Home of the Roundball Poets
Princeton coach Courtney Banghart was named Naismith Coach of the Year Tuesday for leading the Tigers to a 30-0 regular season and notching the second ever NCAA Tournament victory for the Ivy League.
Banghart becomes the first Ivy League coach, women’s or men’s, to be named Naismith Coach of the Year. Banghart was also named to Forbes’ list of the 50 Greatest World Leaders last month, natch.
According to several sources, including his high school coach, Dartmouth junior guard Alex Mitola will become a graduate transfer and play his final season at another school.
“Alex always wanted to see if he could play up at a little bit of a higher level,” Gill St. Bernard’s coach Mergin Sina told Jerry Carino. “Out of high school he didn’t have a chance to do it.”
The news represents a huge loss for Big Green coach Paul Cormier and the Dartmouth basketball program. Mitola averaged 12.4 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game, good for seventh in scoring, first in free-throw percentage, 10th in assists, second in three-pointers made, second in assist/turnover ratio and second in minutes played.
“I’m disappointed and think he’s making a terrible mistake,” Paul Cormier said to the Valley News of Mitola. “He can’t get that (fourth year at Dartmouth) back. The decision that requires the most substance is staying here and following through with the teammates you came in with.”
The Valley News also reports that Mitola plans to play his final season of college eligibility with a higher-profile program and pursue a graduate business degree before playing professionally overseas.
“We’ve gone from nine victories to 12 to 14 since Alex has been here,” Cormier told the Valley News. “He could have left a real legacy. I hope this isn’t something he later regrets, because it’s not ending the way I think it should.”
“It was hard because I know the situation it puts them in, but I felt it was what was best for me and my career moving forwards,” Mitola said.
The Ivy League will miss Mitola’s potent long-range shooting, superior ballhandling and clutch play. Dartmouth would not have made its first postseason since 1959 this season without him. I discussed what I thought Mitola’s versatility meant to Dartmouth in an On the Vine in February, and One Bid Wonders correctly identified him as the “culture changer” in Hanover earlier this season.
2015 Outgoing Ivy Transfers
Denton Koon
Shonn Miller
Kenyatta Smith
Rafael Maia
Cam Crocker
Galal Cancer
Alex Mitola
Penn announced Wednesday that new head basketball coach Steve Donahue will be hosting a new show to be broadcast weekly on the Penn Sports Network.
The show will be called “Donahue” and held at the Palestra, where it will adopt a talk show format in which Donahue will hold discussions with relevant guests about previously taboo topics concerning Penn Athletics, including declining game attendance, lack of player development in recent years, President Amy Gutmann’s commitment to the program and declining game attendance.
Athletic director Jack Hayes announced Wednesday that Brown, which has easily totaled the lowest amount of basketball expenses among all Ivies since 2004 according to Office of Postsecondary Education statistics, will transfer the remaining monies in its basketball budget to the budget for its men’s hockey team.
“Hockey rules at Brown, inasmuch as it rules at all,” Hayes said in a statement. “I just wanted to be transparent for once about where our institutional support really lies.”
The basketball team will raise funds going forward by pooling together lunch money taken from the players by coach Mike Martin.
The Dartmouth basketball team on Tuesday raised a banner at Leede Arena to honor its CIT berth this season, the program’s first postseason appearance since 1959.
The banner read, “Fourth Place”.
Dartmouth then raised a 2014-15 Ivy League championship banner honoring Harvard next to the fourth-place banner.
“We made this happen,” Dartmouth forward Gabas Maldunas said.
Maldunas then told reporters a banner honoring him would be raised at Lavietes Pavilion next week. Maldunas said the banner will hang next to Harvard’s own 2014-15 Ivy championship banner and read, “Thank you, Gabas.”
“You’re welcome,” Maldunas told reporters about the scoop, which was later confirmed by Harvard athletic director Bob Scalise.
If you can’t beat them, join them. If you can’t join them, run away and see if you can beat them next year. This is the lesson that the Columbia Lions have learned, as the entire team has withdrawn from school, saving each a year of eligibility and casting focus to the 2016-17 season.
The Light Blue will effectively dodge a a solid Princeton squad, an experienced Yale team with Justin Sears in his senior year, defending champion Harvard with the ever-problematic Siyani Chambers in his final year, and will no longer have to suffer at the hands of Dartmouth’s Alex Mitola, something Columbia coach Kyle Smith will not take lightly.
“Look, there comes a point at which you have to do what’s best for your team,” Smith said. “Plus, it’s not like we’re going to do any worse than the football team! Am I right? Guys?”
I wanted to thank all the readers, writers and guests who made this such a fantastic and truly enjoyable season for IHO. Also, please feel free to share what you enjoyed most about IHO’s coverage and writing this season and what you’d like to see more (or less) of at this site, either by emailing us at tips@ivyhoopsonline.com or in the comments below.
On another note, we will continue to feature coverage here throughout the offseason. Thanks again for a great season, and cheers!
A few days after watching Harvard’s season end in Jacksonville with Wesley Saunders’ final shot clanking off the rim and backboard, it seems an appropriate time to look back on the Crimson season that was. Amid the shock and nostalgia comes perspective … and withdrawal. Here are my final thoughts on Harvard’s memorable 2014-15 season:
Check out our archive of the final On the Vine podcast of the season, in which George Clark, Michael James (@ivybball) and Sam Tydings join Peter Andrews & Mike Tony to cover the latest Ivy action and what we see as the future of Ivy basketball as we know it. Segments include reflections on Harvard’s NCAA tournament matchup with North Carolina, the growth of the league and a way too early look ahead to next season’s campaign.
Maybe it ended sooner than it could have.
Previously unbeaten No. 8 Princeton was overpowered by No. 1 Maryland in the second half of the Round of 32 matchup on the Terrapins” home floor Monday night, reeling off a 17-2 run to start the second half that distanced themselves from Princeton for good and helped secure the 85-70 victory.
The Tigers (31-1) trailed 42-38 at the half and had harnessed momentum from the program”s first ever NCAA tournament win Saturday against Wisconsin-Green Bay. But Maryland (32-2) shot 12-for-20 from beyond the arc and enjoyed too many hot hands for Princeton to handle. Maryland”s Laurin Mincy led all scorers with 27 points and nbso online casino reviews seven assists, and Princeton guard Blake Dietrick notched 26 points in 40 minutes.