The Yale women’s basketball team took a cultural and basketball trip to Barcelona, Spain and Nice, France last week.
The Bulldogs likely were more successful with the cultural activities, dropping both games played.
Caden Pierce to sit out his senior year at Princeton, the latest jolt to Tigers men’s basketball
Caden Pierce announced on Tuesday that he will step away from basketball during his senior year at Princeton. The two-time All-Ivy League forward told ESPN that he plans to graduate next May from Princeton and enter the transfer portal to play his final year of NCAA eligibility as a graduate student.
Pierce’s withdrawal from the Princeton men’s basketball team is the latest and perhaps heaviest blow to hit Mitch Henderson’s squad since the 2024-25 season ended with a heartbreaking loss to Yale in the semifinals of the 2025 Ivy League Tournament.
The offseason started ominously for Princeton with the news breaking in late March that two key assistant coaches, Brett MacConnell and Lawrence Rowley, would not return to Mitch Henderson’s coaching staff for the 2025-26 season.
There was no obvious explanation for the coaching staff shakeup, other than Princeton’s leadership perhaps deciding that something needed to change after the Tigers underperformed expectations during the 2024-25 season.
A wave of player defections then descended on Old Nassau.
Intellectual grit powers former Ivy League stars’ success in professional 3X3 basketball
At the Spokane Hoopfest, home to the world’s largest 3X3 basketball tournament, seven former Ivy League women’s basketball stars will lace up their sneakers this weekend alongside 25 other elite hoopsters from across the globe in a center court showcase staged by the 3X3 Basketball Association.
Blake Dietrick and Carlie Littlefield (Princeton), Harmoni Turner and McKenzie Forbes (Harvard), Camille Zimmerman and Hannah Pratt (Columbia), and Roxy Barahman (Yale) have signed up to play on the 3XBA tour this summer, with the Spokane Hoopfest as the opening stop.
An eighth Ivy alumnus, Kaitlyn Chen, had signed up to play in Spokane as well, but the former Princeton star and recently crowned national champion at UConn pulled out of the 3XBA tour after she was offered a contract to play for the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries.
In April, the Valkyries selected Chen early in the third round of the WNBA Draft, only to waive her a few weeks later during training camp. Ditto for Harvard’s Turner, who was also drafted in the third round by the Las Vegas Aces and later waived.
Other WNBA Draft picks failed to earn roster spots this spring as well, and many of those players have now found an opportunity to continue developing their professional basketball careers by signing on to join the 3XBA tour.
The 3xBA describes itself as “the premier professional women’s FIBA 3X3 tour and youth development pipeline in the United States.” Part of its mission is to provide an outlet for standouts like Chen and Turner, who didn’t quite make the cut in their first attempts, to land a roster spot in the WNBA.
“The idea, is that young players, the bubble players, who maybe are the 13th and 14th kids who would make a WNBA roster if we had that many spots, can come and play 3X3 and potentially end up on a USA national team or make money, have a livelihood during the summer, and then go and play their five-on-five season overseas if they want to, in the fall and spring,” Blake Dietrick told Ivy Hoops Online.
Longtime Yale men’s basketball assistant Justin Simon departs for Carnegie Mellon
The golden era of Yale men’s basketball has taken place over the last decade under the tutelage of longtime head coach James Jones.
Playing no small part in such excellence has been associate head coach Justin Simon, who was named the head coach at Division III Carnegie Mellon University Wednesday.
“I am really fortunate to have been surrounded by so many extraordinary people during my tenure at Yale,” Simon said.
Five things about Penn men’s basketball in new Fran McCaffery era
Penn basketball looks a lot different than it did when I last wrote about the program roughly three weeks ago after Fran McCaffery’s hire as head coach became official.
Where to begin? The new stable of assistant coaches? The official return of leading scorer Ethan Roberts? The ex-five-star recruit and power conference transfer who just committed? The new 7-footer coming over from the pros in Norway?
There’s an unmistakable air of optimism around the program right now, and with good reason. In the spirit of the estimable football writer Peter King, here’s “five things I think I think” about the Quakers at this juncture of the offseason:
Could Division III be in the Ivy League’s future?
Dear Ivy League presidents:
I have tried to warn you for almost three years.
The warning signs were there. The arrogance was pervasive. The lack of understanding of the current landscape of college athletics on your part was mind-boggling.
Xaivian Lee’s portaling leaves Princeton men’s basketball at a crossroads
The Xaivian Lee era at Princeton appears to be over.
According to a report posted today by ESPN, the First-Team All-Ivy junior guard has entered the transfer portal. The report states that Lee will also enter the NBA Draft while simultaneously keeping his options open to transfer to another program for his final year of collegiate eligibility.
A year ago, Lee similarly tested the NBA Draft waters before returning to Princeton for his junior year.
Lee’s likely departure from Princeton, while not entirely unexpected, is the latest development in what already is shaping up to be a tumultuous offseason for the Princeton men’s basketball program.
Princeton men’s basketball’s 1975 NIT title run remembered 50 years later
March 23 marked the 50th anniversary of an extraordinary moment in Ivy League basketball history, when Princeton University’s cagers shocked the college basketball world by winning the 1975 National Invitational Tournament. I fell in love with Princeton basketball that season as a 10-year old kid growing up in Princeton, N.J.
Armond Hill, Mickey Steurer, Barnes Hauptfuhrer, Tim “Speedy” van Blommesteyn, Peter “Mugsy” Molloy, Brian O’Neill, Ilan “Spider” Ramati — these Tigers were regular topics of dinner conversation in my house that year. I collected all of these heroes’ autographs on game programs marked with the players’ sweat.
Quakeaways on Fran McCaffery becoming Penn men’s basketball’s new head coach
Penn men’s basketball made it official on Thursday, revealing that the school has hired Class of 1982 alum Fran McCaffery as its head coach.
At first glance, the deal looks like a win-win for both sides. The Quakers get a proven high-major winner and one of the best offensive coaches in the country to revitalize the program and the alumni base. For the 65-year-old McCaffery, the homecoming job is a soft landing after a 15-season run at Iowa. McCaffery can recruit and scheme what will presumably be his last collegiate coaching job without the pressure-cooker environment inherent to power conference basketball these days.
There will be much ink to spill about McCaffery in the coming days and weeks, but in the short term, here are a few thoughts about the hire I’ve jotted down:
Fran McCaffery returns to Penn as new head men’s basketball coach
With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, it appears you can go home again… even if it takes 42 years.
Former Iowa men’s basketball coach and 1982 Penn alum Fran McCaffery was named the University of Pennsylvania’s new coach in a Penn Athletics announcement Thursday.
The hire will be a homecoming for McCaffery, who grew up in Northwest Philadelphia, attended La Salle College High School and played for the Quakers from 1979 to 1982.
“I am thrilled to bring Fran back to Penn and Philadelphia as our next head men’s basketball coach,” Penn director of athletics Alanna Wren said in the press release. “Fran has had success at every level of Division I and is passionate about restoring our program to glory. His energy and enthusiasm for leading young men was apparent throughout the process and he has proven to be committed to player development and relationship-building with his student-athletes throughout his storied career.”