Yale

Ivy women go 3-2 with a no-decision on opening day

by

While November 5 was Election Day for statewide offices in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia, it was Opening Day for college basketball across the entire nation.

For the Ivies, Harvard tipped things off at noon, picking up the Ancient Eight’s first “W” of the 2019-20 campaign with a road win at Northern Illinois. Princeton’s “pretty great machine” dominated Rider to give Carla Berube her first victory as the Tigers’ head coach. Dartmouth used a balanced attack to take down neighboring Vermont.

Columbia gave Albany all it could handle, but came up just short in an overtime defeat at the SEFCU Arena.  Brown, playing without its biggest offensive weapon, had several chances in the last minute but fell by one to crosstown rival Bryant.

Read more

Myles Stephens, Kyle Castlin and Trey Phills picked in NBA G League Draft

by

Add three more Ivy grads to the NBA G League.

Princeton’s Myles Stephens was the first to go off the board with the number 10 pick in the 2nd round of Saturday’s G League Draft by the Long Island Nets.  Columbia’s Kyle Castlin, who completed a graduate transfer year at Xavier, was chosen with the 17th pick of the 2nd round by the Salt Lake City Stars.  Yale’s Trey Phills went to the Windy City Bulls with 18th pick in the fourth and final round.

Read more

Q&A with Yale coach Allison Guth

by

IHO writer Richard Kent caught up recently with Yale women’s basketball coach Allison Guth as she enters her fifth season helming the Bulldogs, who have registered winning campaigns each of the past three seasons. (Ivy League Digital Network)

Ivy Hoops Online: Tell us a bit about your freshmen and how much contribution you expect to get from them.

Read more

Penn needs to go public with the results and reforms of its admissions investigation

by

It has been 15 months since news broke about former men’s basketball head coach Jerome Allen receiving bribes from Florida businessman Philip Esformes to place Esformes’s son, Morris Esformes, onto the recruited athlete list for the entering Fall 2015 class.  The information, which was revealed as federal authorities were investigating the elder Esformes for healthcare fraud, led to bribery charges against Allen.  Since that time, Allen and Philip Esformes were found guilty and sentenced for their crimes, while the younger Esformes graduated from Penn’s Wharton School.

In March, Yale was caught up in the national Operation Varsity Blues admission scandal, when its former women’s soccer head coach Rudy Meredith was alleged to have taken bribes to place students on his recruited athlete list.  Meredith plead guilty to his actions and is awaiting sentencing.  Of the two recruited students, one was admitted for the fall of 2018 and had her acceptance rescinded.

Looking at the responses to these scandals by the two Ivy League institutions, one has been open and one has been far from forthcoming.

Read more

Ivy League women’s basketball preseason power rankings

by

Ivy Hoops Online’s writing staff voted on where all eight Ivy women’s and men’s basketball teams would end up for the 2019-20 season. Our projected order of finish for the women:

Read more

Ivy League player carousel

by

The biggest story of the off-season was Miye Oni being selected in June’s NBA Draft.  The Yale junior and reigning Ivy Player of the Year decided to leave school early and leave his name in the draft.  Despite falling to the late second round, a perilous spot to making an NBA roster, Oni impressed in the Summer League and earned a guaranteed contract with the Utah Jazz.  He is playing just as well in the pre-season and looks to be a real steal for the Jazz.

Read more

Ivy League coaching carousel

by

After three years without any head coaching changes, things changed in a big way at the end of April.  Princeton’s Courtney Banghart left after 12 seasons and seven Ivy titles to rebuild the program at the University of North Carolina. The Tigers search lasted a month, ending with the hiring of former UConn guard and long-time Tufts head coach Carla Berube.

On the men’s side, the conference almost lost James Jones to St. John’s, but the Yale coach finished as the Red Storm’s runner-up.  Weeks later, Jones signed an extension that will keep him in New Haven until the end of the 2025-2026 campaign.  In May, Brown’s Mike Martin was reported to be at Holy Cross interviewing for the Crusaders job, but a probable extension kept him in Providence.

Several Ivy assistants made the jump to head coaching positions with Columbia’s (and former Harvard’s) Kenny Blakeney heading to Howard, Penn’s Bernadette Laukaitis returning to Holy Family, Brown’s Tyler Simms going to Clark, and Brown’s Sara Binkhorst moving to Wheaton.

In the off-season’s strangest coaching news, Dartmouth promoted assistant coach Pete Hutchins to associate head coach on March 19th, only to see him jump to an assistant coaching position at George Mason on May 2nd.

The complete list of changes, from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020, for all 16 Ivy teams are noted below.

Read more

Ivy hoops roundup – Sept. 25, 2019

by
  • Princeton’s Bella Alarie completed her last 3×3 tournaments with USA Basketball with a silver medal effort in  Edmonton this past weekend and a bronze medal showing in Montreal in early September.  Overall, her team came in seventh place in the 28-team field.
    The two-time Ivy Player of the Year, who also picked up a silver medal with USA Basketball at this summer’s Pan American Games, continues to improve her stock as she heads into her final year for the Tigers.  Michelle Williams of the WNBA listed Alarie as one of the 12 potential first-round picks in next years’s Draft, while Howard Megdal of High Post Hoops had her as the number five pick for the Minnesota Lynx.
  • Harvard men’s coach Tommy Amaker told Jon Rothstein that 2018 men’s Ivy League Player of the Year, Seth Towns, has been cleared for non-contact work.  Towns, a co-captain of this year’s Crimson team, missed all of last year due to a knee injury sustained in the 2018 Ivy Tournament final against Penn.
    Earlier this month, the senior from Columbus, Ohio, was one of 16 players attending the NCAA Elite Student-Athlete Symposium for Men’s Basketball in Indianapolis.

Read more

Ivy 60 for 60: Justin Sears

by
Justin Sears excelled with joy in his four-year Yale basketball career, becoming just the sixth man to be named Ivy Player of the Year twice. (Justin Sears | Twitter)

Ivy Hoops Online announces the next entry in Ivy 60 for 60, our series running through 60 of the greatest players in Ivy League men’s basketball history to continue celebrating six decades of modern Ivy League basketball. An Ivy 60 for 60 for Ivy women’s basketball will follow.

He is the only player in the history of Yale basketball to be Ivy Player of the Year two years in a row. He was a fan favorite at John J. Lee Amphitheater throughout his career.  He hails from Plainfield, N.J.  He was a high school star with scholarship offers from many high level D-1 teams, but he chose academics first, much to the satisfaction of his parents.

His name is Justin Sears.

Read more

Yale women’s basketball releases 2019-20 schedule

by

Yale started out the last week of the summer by announcing a new set of admission policies for recruited athletes in the wake of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal on Wednesday.  Two days later, heading into Labor Day weekend, the athletic department followed with a posting of the women’s basketball schedule for the 2019-20 season.

Coach Allison Guth’s fifth season in charge of the Bulldogs features a strong 13-game non-conference schedule which will have her team facing nine teams that made the postseason in 2019. The Elis will challenge Mercer, North Carolina, Quinnipiac, and UCLA, which went to the NCAA Tournament, while taking on WNIT participants Fresno State, Loyola Marymount, Northeastern, Providence, and Sacred Heart.

Read more