Columbia

Previewing another epic clash between Columbia and Princeton women’s basketball

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Sole possession of first place in the Ivy League is on the line Saturday night when the Columbia Lions’ women’s basketball team travels to central New Jersey to face their biggest rival, the Princeton Tigers, at Jadwin Gymnasium. The game tips off at 5:30 p.m. ET and will be televised on ESPN+.

The clash provides Columbia (18-5, 9-1 Ivy) with an opportunity to regain control of the Ivy League regular season title chase after the Lions dropped a hard-fought battle to Harvard last week, 60-54, at Levien Gymnasium in Morningside Heights.

Princeton (18-5, 9-1) can also seize control of the Ivy race with a win and close out its home schedule on Saturday with a 12-0 record. The Tigers are currently riding a 30-game home-court winning streak, the longest such streak in the nation.

Who was the last team to defeat Princeton at home? You guessed it, the Columbia Lions. On Jan. 6, 2023, Megan Griffith’s squad strode into Jadwin Gym and took down the Tigers, 58-55, in an overtime thriller.

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Harvard women’s basketball wins round two at Columbia, 60-54

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Rebounding from a home loss to Columbia on national television 17 days ago, Harvard women’s basketball used its pressure defense and a big fourth-quarter run to take round two at Levien Gymnasium, 60-54, in front of a raucous sellout crowd and ESPNU audience.

“I’m just really proud of our team … We were obviously disappointed with what we were able to do in that last game. You saw more of who we are in this game,” Harvard coach Carrie Moore said. “This team being able to take a punch, and then give a punch, and take another punch and punch back. We just really showed our growth and maturity.”

Harvard (19-3, 8-2 Ivy), which beat Cornell by 37 points on Friday night and exorcised the demons of its lackluster performance against the Big Red 16 days earlier, remains in third place but now sits only one game out of first place.

While Columbia (18-5, 9-1) clinched a spot in the Ivy League Tournament with its 89-37 victory over Dartmouth on Friday night, Sunday’s defeat moved the team into a tie with Princeton and ended several impressive streaks for the program: 11 straight games, 19 consecutive conference games and 20 regular season home contests.

“I thought they (Harvard) were just the better team today,” Columbia coach Megan Griffith said. 

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Hot shooting leads Harvard men’s basketball to 87-75 win over Columbia

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Behind a career high 31-point performance from sophomore forward Thomas Batties II, the Harvard men cruised to an 87-75 victory over visiting Columbia at Lavietes Pavilion on Saturday night.

The win gave head coach Tommy Amaker his 301st as head coach at Cambridge and, coupled with a 75-73 triumph over Cornell on Friday night, a weekend sweep of the Empire State Ivies. The Crimson (9-13, 4-5 Ivy) finish the weekend where it started, in fifth place in the conference, only one game out of the running for the Ivy Tournament.

The Lions (12-10, 1-8), which lost to Dartmouth by 22 points the previous evening, have been in the loss column for nine of its last ten contests, including five of six since leading scorer Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa went down to an injury. Jim Engles’ squad heads back to New York City in sole possession of last place.

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Everything coming up Big Green after Dartmouth men’s basketball’s 78-56 win over Columbia

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 Columbia and Dartmouth tip off at Leede Arena Friday for what became a 78-56 win for the Big Green. (Ray Curren | Ivy Hoops Online)

HANOVER, N.H. – It’s not often that Dartmouth has played the role of the hunted in the Ivy League in the last few decades. But they certainly looked the part Friday night at Leede Arena, beating Columbia in dominant fashion, 78-56.

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Could three Ivy League teams gain berths to the 2025 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament?

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With fewer than five weeks to go before Selection Sunday, coaches, players and the soothsayers known as bracketologists are beginning to focus their attention on which teams might gain a coveted berth to the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

Three teams in the Ivy League realistically are in contention for the 68 invitations that will be spread among the 362 Division I teams this year: Columbia, Harvard and Princeton.  

One of these three teams is very likely to earn the automatic qualification slotted for the team that wins the Ivy League Tournament in Providence on March 15. For the past five years in which Ivy teams have competed (COVID resulted in no Ivy League postseason play in in 2020 and 2021), Princeton has secured the automatic bid by winning the Ivy League Tournament.  

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Taking stock of the big three at the midway point of the Ivy League women’s basketball season

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With seven conference games in the books for every Ivy League women’s basketball team, the race for the regular season conference title has reached the halfway mark. 

The three teams picked in the preseason to contend for an Ivy League title – Princeton, Columbia and Harvard – have lived up to their billing, racking up big wins in the nonconference season and largely dominating the other five Ivy teams in league play.

Here’s where each of the big three stands as we head into the final five weeks of the Ivy League regular season:

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How Columbia women’s basketball routed Penn to stay atop the Ivy League

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For 10 minutes Saturday in New York, the Penn and Columbia women’s basketball teams had a real game going, with no evidence of which was undefeated in Ivy play and which had just one Ivy win.
But basketball games are 40 minutes long, and after the first quarter, the Lions roared past the Quakers for a 79-54 romp that kept Columbia atop the league standings and Penn near the bottom.

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Quakeaways from Penn men’s basketball’s 93-78 win over Columbia

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Penn is back in the mix for Ivy Madness after a second consecutive strong shooting performance.

The Quakers rained in 18 threes on 35 attempts in a 93-78 home dismissal of Columbia. Penn (6-11, 2-2 Ivy) is now tied with Dartmouth for fourth place in the league standings, while the Lions (11-6, 0-4) are pretty much toast after a stellar nonconference campaign.

Saturday afternoon’s hero was Sam Brown, who dropped in a career-high 30 points on 12 shots. He became the first Penn player to hit at least eight threes in a game since Jordan Dingle’s 2022 demolition of Harvard in the first Penn game at the Palestra open to fans since COVID hit.

The Quakers won on Saturday thanks to an excellent stretch of complementary basketball early in the second half. They held Columbia without a field goal for 7:38 on the defensive end, while five different Penn players hit threes on the offensive side of the floor. Penn used the dominant stretch to extend a four-point lead into a 19-point advantage inside of 10 minutes to play.

It’s all good vibes again, thanks to how …

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LISTEN: How Princeton men’s basketball completed another comeback to clip Columbia, 71-67

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Ivy Hoops Online correspondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark reflects on a 71-67 comeback win to remember for Princeton (14-4, 3-0 Ivy) over Columbia (11-5, 0-3) at Jadwin Gym Monday:

Columbia women’s basketball rallies in the second half to defeat Princeton, 58-50

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It’s been 47 days since the Columbia women’s basketball team played a home game at Levien Gymnasium. On Monday night, the Lions made the most of their homecoming, besting Princeton, 58-50, in an Martin Luther King Jr. Day rivalry matchup in Morningside Heights.

It took some time for the Lions to find their footing and range, as Princeton jumped out to a 30-20 lead at the intermission.

The Lions shot only 31% in the first half, hitting 10 of 32 shots, while the Tigers capitalized on high-percentage inside plays, shooting 58.3% and outscoring the Lions 22-16 in the paint.

The Tigers were paced by Ashley Chea, who tallied 10 first-half points, and Parker Hill, who netted eight points on 4-for-4 shooting. Hill finished the game with a perfect stat line of 12 points on 6-f0r-6 shooting.

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