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A wild Saturday capped the regular season for the Ancient Eight. When the dust settled, Yale and Princeton tied for the league title, while Penn settled for third place and Cornell captured the final spot for this weekend’s Ivy League Tournament at Jadwin Gymnasium.
In what was arguably the conference game of the year, it was the worst of times in the opening half and the best of times in the second stanza for the hometown Tigers.
The conference’s next-to-last weekend began on Friday night with a nationally televised game between Princeton and Harvard, two of the four teams headed to the Ivy Tournament. The last time they met in January, the Crimson came away with a 67-59 victory, ending the Tigers’ 42-game Ivy League win streak.
Playing in front of more than 1,700 fans at Jadwin Gymnasium, Harvard took a 14-12 lead after the first quarter. The visitors used a late 13-2 run to open up a 12-point lead before Princeton cut it to 10, 30-20, at the half.
Despite another stupefying second-half collapse, the Princeton men’s basketball team somehow hung on to defeat the Harvard Crimson at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday, 58-56. With the win, the Tigers retained a share of first place in the conference standings and guaranteed themselves an opportunity to earn at least a share of the Ivy League title with a win on senior night at Jadwin Gym next Saturday against the Penn Quakers in the regular season finale for both teams.
The Tigers gutted out this hugely important road win despite a harrowing stretch of offensive futility that echoed Princeton’s epic second-half collapse against Yale last weekend.
Senior guard Ryan Langborg led the Tigers with 18 points and six rebounds while Evan Nelson led Harvard in scoring with 19 points in a losing cause. Chris Ledlum, playing his final game at Lavietes, was held to 14 points (five below his average), but muscled his way to a game-high 11 rebounds for the Crimson, who were eliminated from Ivy Madness on Senior Night by Princeton for the second year in a row.
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.
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.
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.
The opening games of the second half of the Ivy slate ended with sweeps by Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown. The Ps did their traditional double wins from home, while the New Englanders were able to earn their victories on the road.
On Friday, the Tigers welcomed Cornell to Jadwin Gymnasium in a match between the league’s top two teams. Prior to the start of the contest, Princeton honored its championship teams from 1996 to 1998, which included Tigers head coach Mitch Henderson and Big Red coach Brian Earl. The Orange & Black overcame a 13-point second half deficit to claim sole possession of first place. The win gave Henderson his 200th career victory.
A day later, the Tigers gave Henderson win number 201 with a comfortable 22-point victory over Columbia, the last-place team in the Ancient Eight.
Yale showed it has completely rebounded from its opening losses to Columbia and Dartmouth by extending its winning streak to five.
The Bulldogs were hot on the offensive side in the first half at Harvard, opening up a 17-point halftime lead. The Crimson tightened the defense in the second half and cut the lead to five with 2:25 to go in regulation, but a 0-for-6 effort the rest of the way ultimately doomed Harvard. With the victory, the Bulldogs completed their second straight season sweep of their Boston rivals.
At Leede Arena, Yale used a 13-0 run to close out the first half and take an 11-point lead into the locker room. The visitors never let the Big Green get closer than 10 and cruised to a 19-point revenge win that gave them sole possession of second place.
Against Columbia on Friday night, Penn took an 18-point advantage at the 13:15 mark of the second half, but the Lions clawed their way back and made it a five-point contest with two minutes on the clock. Similar to Harvard against Yale, Columbia closed the game 1-for-6 and the Quakers came away winning by nine.
Saturday’s matchup between Penn and Cornell was an offensive slugfest with 10 lead changes over the first 30 minutes of action. The Quakers eventually opened up a nine-point lead with 7:19 to go and held on against the never-say-die Big Red. The win, which split the season series, gave Penn its fourth in a row and its 46th all-time sweep of the Empire Ivies.
The Big Red, meanwhile, dropped from the top of the leaderboard to a tie for third after the lost weekend.
In Friday’s game in Hanover, Brown tied a season high with 13-made three-pointers on their way to a season sweep of Dartmouth. Although limited to 24% shooting in the opening half, the Big Green got within seven points with 9:25 left in the contest. The Bears used a 10-2 run over the next four minutes to put the game away.
After four ties and five lead changes in a close contest between Brown and Harvard, Bruno used a 16-zero run to open up a 15-point lead almost halfway through the second half. For the second straight night, the Crimson battled back, eventually making it a two-point game with six seconds remaining. Brown made one of two free throws and the home team couldn’t convert the game-tying three-pointer at the buzzer.
