Noah Savage (@yoitsthesav), comedian, broadcaster and color commentator for the Princeton men’s basketball team, previews the conference slate and how the Ivies stack up halfway through the first full Ivy weekend of 2014-15:
The men’s Ivy League basketball teams are already half way through their schedule and you haven’t paid any attention at all. But don’t worry. There’s still time to catch up since the preconference schedule is almost completely irrelevant in the Ivy League where the regular season champion receives a bid to the NCAA tournament. Now that we’re still just halfway through the first full Ivy weekend of the season, here’s a quick cheat sheet for each team – plus a few of my own predictions – to help you catch up:
Even Justin Sears’ stat line doesn’t do justice to how clutch he was at Levien Gym Saturday. (Fred Beckham/AP)
Last year, Yale made the trek to Columbia and got blown out. But that was on a Saturday night, after the long ride back from Cornell.
This year Yale got Columbia on a Friday and made the best of it with an exciting 63-59 win, which left Yale as the only undefeated Ivy, a strange stat for just three games into the Ivy season.
Justin Sears was far and away the best player on the court, with 28 points, eight rebounds, three blocks, two steals, two assists and zero turnovers, in addition to a game-saving block of an attempted three-pointer by Columbia standout Maodo Lo.
Javier Duren made clutch free throws down the stretch.
Yale got off to a slow start but still led 35-32 at the half. The Elis built a large lead to start the second half, but Columbia fought back with a barrage of threes, to cut the deficit to 58-57. The Lions were unable to take the lead as Yale closed them out from the charity stripe.
The game was played before a near sellout and very vocal crowd.
Yale made the ride to Cornell last night and Columbia faces a Brown team reeling from a player defection (leading scorer Leland King) and a squandered lead at Cornell.
It is tough to believe that the Elis can run the string undefeated in a very competitive Ivy League.
Check out our archive of last night’s On the Vine podcast, in which Michael James (@ivybball), John Phillips and Sam Tydings join Peter Andrews and Mike Tony to cover the latest Ivy action. Segments include how to turn Harvard around, how much momentum Penn really has after beating St. Joe’s, what losing Leland King means to Brown’s program and predictions for the first full Ivy weekend slate of the season:
Leland King led or was tied for the team lead in points and rebounds as just a sophomore this season. (nbcsports.com)
Brown Athletics announced today that the team’s leading scorer, sophomore forward Leland King, has decided to leave the program for personal reasons.
The news is very unexpected with Brown just two games into Ivy League play (both losses, making Brown the only Ivy with two losses thus far).
And now that King is gone, so are his 14.6 points and 7.8 rebounds per game, a huge blow for a team that has already struggled on both offense (worst assist-turnover ratio in the conference) and defense (worst scoring defense in the conference) this season.
King had missed Brown’s last two road games, including the Bears’ 69-65 loss at Yale Saturday, a game in which senior forward Rafael Maia and sophomore guards Steven Spieth and Tavon Blackmon combined for 50 points, 18 rebounds and nine assists in King’s absence.
Senior guard Zeve Sanderson left the team earlier this team as well, and highly touted freshmen Aram Martin and Matty Madigan also left the program after their freshman campaigns in 2013-14.
1.Yale 45, UConn 44- Yale was up most of the game at Gampel and it took a three from the corner by Jack Montague with 1.7 seconds remaining to seal the victory over the defending national champions.
2.Brown 77, Providence 67- This was a beatdown against a very good Providence team who could see the postseason. Brown was 12-for-13 from the free throw line to close out the game.
3.Penn 56, St. Joe’s 52-This is a bad Penn team, no doubt about that. But when Tony Hicks is playing well, the Quakers can compete with decent teams. Hicks notched 13 of his 15 points in the second half of a game in which Penn led for 29 minutes.
4.Brown 70, Saint Peter’s 58- This was a Saint Peter’s team which beat Rutgers, and Brown thoroughly outplayed them. Now former Bear Leland King had 16 points.
5.Cornell 68, George Mason 60- Sure, George Mason is no power, but this game was played on the road in November and few knew if Cornell was going to duplicate its inept effort of last season. Shonn Miller and Robert Hatter both posted 21 points.
“One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.” Aristotle.
When it comes to Penn basketball, the Jerome Allen years have unfortunately inured me into believing the ancient Greek’s wisdom. (As for quoting Aristotle, this is “Ivy Hoops Online,” not Big 10 or SEC Hoops Online, otherwise I’d quote a Kardashian. I therefore make no apologies for my pretension.) Saturday night’s win over St. Joe’s is, of course, gratifying. Any win at this point is.
Lavietes Pavilion hasn’t hosted too many 26-2 runs in its day. (gocrimson.com)
Harvard’s 70-61 loss to Dartmouth was the culmination of every single thing that has gone wrong for the Crimson at some point this season. Critics of Harvard have pointed out that when Wesley Saunders isn’t “on,” they can’t win, that Harvard’s offense is anemic, that Siyani Chambers turns over the ball too frequently. One thing that Harvard had not been called out on – until yesterday – was its defense. Harvard struggled to get key stops when it needed them, which led to this deflating loss. But really, this was a tale of two halves… or four quarters, actually.
NEW YORK – There was a moment, in the second half of Columbia’s massively disappointing loss to Cornell, where all felt hopeless. The Big Red had stretched their lead to some new high — was it 11 points? 13? — and their bench roared with jubilation after each bucket. The Columbia faithful, a sellout 2,715 people packed so tightly into Levien that the gym was approaching “call the fire marshal” status, began to grow quiet, one or two or 20 beginning to slink meekly down the bleachers and then back up onto campus, covered in a coat of gloppy wet snow.
Harvard had lost earlier in the day, as I found to my shock and glee on a random scroll through Twitter during the women’s game. (That, too, a disappointing loss for the Light Blue.) Yale had been scared senseless by Brown at home. The mantle of the Ivy League was right there for Columbia to grab, just two games into the season, in front of the largest crowd seen in Levien since before the 2010-11 season. And the Lions let it slip away.
Generally, it’s a question asked in philosophy classrooms across the country by students wearing ugly plaid sweaters, and knit caps on their heads.
The only similarity between Penn coach Jerome Allen and the typical hipster philosophy student is the glasses, but last night, after his team won its first Big 5 game in three years against St. Joe’s, Allen was asking the same question.
And it’s a fair one to ask about this Penn squad, albeit troubling when coming from the man who should know better than anyone else. The Quakers’ effort seems to fluctuate from night to night. When the Palestra has been packed recently, against Villanova last weekend and against the Hawks last night, Penn brings a higher level of energy. Then, when no one is around to watch, the Quakers lay eggs, like the one they laid against Monmouth on Wednesday.
Last night, their leader, Tony Hicks, went from taking zero shot attempts in the first half to shifting completely in his approach in the last twenty minutes of the contest, driving to the rack at will. Darien Nelson-Henry took control in the second half, but missed two free throws late that could’ve put the game away sooner for the Quakers.
But “Who are we?” may not be the right question to ask, because it doesn’t solve the Quakers’ problems. In fact, when looking at the difference in regards to level of performance from night to night, it’s quite clear who the Quakers are: an inconsistent squad, both on the micro and the macro level.
