Home of the Roundball Poets
SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — It wasn’t pretty, but Columbia got its biggest road win of the young season.
The Lions (7-4) took the short ride to South Orange, New Jersey and beat Seton Hall (6-2) on a Perri Page layup with 0.7 seconds left, 54–53. Facing an unrelenting Seton Hall defense, the Lions never led in the second half until the final second.
Penn men’s basketball took a circuitous — and fortuitous — path to victory in its first game without Ethan Roberts.
The Quakers (6-4) started hot against Lafayette, building an early 16-point lead. But then the offense stagnated, the Leopards began to hit shots and Penn needed a favorable whistle (or lack thereof) and one last stop to escape with a 74-72 win at the Palestra Monday evening.
The Leopards (3-8) were deprived of a chance to get the game’s final shot while trailing only by one point after the referees incorrectly ruled that a mid-range jumper from forward TJ Power hit the rim. Instead of being hit with a shot clock violation, the Quakers were able to corral the offensive rebound thanks to a winning play from forward Lucas Lueth.
Cam Thrower was fouled with 4.7 seconds on the clock and split a pair of free throws; Lafayette’s Mark Butler was able to get off a desperation attempt at a game-tying layup just before the buzzer sounded, but a good contest from forward Augustus Gerhart helped force the shot offline.
The Quakers may have gotten a little lucky, but you never apologize for winning. Penn fans will have plenty to contemplate about the state of the team heading into its finals break, starting with how …
The ups and downs of the Penn women’s basketball season brought it Sunday to the Big 5 Classic at Finneran Pavilion — not to play for the title but to avoid the odd fate of taking sixth place in the Big 5. And avoid it Penn did, beating La Salle 65-52 behind a 20-point afternoon for Katie Collins.
(The addition of Drexel threw off the numbers of the Big 5 but saved Philly’s treasured rivalry, as even the Villanova men’s team can devote three games instead of the traditional four in playing Big 5 games. Besides, do you know how many schools are in the Big Ten these days? Of course not — nobody does, but estimates range as high as 30.)
Yale men’s basketball played out the second leg of a rare home-and home series with an out-of-conference mid-major at John J. Lee Amphitheater Sunday, 13 months after the Bulldogs fell at its opponent, Illinois Chicago, by a 91-79 tally.
But on Sunday, the Bulldogs evened the score by running all over UIC, 80-66.
“It was a really good win over them,” coach James Jones said. “They try to slow you down.”
PHILADELPHIA — What briefly looked like an opportunity for Penn to snatch a signature win in Fran McCaffery’s first season as head coach spiraled over the course of a half-hour into a nightmare that recreated the worst moments of the Quakers’ last two nightmarish seasons.
Just like last season, Penn played Villanova competitively on Saturday for about 15 minutes of game time. Once again, the game devolved into a blowout. This time, the Wildcats put up 1.36 points per possession in a 90-63 rout that delivered Villanova a Big 5 title.
After junior wing Lucas Lueth tied the score at 27 with an open catch-and-shoot three from the left wing, Villanova (7-1, 3-0 Big 5) went on a 17-2 run to break the game open, which was capped off by two runout layups off turnovers in the final 15 seconds of the first half. The Wildcats were never seriously threatened after that.
The final score, though, was ultimately a secondary concern. The season itself for Penn (5-4, 3-1) is at a crossroads after senior wing Ethan Roberts went down with a scary-looking injury early in the second half. Roberts took an inadvertent high hit while being called for a foul, seized up for a few moments while crumpled in a heap on the ground, and then looked visibly unsteady returning to his feet before walking off the floor under his own power.
McCaffery did not comment on the specific nature of Roberts’ injury but said his player was headed to the hospital.
Roberts’ injury brings back bad memories of the ankle sprain Clark Slajchert suffered in a blowout loss to powerhouse Houston just before New Year’s in 2023. By the time Slajchert returned, Penn was in too deep of a hole to seriously compete for an Ivy Madness spot.
Where do the Quakers go from here?
You never know who’s going to come up big for the Princeton women’s basketball team this season.
On Saturday afternoon in the Music City, it was Olivia Hutcherson.
Ivy Hoops Online correapondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark recaps a 73-68 loss for Princeton men’s basketball (3-9) at Loyola Chicago (3-7) Saturday:
With a Harvard women’s basketball victory never in doubt for the better part of 35 minutes, there was still last-minute drama amongst the 1,147 tween-heavy Education Day fans at Lavietes Pavilion to see if the Crimson would hit the magic number of 67.
As the seconds ticked down, senior guard Saniyah Glenn-Bello cut across the lane, hit a contested underhand layup and sent the crowd, as well as the Harvard bench, into a frenzy to seal a dominant 67-33 victory over Stony Brook on Friday afternoon.
With her late bucket, the senior guard from Staten Island capped a stat-stuffing afternoon of 14 points, nine assists, seven rebounds and five blocks.
The Crimson (6-5) claimed their first three-game winning streak of the season and entered into the two-week Final Exam break over .500 for the first time in the season. The rebuilding Seawolves (3-7), meanwhile, lost their third straight contest against Harvard and sixth straight against Division I competition.
HANOVER, N.H. – The Dartmouth men’s basketball team miraculously escaped an upset from in-state rival New Hampshire Wednesday night by scoring the game’s final nine points, with Kareem Thomas’ runner with 5.5 seconds left holding up for a 69-68 win.
The Big Green (3-3) looked disjointed for most of the evening, particularly on the offensive end, and there will likely need to be several areas of improvement if Dartmouth is to follow up on last season’s inaugural Ivy League Tournament bid.
But that’s not a surprise to them. With Ryan Cornish now graduated, others like senior Brandon Mitchell-Day and sophomore Connor Amundsen (who was also injured to start the campaign) have seen the brunt of opposing defenses’ attention, especially Amundsen, who at 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds is a clear target for teams like New Hampshire that have good size at the guard position.
Ivy Hoops Online contributor George “Toothless Tiger” Clark reports on a 63-58 loss for Princeton men’s basketball (3-8) at Monmouth (5-4) Wednesday: