue’s Ivy and Philly ties stretch way back.
But of course, Donahue is best known throughout the Ivy League for head coaching Cornell from 2000 to 2010, making the NCAA tournament in his final three seasons in Ithaca, including a Sweet 16 appearance in 2010. Donahue finished 146-138 (.514) at Cornell, which did not finish with a winning record in Ivy play until Donahue’s fifth season.
Donahue moved on to Boston College in 2010 but struggled mightily with recruiting in Chestnut Hill, going just 54-76 (.415) in four seasons as head coach there before getting fired in 2014.
Donahue’s teams are known for motion offense, which worked with great success toward the end of hs run at Cornell and even at BC, where Donahue’s defenses repeatedly failed him.
The move was perhaps the easiest for Penn Athletic Director Grace Calhoun to make because current Penn assistant coach Nat Graham also served under Donahue at Boston College and Cornell in that same capacity.
Calhoun used Fogler Consulting to assist with the head coaching search.
The news comes just nine days after it was reported that former Penn coach Jerome Allen would be fired after five and a half seasons at the helm, and just six days after Penn’s 2014-15 season finale.