Five takes on the Penn men’s season-opening blowout loss at Iona Monday night, a startling stumble out of the gate for the Ivy preseason favorite against the MAAC preseason favorite:
Ivy League
2022-23 IHO Men’s Preseason Poll
Only five points separated the top three teams in the Ivy League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll, and our final tabulation was even tighter. Just three points separated the team atop IHO contributors’ preseason poll.
Yale gets the slight nod here, with our contributors trusting James Jones to lead the Bulldogs to their fifth Ivy League title in an eight-season span in a bid to represent the conference in the NCAA Tournament for a third straight time. Penn, the Ivy League preseason poll’s top team above Princeton by a single point, also finished a single point above Princeton in our standings. Our contributors saw potential for success in a roster that returns most of the key players from last year’s squad that placed third in the Ivy standings. We’ve got Princeton pegged to finish third, aided in their quest to repeat as Ivy League champions by returning 2021-22 Ivy Player of the Year Tosan Evbuomwan but losing significant backcourt production from last year’s conference title team.
Harvard was the clear No. 4 finisher in our poll, a showing that would improve upon the disappointing sixth-place result that locked the Crimson out of the Ivy League Tournament on its home floor last season. We have Cornell ranked slightly ahead of Brown as the Big Red look to build on last season’s overachieving Ivy League Tournament berth and the Bears look to bounce back from an underachieving sixth-place finish (tied with Harvard) a season ago. Columbia and Dartmouth tied in our voting tally at the bottom of the standings as both programs look to secure their first Ivy League Tournament appearances.
2022-23 IHO Women’s Preseason Poll
It’s still Princeton’s conference until another Ivy proves that it isn’t. Our contributors are united in believing that the Tigers will stay on top in 2022-23, with Megan Griffith’s ascendant Columbia program again placing second.
But there wasn’t consensus on how the rest of the top half of the league will fill out.
Penn could break back into the Ivy League Tournament after missing it for the first time last season, but we expect the Red & Blue to draw stiff competition from Harvard and Yale in their first years under new coaches.
Will #2bidivy happen in the league for only the second time in conference history? It very well could, and the bottom half of the conference is likely to be substantially stronger this season as Brown and Dartmouth return more experienced rosters under coaches that now have a year of Ivy play under their belts.
2022-23 Ivy season lookahead with Dartmouth women’s coach Adrienne Shibles
Dartmouth women’s coach Adrienne Shibles joins Ivy Hoops Online writer and host Steve Silverman to reflect on her coaching philosophy, a learning curve in recruiting coming from Division III Bowdoin, whether the Ivy League should reconsider not allowing athletic scholarships, how the “grit index” works, her overview of the team’s top four scorers from a year ago returning, and much more:
in case you missed it, check out Steve’s interviews with Cornell men’s coach Brian Earl here, Cornell women’s coach Dayna Smith here and Brown men’s coach Mike Martin here.
Uncertainty grows for Ivy League aid after antitrust exemption expires
Congress did something of great significance to Ivy League sports Friday.
It did nothing at all.
Congress allowed a section of the Higher Education Act allowing key antitrust protection for the Ivy League to expire. The expiration increases the Ivy League’s exposure to legal challenges to its refusal to grant academic and athletic scholarships.
What should Ivy League basketball do next?
Conference realignments, eye-popping TV deals and compensation for college athletes’ name, image and likeness have upended the college sports landscape. What is Ivy hoops’ place in all the hoopla? How should the Ivy League and its member schools raise the profile of its basketball programs? With Ivy student support waning and NIL on the rise, what moves would improve Ivy hoops? Our writers consider these looming questions below:
Listen: NCAA’s approach to name, image and likeness and Ivy League antitrust exemption expiration
Ivy Hoops Online contributor and Manhattanville College sports law professor Richard Kent joined Sports Talk with John & Jimmy on 99.1 The Sports Animal WNML-FM 99.1/AM 990 Monday to discuss the NCAA’s name, image and likeness policy approach, the outlook for reform after the Ivy League’s antitrust exemption expires later this year and more: