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HANOVER, N.H. – Dartmouth inadvertently flashed a graphic momentarily before Saturday’s pivotal game against Brown that read, “Ivy Madness Clinched.”.
Fortunately for the Big Green, there has been little to jinx them in the 2024-25 Ivy League season, as they shook off a dreadful start and halftime deficit to win by another lopsided margin, 78-58, and clinch its first Ivy League Tournament berth in school history at Leede Arena.
Ivy Hoops Online correspondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark recaps a 73-68 win for Princeton (18-9, 7-5 Ivy) at Columbia (12-13, 1-11) Friday:
Six days after having its 30-game home winning streak snapped by the Columbia Lions. Princeton women’s basketball hit the road and took out its frustrations on the Harvard Crimson, beating its host, 70-58, at Lavietes Pavilion Friday.
The win gave Princeton a two-game sweep of Harvard during the regular season, setting up a likely third clash in two weeks in the semifinals of the Ivy League Tournament.
In a season marked by one low after another, Penn took what may have been its biggest body blow yet in a humiliating 90-62 defeat to Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y.
Even that final score is generous to the Quakers (7-18, 3-9 Ivy). Penn went into the halftime locker room down 63-27 after allowing the Big Red (15-10, 7-5) to drain 15 three-pointers in the first half.
By night’s end, nine different Cornell players had made a three-point basket, tying an NCAA Division 1 record.
There’s only one meaningful takeaway from Friday night’s disaster:
In an early Friday evening battle between fifth-place teams at Lavietes Pavilion, the Brown men’s basketball team held Harvard without a bucket for over nine minutes in the second half to help overcome an 11-point deficit and come away with a hard-fought 59-52 victory.
The result marks the eighth time in the last nine meetings between the two New England rivals that the visiting team came away with the win.
After all of the Ancient Eight’s contests were in the books for the evening, the Bears (14-11, 6-6 Ivy), which evened their season series with the Crimson (10-15, 5-7), sit alone in fifth place one game off the pace of Cornell, Dartmouth and Princeton. Harvard, meanwhile, is alone in sixth place with only two games left in the regular season.
HANOVER, N.H. – Troubles with the Wi-Fi are not new at Leede Arena. It is a notoriously dreadful place to get a signal, even when the crowd can be counted in dozens.
But the line to the restroom that wrapped far outside the door at halftime? That was definitely something that hasn’t been seen in a long, long time.
Ivy Hoops Online recently caught up with Yale senior guard John Poulakidas, a Naperville, Ill. native and the Ivy League’s scoring leader at 19.5 points per game:
Ivy Hoops Online: What was your recruiting process like during COVID?
John Poulakidas: It was definitely difficult. Butler offered me. Princeton was in the mix. Not having an AAU year hindered my recruitment.
Another eventful weekend of women’s hoops games has set the table for a dramatic conclusion to the Ivy League season.
The Columbia Lions (19-5, 10-1 Ivy) seized control of the race for the regular season title with another come-from-behind win over the Princeton Tigers, 64-60, at Jadwin Gymnasium on Saturday. The Lions completed a rare series sweep of the Tigers and put themselves in position to earn a third consecutive Ivy League title and the program’s first outright championship.
Penn’s flickering postseason aspirations were officially snuffed out on Saturday night after the Quakers endured another heartbreaking loss, this time in overtime to Harvard at the Palestra, 79-78.
The Quakers (7-17, 3-8 Ivy) managed to lose despite having free-throw shooters heading to the line with a three-point lead twice in the final 11 seconds of regulation. But both junior wing Ethan Roberts and senior wing George Smith missed their one-and-one front ends.
Harvard (10-14, 5-6) forced overtime after Penn guard Sam Brown deflected a Crimson home run pass into the arms of senior guard Evan Nelson, who drained a contested three over Brown’s outstretched arms with a second to play.
The Crimson took the lead for good when freshman Robert Hinton converted two free throws with 26 seconds to play in overtime. Penn missed three game-winning shot attempts in the final 12 seconds of OT, with senior big man Nick Spinoso missing a desperation hook shot off the front rim just before the buzzer sounded.
Here’s what we learned from another devastating defeat: