General

Yale men lose Knowling and tight defensive battle at Penn, 66-64

by
Yale lost Matt Knowling to injury in its 66-64 defeat versus Penn at the Palestra Friday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

A key injury spelled doom for Yale at the Palestra in a 66-64 loss to Penn Friday.

With 18 minutes left in the game and the score knotted at 33-33, Yale leading scorer Matt Knowling rolled his ankle. He would not return to the game and his status for tonight against Princeton is questionable.

Penn hung on in a defensive struggle featuring 14 lead changes in which Yale converted just three field goals in the final 5:26. The visitors’ fate was sealed when a fallaway shot landed off base after Yale got the ball back down two with 5.1 seconds left following a 1-for-2 trip to the foul line by Ivy League free-throw percentage leader Clark Slajchert.

Read more

Penn women stop Yale again to clinch Ivy League Tournament berth, 72-58

by
It was pretty much a make-or-break game for the Yale women, and Penn’s Kayla Padilla broke them.
The Quakers ran away from the Bulldogs, 72-58, and left them with only the slimmest of chances of reaching the Ivy League Tournament — while securing a spot for themselves.

Read more

Ivy women’s week seven roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top Ten

by

Following Saturday afternoon’s action, the upper division pulled away from the bottom half, while the Brown rebuild took a positive step forward.

Columbia bounced back from a disappointing result against Princeton by taking it out on Yale in front of 1,485 fans at Levien Gymnasium.  The Lions jumped out to a 32-17 halftime lead on the strength of a 14-0 second quarter run.  The Light Blue made it a 20-point game after three and widen it to a game-high 28 points with just under four minutes to go in the contest.  Defensively, they limited the Bulldogs to 32% shooting and only 49 points, the first time they held an Ivy opponent under 50 this season.

Read more

Ivy men’s week seven roundup: Ancient Eight’s top 10

by

Week seven for the Ancient Eight saw Yale avenge its shocking opening day loss at Columbia and move into a tie at the top of the conference leaderboard.  After a close half that saw the Bulldogs holding onto a slim 31-26 lead, the Bulldogs outscored the last-place Lions 58-32 for the dominant 31-point win.  Yale, winners of six straight, had 13 different players in the scoring column and shot 65% from the field. 

Read more

Yale men get revenge in 99-68 rout of Columbia

by
Matt Knowling went 9-for-10 from the field to score 22 points in Yale’s 99-68 rout of Columbia at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Revenge was certainly on the docket for Yale when it hosted Columbia at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday.

The Lions had upset Yale 62-60 on New Year’s Eve at Levien Gym in what remains their only Ivy win. Yale returned the favor Saturday with a resounding 99-68 win.

“We certainly wanted to avenge the loss,” Yale coach James Jones said. “I told them that I didn’t have to motivate them.”

Read more

Three Quakeaways from Penn men completing season sweep of Harvard

by
Penn senior swingman Lucas Monroe finished just one point shy of a second straight double-double in an 80-72 win at Harvard Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Penn took a huge step towards securing a berth in Ivy Madness on Saturday with a nearly wire-to-wire 80-72 win over Harvard in Cambridge, Mass.

Though the Quakers (14-11, 6-4 Ivy) led the game for 38:59, there were some nervous moments in the second half, as careless turnovers and a scoring drought that spanned 5:51 of game time let the Crimson (12-12, 3-7) close their deficit to as little as three points with 3:37 to go.

Penn only made one field goal in the game’s final 10 minutes — a corner three from sophomore guard George Smith — and relied on 20-23 free throw shooting in the final 3:18 to keep Harvard at bay. Smith hit five three throws in that span, as did senior swingman Lucas Monroe.

The Red and Blue pretty much stuck the dagger in Harvard’s playoff hopes with the victory; Harvard now sits alone in seventh place in the Ivy standings, three full games out of playoff position.

Meanwhile, Penn sits just a game out of first place in the league and controls its own destiny for at least a share of the Ivy crown.

That tantalizing possibility is one of many things Penn fans can chew over from an uplifting win, such as the fact that …

Read more

Thoughts on Dartmouth men’s 83-76 win over Princeton

by
Dame Adelekun’s highly efficient 25 points on 10-for-14 field-goal shooting helped lift Dartmouth past Princeton at Leede Arena Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Dartmouth’s been a resilient team throughout this season, bouncing back from a 13-point second-half deficit to push past Penn last month and overcoming a four-point overtime deficit almost midway through the extra period to top UTSA in November. So Dartmouth blowing a 76-71 lead with 70 seconds left in regulation to drop its first meeting with Princeton at Jadwin Gym in an 83-80 overtime decision last month was never going to be the final word on the Big Green’s season.

