Home of the Roundball Poets
1. Yale (2-1)
Who outside of New Haven expected Yale to have this kind of start when then-Ivy Player of the Year candidate Makai Mason was declared out for this season with a foot injury?
And who expected Yale to gel so quickly after Ivy Rookie of the Year candidate Jordan Bruner reportedly suffered an ACL sprain earlier this month?
What happened last year: A season after Harvard was a hard-fought one and done in the NCAA Tournament and Yale was snubbed by the NIT, the Ivies had a much better go of the postseason in 2016. Yale earned a No. 12 seed in the Big Dance and upset No. 5 Baylor before nearly sustaining an incredible comeback against No. 4 Duke in round two. It made for a memorable narrative – the Elis, absent from the NCAA Tournament, beat the Bears at their own rebounding game, with a meme-friendly moment after the game.
Yale’s win marked the fifth NCAA Tournament win for the Ivy League since 2010, bringing the league to an impressive 5-7 mark (.417) against substantially higher-seeded competition. The Ivy has proven it can hang with high-majors time and time again, and analytic databases such as KenPom have shown that the league should be nabbing higher seeds in the tourney than it has been this decade.
The Ivy League announced on August 24 availability on Apple TV and Roku for its coverage of conference athletics.
ILDN is a nine-channel network, and in-home television viewing of ILDN is now possible for the first time as a result of the new Apple TV and Roku availability.
In-game television viewing of live events on ILDN began last month.
ILDN was launched in 2013 as the league’s first-ever digital sports network, created by the league in partnership with NeuLion as a nine-channel video platform. It consists of eight channels for each individual school and one conference-wide channel which features all available Ancient Eight digital content across more than 30 sports.
In addition to the new in-game television viewing availability, the Ivy League continues its partnership with ESPN to simulcast select ILDN broadcasts on ESPN3 and the ESPN app.
Opting to go in a different direction after firing Paul Cormier, Dartmouth Athletic Director Harry Sheehy announced in a press conference in the boxing gym at Leede Arena Friday he was hiring Dartmouth’s Twitter feed to be the Big Green’s new head coach.
Sheehy told excited Ivy basketball reporters that he was impressed by @DartmouthMBK’s Twitter banter with Ivy Hoops Online and other Dartmouth hoops followers, and that that kind of charisma is what it will take to get Big Green basketball a national following beyond Hanover.
“I want to win the hearts and minds of basketball fans across the country, not just in Hanover,” Sheehy said. “Rudy LaRusso may not be walking through that door, but a program-saving Twitter feed sure is.”
MANHATTAN — At a hastily called press conference in Low Memorial Library, Columbia star guard Maodo Lo announced his retirement from the game of basketball, citing his intent to begin a career as an artist.
Though most in attendance expected Lo, the third leading scorer in Columbia history, to declare for the NBA Draft, the 6-foot-2 scoring guard stated that he felt a call to the world of studio art.
The Yale Bulldogs’ terrific showing in this year’s NCAA Tournament has inspired a new national narrative. As a Wall Street Journal headline put it, “The Ivy League finally merits your respect.”
But as someone who has been following Ivy League basketball for more than forty years, the story that’s being promoted in certain circles is revisionist history that just makes me want to scream.
As Brandon Sherrod iced Baylor from the foul line Thursday afternoon, two thoughts quickly popped into the minds of Ivy basketball enthusiasts. First, a sense of shock that Yale had actually pulled off the upset and second, that next in line for the Elis was Duke, one of the bluest of college basketball’s bluebloods.
The question posed to all non-Yale Ivy fans was, do we root for team loyalty or conference loyalty? You, the esteemed reader, might be dealing with this dilemma yourself. Is it really worth rooting for Duke (Duke!) just for the sake of hoping a conference rival doesn’t make it past the first weekend? Here to tackle this issue are two Columbia fans who are definitely not bitter that their team has not made the tournament in their lifetimes while others experience joy: Miles Johnson is taking the pro-Yale (or at least anti-Duke) side, and Sam Tydings would rather see Grayson Allen smile than Yale advance to the Sweet 16.
Columbia 86, Norfolk State 54
The host Lions doubled up the Spartans in the first half, 42-21, and never looked back. Luke Petrasek shook off a late-season scoring slump to lead all scorers with 18 points in just 24 minutes, with Petrasek and Maodo Lo each hitting four treys to give the Lions an easy first-round CIT win. The Spartans got outscored 48-6 from three-point range, and that was pretty much the ballgame. Here’s Columbia Athletics’ explanation of what happens next in the crazy CIT process:
The Ivy League announced Thursday it will add men’s and women’s basketball tournaments beginning with the 2016-17 season. It’s a historic move since the Ivy League was the last of the 32 Division I conferences that did not hold a conference tournament to determine its automatic NCAA Tournament representative.
The League’s Council of Presidents approved four-team tournaments in men’s and women’s basketball, with a one-game reduction for each team in the regular season. The tournaments will determine the conference’s automatic bids to the NCAA Division I Basketball Championships. Both the men’s and women’s tournaments will be held at the Palestra on March 11 and 12, 2017.
IHO’s writers voted on the best this Ivy season had to offer, voted on and tabulated prior to the announcement of Ivy League’s official awards Wednesday:
PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Justin Sears, Yale (Sr., F – Plainfield, N.J.)
For the second straight season, Sears wins IHO’s Player of the Year honors, a game theory-free decision. It’s no coincidence that Yale’s conference-winning wheelhouse – defense and rebounding – is centered on Sears’ own strengths. The POY was a much better ball distributor this season, scoring with slightly more consistency as well as he reached the 20-point plateau seven times and recorded five double-doubles. This is a clear case of the best getting better.