IHO has reached out to folks who cover or follow each Ivy program to gauge what they’re looking forward to most about this upcoming season and how they expect the team will fare in 2015-16. First up, the team projected in the Ivy Preseason Media Poll to finish last in the Ivy League this season, the Cornell Big Red:
Haiku Corner – Cornell season preview edition
Welcome to Haiku Corner, where we analyze what to look for with each Ivy squad this upcoming season, three lines at a time (with supporting links to boot):
Ivy Hoops Plus: Q&A with Cornell visiting assistant professor Kevin Kniffin
We present a new feature, Ivy Hoops Plus, in which we shine a light on the many impactful works that those in the Ivy League are doing off the court, whether they”re Ivy academics conducting sports-related research, former basketball players embarking on noteworthy projects, or anything else that merits checking in on.
First up is Kevin Kniffin (@KevinKniffin), visiting assistant professor of organizational behavior and leadership at Cornell. Kniffin coauthored a 2015 study in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, “Sports at Work: Anticipated and Persistent Correlates of Participation in High School Athletics,” which examines whether former high school athletes make better employees than nonathletes. The study found that former student-athletes are expected to possess relatively greater leadership ability as well as more self-confidence and self-respect than others, and that participation in competitive youth sports results in demonstrated higher-status careers. Perhaps most importantly, the study found that there is a troubling lack of studies focusing on the effects of youth sports participation, suggesting that sports participation”s impact on the workplace need to be further examined as well.
Let”s hear from Kniffin after the jump…
Making sense of Tony Hicks' departure from Penn basketball
Tony Hicks has walked away from a most interesting scene, just when we thought he’d be front and center.
Unfortunately, what made the scene so interesting in theory is probably what kept it from ever becoming a reality.
The senior guard has left the program, according to a Friday afternoon press release from Penn Athletics:
“After speaking with Coach (Steve) Donahue about the best situation for Penn basketball and myself, I have decided the best decision for me will be to take a break from basketball,” Hicks said in the release. “I plan to graduate from Penn in May, and then take my next step as a basketball player next year.
“This is a personal decision, and I wrestled long and hard with it because I have thoroughly enjoyed playing for Penn the last three years and wearing the Red and the Blue. I want to wish the guys on the team and the coaches all the best for this season and future seasons, and I will definitely be backing them in The Palestra during these next several months.”
Hicks leaves a lot on the table. He was named a captain for the 2015-16 season, was the leading scorer for the Quakers for the past two seasons and figured to be the greatest beneficiary of an offensive system under coach Steve Donahue that values efficiency through careful shot selection (i.e., shoot under the hoop or behind the three-point line).
Ivy League KenPom rankings released
Celebrated weather expert Ken Pomeroy has come out with his 2016 College Basketball Ratings, and he is riding the Princeton bandwagon, reinforcing the idea that the smart money is on Princeton to win the 2015-16 Ivy championship. KenPom’s numbers reflect the notion that Yale’s comparatively weak adjusted offensive efficiency and Columbia’s comparatively weak adjusted defensive efficiency will respectively hold them back from trumping the Tigers this season.
81 – Princeton
115 – Yale
126 – Columbia
169 – Harvard
224 – Penn
229 – Dartmouth
243 – Brown
311 – Cornell
And the final 2015 KenPom College Basketball Ratings:
70 – Yale
73 – Harvard
148 – Princeton
165 – Dartmouth
175 – Columbia
205 – Cornell
261 – Brown
289 – Penn
Ivy Preseason Media Poll puts Yale at top of league
Today’s release of the Ivy Preseason Media Poll yielded a predictably unpredictable outlook for the 2015-16 14-game tournament.
Yale was selected to finish first in the poll, garnering 117 points and five first-place votes. But by no means is there an Eli-favoring consensus here. Columbia and Princeton, finishing second and third in the poll respectively, each actually finished with more first-place votes (six) than Yale.
Justin Sears gets Slam spotlight, but not CBS Sports kudos
Yes, Justin Sears remembers how Yale’s season ended last year.