In its rematch with Princeton at Leede Arena Saturday, it was Dartmouth that delivered a second-half comeback, climbing out of a seven-point hole early in the second stanza to notch an 83-76 win. Dartmouth’s now tied with a quickly cooling Cornell at fifth place in the Ivy standings,

Some thoughts on how Dartmouth got there and where they could be headed:

Read more

Penn women take revenge on Harvard, 70-64

by
Passion! Great performances! Revenge! You could enjoy them all on the radio — the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday broadcast had “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” — or you could find them at the Palestra in West Philly, where the Penn women took down Harvard, 70-64.

Read more

2024 Ivy League Tournaments moved from Brown to Columbia

by
Levien Gym will host the 2024 Ivy League Tournaments, the league announced Wednesday. (Columbia Athletics)

In a surprise Wednesday afternoon announcement, the Ivy League office stated that the 2024 Ivy League men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will be held at Columbia’s Levien Gymnasium. Specific dates for the four-day event have not been posted.

The announcement signals a substantial change in the Ivy League’s rotation of tournament locations set in 2019. Brown was slated to host the tournaments next in 2024.

The Ivy League attributed the move to Levien Gym to gym renovations being finished sooner than expected when the original tourney rotation was announced in a statement Wednesday.  

“The future of the rotation remains under continuous evaluation,” Ivy League spokesman Matt Panto told Ivy Hoops Online in an email Wednesday. “The league is excited to bring the tournaments to Princeton next month and New York City in 2024.”

Brown Athletics did not respond to a request for comment.

“New York City is home to passionate and dedicated alumni and fans from all eight Ivy League institutions,” Ivy League executive director Robin Harris said in Wednesday’s statement. “Coupled with the energy of March Madness and the enthusiasm that this event has built over just a short period of time, the league could not be more excited to host Ivy Madness in the Big Apple.”

Read more

Ivy women’s week six roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top Ten

by

On Friday night, league-leading Columbia continued its “Revenge Tour” by dominating Penn by 22 points at Levien Gymnasium, avenging a surprise four-point loss to the Quakers on January 7.  The Crimson also had payback on their minds, as they traveled down to New Haven to take on a Yale team that defeated them 71-70 in overtime on that same January day.  Harvard’s defense took control over the opening 20 minutes, limiting the Elis to 19% (0% from three) from the field and opening up a 33-13 halftime lead that the visitors could not overcome.  

Meanwhile, Princeton, which entered the weekend tied for second with Penn and Harvard, rattled off a 17-5 run over a six-minute stretch of the third quarter to ring up a double-digit victory over Cornell.  In the night’s remaining contest, Brown swept the season series over Dartmouth on the strength of 10 three-pointers.

The Big Red suffered another big third-quarter run, giving up 17 straight points to the Quakers on Saturday, as Penn took the second half of their Empire State weekend. Harvard methodically built a 26-point fourth-quarter lead and ended up winning by 13 at Brown. The victory gave the Crimson a season sweep over the Bears and was the team’s fifth in a row.

Down three at the half, Yale outscored Dartmouth 28-17 in the third quarter to lead the Bulldogs to a 13-point win.  While Yale’s season sweep of the Big Green and weekend split keeps it in the hunt for a slot in the Ivy Tournament, Dartmouth’s 14th straight loss keeps them winless in Ivy action and eliminates it from postseason play.

Like last February, the Lions and Tigers faced off in front of a boisterous capacity crowd at Levien Gymnasium with first place on the line.  And just like a year ago, Princeton controlled the game from the very beginning, quickly taking the students out of the contest and running away with a commanding 18-point victory. 

The Tigers’ eighth win in a row was the first their first taste of Ivy revenge in the Carla Berube era, rebounding from an 58-55 defeat at home in early January.  

With nine league games in the book, Princeton, Columbia and Harvard sit atop the standings, while Penn is one game back in fourth and Yale is two games behind. 

While the preseason favorite Tigers and Lions split their season series, the commanding nature of Princeton’s road win, the reemergence of the team’s offense and the presence of the Ivy League Tournament at Jadwin Gymnasium seems to put the Orange & Black in the driver’s seat for the league’s automatic bid.

Read more