The panel talks Lions and Tigers, makes sense of the thrashings some other Ivies took last weekend and ponders whether Yale will wind up with more or less than 1.5 losses in Ivy play. Peter Andrews is joined by IHO writers Rob Browne and George Clark for this episode.
Another memorable Leede/Lavietes weekend for Yale?
It was penciled in in September as a huge game. One which would go a long way toward deciding the Ivy League Championship, again: Yale at Harvard. Then something went wrong and something else went very right.
Ivy 60 for 60: Zack Rosen
Following our countdown of the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s men’s basketball history this summer, Ivy Hoops Online is delighted to continue celebrating the 60th anniversary of modern Ivy League basketball by honoring the top 60 players in Ivy hoops history throughout the season (in no particular order):
One could argue that Zack Rosen is the greatest Penn player of the modern era.
His personal achievements on the court clearly support this. He is Penn’s all-time leader in assists, games started and minute played, third all-time in points, free throw percentage and three-point shooting as well as fourth in steals. He was named Honorable Mention AP All-American in 2012, first-team All-Ivy three times (2012 unanimously) and All-Big 5 twice. Zack also has a plethora of personal awards and accolades far too numerous to mention.
Stuck in the middle with Cornell
Yes I’m stuck in the middle with you,
And I’m wondering what it is I should do,
It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, yeah, I’m all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
-Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan, “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel (1972)
Heading into this weekend, Cornell looked to build upon its road sweep of Harvard and Dartmouth to solidify its hold onto fourth place in the Ivy League. After being thoroughly dismantled by first-place Yale, Cornell ended its four-game road trip at 2-2 and finds itself in a tie for fifth place at 2-4 (9-11 overall). After week four of the conference schedule, the league appears to be divided into several groups. While Yale, Princeton and Columbia are at the top, Harvard and Dartmouth find themselves clustered at the bottom. The Big Red are presently stuck in the middle with Penn and Brown.
Ivy Power Rankings – Feb. 9, 2016
The Ivy hoops fan base is a small and select group. Unlike other colleges (and I use the term extremely judiciously for most institutions located outside The Eight) there are few zealots. However, there are two who deserve a certain amount of praise. Thus I would like to dedicate this Power Poll to two of the stalwarts of our avocation, namely, Michael James (@Ivybball) and the Cornell Basketball Blog. They both add a certain dimension to the analysis of watching Ivy hoops and they couldn’t be more different. Their occasional domestic spats on social media are legendary — the cool, calculating number-cruncher versus the overly emotional and often fairly delusional Big Red fan. One, a haughty winner in the recent Ivy rooting sweepstakes and the other, a “we try harder” guy who still wishes beyond any reasonable hope that it was still 2009 and Jeff Foote was roaming the Ithaca post. In essence, these two play the Spock and McCoy respectively in Ivy hoops coverage to my omniscient, gallant, rational, and let’s be fair, womanizing, Kirk. With these two in mind, and six games into the 14-Game Tournament, here is my usual Penn-centric IHO power poll.
Ivy 60 for 60: Craig Robinson
Following our countdown of the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s men’s basketball history this summer, Ivy Hoops Online is delighted to continue celebrating the 60th anniversary of modern Ivy League basketball by honoring the top 60 players in Ivy hoops history (in no particular order). For the next entry in our Ivy 60 for 60 series, three IHO writers give their individual perspectives of Craig Robinson, one of the greatest players in Princeton basketball history…
Ivy Saturday roundup
Columbia 77, Brown 73
The Lions absolutely needed to have this game to hold serve in the Ivy title chase, and they got it thanks to Grant Mullins. The unsung senior guard turned it on with Brown keying in on Maodo Lo and Alex Rosenberg, notching 25 points on 8-for-14 shooting, including 6-for-9 from long range. The Bears held the lead as late as the 3:18 mark but couldn’t quite crack it, led by Steven Spieth, who has averaged 20 points per game since Brown was swept by Yale last month.
Q&A with Westchester Knick and Harvard great Wesley Saunders
Wesley Saunders graduated from Harvard in 2015 as one of the best players in program history, collecting three consecutive first-team All-Ivy honors from 2013-15, winning a Player of the Year award in 2014 and making four consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
A successful stint with the Jazz in the NBA Summer League earned Saunders a shot with the Knicks. He has been assigned to their Developmental League team since Nov. 2, playing in all 30 games.
We caught up with the guard prior to his Westchester Knicks’ matchup with Sioux Falls on Friday night.
Ivy Friday roundup
Yale 86, Columbia 72
Yale outlasted Princeton last Saturday by getting and staying hot, as its starters shot 54.9 percent from the floor and 61.1 percent from three-point range. Against also 4-0 Columbia, Yale asserted its place as the top team in the conference by getting even hotter, shooting 62.2 percent from the floor and 55.6 percent from beyond the arc. The Lions relied on active hands to notch 11 steals and force 17 turnovers, applying impressive pressure early in the game, but it never mattered. Yale hit what it wanted to hit, scoring 86 points on just 39 field goal attempts. (For comparison, Cornell scored six fewer points tonight on 76 field goal attempts, but we’ll get to that later.)
Columbia-Yale: A quick primer
Last year, Yale won at Columbia, 63-59, and Columbia won at Yale, 56-50, a season after the Elis prevailed at Levien Gym in the CIT quarterfinals at the Lions’ expense. But in this series’ matchup in New Haven last season, it was the Bulldog guards who had led the way in a losing effort for Yale, as Justin Sears scored just seven points on 3-for-8 shooting.
Yale enters the game tonight as the best team in the Ivies. Columbia can compete with Princeton as No. 2 until proven otherwise. Columbia is finally playing good defense in Ivy play after bad outings against Longwood, Fairfield and Stony Brook, among others. The Lions have the offensive weapons in Alex Rosenberg, Maodo Lo and a resurgent Grant Mullins to match Yale offensively. Those three notch a combined 42.6 points per contest. Indeed, the Lions are outscoring opponents by 8.5 points per game and outshooting the opposition from three. Luke Petrasek is shooting 53.6 percent from the floor and Lukas Meisner can certainly score off the bench. The Lions are not as strong as Yale in their starting lineup, player for player, and the bench which Yale used sparingly against Princeton, could spell the difference. Once again, if Sears and Sherrod can avoid foul trouble and the crowd is into the game despite a concurrent home hockey contest, the Elis should win. If the Columbia threes are falling, it could be a different story. Time will tell.