According to an insightful new article from Slam Magazine, Sears found a box of t-shirts in the locker room with “2014-15 Ivy League Champs” emblazoned on them, including the message, “We’re in.”
This message would be great if it weren’t for the fact that Harvard beat Yale in the Ivy League playoff last season, thus swiping a NCAA Tournament berth away from the Bulldogs in dramatic fashion.
But Sears took one of the shirts and put it in his room as a reminder of what he has to work toward as a senior. Motivation indeed.
And oh yeah, did I mention Sears is reigning Ivy Player of the Year? Because Sears, casino online players in college hoops for 2014-15″ href=”http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/eye-on-college-basketball/24773610/cbssportscoms-top-100-players-in-college-hoops-for-2014-15″ target=”_blank”>for the second year in a row, was left completely off the CBS Sports list of the top 100 basketball players.
Yale (No. 80) was also placed behind Columbia (No. 72) in CBS Sports’ ranking of all 351 teams in college basketball, despite Sears’ return.
If sports is about redemption, Yale is your team to root for this season.
Cornell all-time moment No. 1: The 2010 Sweet 16 run
We’ve counted down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective.
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We Cornell did last because they are the Men of Last Call.
Over the course of writing the most memorable moments in Cornell basketball history, I’ve tried to lay out a story – the path a school with no discernible basketball pedigree took to becoming the top story of the biggest event in all of college sports.
It didn’t happen overnight.
Eventually, a novice group of freshmen with potential became young guns taking the league by storm and finished as savvy veterans playing with a purpose. After two straight defeats in the NCAA Tournament, the novelty of seeing the Cornell logo on college basketball’s biggest stage had worn off for the eight-man senior class. It was the last chance for the group who turned around Cornell basketball to become the first Ivy League team since 1998 to win an NCAA Tournament game. It was a mindset that had permeated throughout the whole team even before the season began.
“Obviously the first goal is to win the league and make it three in a row and then hopefully get to the tournament again and definitely win a game or two, Sweet 16 at least, and see where we go from there.” freshman Peter McMillan said in Nov. 2009. “I definitely think we can win a lot of NCAA Tournament games, get kinda far, you know, make some noise,” fellow freshman Errick Peck added.
Cornell all-time moment No. 2: The undefeated Ivy season
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Cornell is next because it’s good to be healthy!
Nov. 10, 2007 – Cornell opened the 2007-08 season with a win against Lehigh. During halftime, members of the 1988 Ivy League championship team walked onto the court to be honored for the 20th anniversary of their title. It was a fitting time for the celebration. In the 20 years since the 1988 team hung a banner in Barton Hall, Cornell hadn’t been back to the promised land.
The 2007-08 campaign was set up to tell a different story and Cornell poised to play an unfamiliar role in it – the favorite. For the first time since the 1987-88 season, a school other than Penn or Princeton was projected to win the league. The preseason hype was real. Steve Donahue’s teams had made significant strides over the past few seasons, Adam Gore and Jason Hartford were returning from injury, Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale were coming off arguably the two best freshman seasons in school history, and by the seventh game of the year, a new 7-footer would be eligible to step on the court.
Cornell all-time moment No. 3: The Jeff Foote story
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Cornell is next because there are some improbable connections you just can’t make up…
Jan. 6, 2010 – Cornell was in Allen Fieldhouse taking on the No. 1 team in the country. The game was so close and so good that ESPN cut away from the Duke game it was airing to show final 10 minutes of Cornell-Kansas. (When does ESPN ever cut away from a Duke game?) It took a Sherron Collins driving layup with under a minute left for Kansas to retake the lead for good. Cornell lost that night, 71-66.
In the postgame press conference, the first thing out of Kansas coach Bill Self’s mouth was, “They [Cornell] have a terrific big man [Jeff Foote] that could play for anybody in the country.”
Self’s commentary was a far cry from back when Cornell coach Steve Donahue was scouting a high school tournament Foote played in and recalled thinking, “There were some Division III coaches watching that day and none of them thought he was good enough for them.”