Bruno’s win was the 133rd victory of head coach Mike Martin’s career, tying him for the program lead with Stanley Ward. It also avenged a 70-68 overtime loss to Harvard at the Pizzitola Center on January 6 and put the team in a three-way tie for third place with Cornell and Penn.
By late Saturday night, Dartmouth dropped to sole possession of sixth place, while Harvard, losers of three straight was alone in seventh.
As the opening half of the conference schedule came to a close on Saturday, Columbia used a dominant performance over last-place Dartmouth to claim sole possession of first place. Penn, which entered the weekend tied with the Lions, fell from the top slot after giving up a season-high 84 points during a lopsided 24-point defeat at Harvard. Princeton, which started out tied with Harvard and Yale, used a masterful defensive performance to beat Yale by 49 points and keep pace with the Crimson. In Saturday’s Ivy opening game, Cornell used a 10-1 run early in the fourth quarter to pull away from Brown and get the league’s only road win.
Saturday results
Cornell over Brown, 66-61
Princeton over Yale, 79-30
Columbia over Dartmouth, 79-50
Harvard over Penn, 84-60
Standings
Columbia 6-1 (17-3 overall)
Princeton 5-2 (14-5)
Penn 5-2 (13-7)
Harvard 5-2 (12-7)
Yale 4-3 (10-10)
Cornell 2-5 (9-11)
Brown 1-6 (8-11)
Dartmouth 0-7 (2-19)
As the second half of the Ivy schedule begins this weekend, all eyes will focus on Levien Gymnasium as Columbia welcomes the Ps to NYC. The league leaders will look for payback on Friday night against the Quakers, who pulled away late in the fourth quarter at home against the Lions on January 7. On Saturday, Columbia, which beat Princeton by three in an overtime thriller on January 6, will try to make it two in a row against four-time defending champs. The Tigers haven’t been swept by an Ivy opponent since losing to Penn three times in 2017, but the dreaded Friday night bus trip from Ithaca to Manhattan and a start time 20 hours after finishing the game at Cornell will certainly pose added challenges.
Fri., Feb. 3
Princeton at Cornell, 6:00 p.m.
Harvard at Yale, 6:00 p.m.
Penn at Columbia, 6:00 p.m.
Dartmouth at Brown, 7:00 p.m.
Sat., Feb. 4
Penn at Cornell, 4:00 p.m.
Princeton at Columbia, 4:00 p.m.
Dartmouth at Yale, 4:00 p.m.
Harvard at Brown, 5:00 p.m.
Below are 10 of the top performances from the weekend:
After another exciting weekend of Ivy hoops that saw all the home teams holding serve, the league standings have a tie at the top, and seven teams are separated by only two games.
Yale continued its dominance of Princeton, winning for the eighth time in their last nine matchups. Meanwhile, Penn, losers of three straight league contests, won its third straight over Harvard in a must-win game at the Palestra.
Cornell, missing Nazir Williams, took care of Brown, which was without Kalu Anya, Dan Friday and Malachi Ndur. Dartmouth continued its strong league play with a victory over Columbia, its third league win it its last four contests and finds itself over .500 at the halfway point for the first time since 2009.
Saturday results
Yale over Princeton, 87-65
Penn over Harvard, 83-68
Cornell over Brown, 80-73
Dartmouth over Columbia, 83-73
Standings
Cornell 5-2 (15-5, overall)
Princeton 5-2 (14-6)
Yale 4-3 (14-6)
Dartmouth 4-3 (8-13)
Harvard 3-4 (12-9)
Brown 3-4 (10-10)
Penn 3-4 (11-11)
Columbia 1-6 (6-16)
The second half of the schedule starts with a big back-to-back weekend, highlighted by a matchup between the league leaders at Jadwin Gymnasium and Yale looking for revenge against Dartmouth at Leede Arena.
Fri., Feb. 3
Yale at Harvard, 5:00 p.m.
Brown at Dartmouth, 6:00 p.m.
Columbia at Penn, 7:00 p.m.
Cornell at Princeton, 7:00 p.m.
Sat., Feb. 4
Yale at Dartmouth, 6:00 p.m.
Brown at Harvard, 6:00 p.m.
Columbia at Princeton, 6:00 p.m.
Cornell at Penn, 6:00 p.m.
Below are 10 of the top performances from the weekend: –
Our George “Toothless Tiger” Clark reports on Princeton guard Madison St. Rose catching fire for the Tigers, earning her second straight Ivy Rookie of the Week honor after leading the Tigers to a 79-59 win over Dartmouth with 15 points on 6-for-12 shooting Saturday.