Welcome to the 2023-24 Ivy League basketball season preview edition of Inside Ivy Hoops. Ivy Hoops Online editor Mike Tony is joined by IHO writer Rob Browne for a wide-ranging discussion that takes stock of the Ivy men’s and women’s basketball preseason media polls and what to expect from all 16 teams, while also reflecting on off-the-court developments, including NIL (name, image and likeness), labor unionization momentum and more:
Ancient Nine: An Ivy hoops grid game
As we await the tip-off of a new season, let’s have some fun with an Ivy hoops trivia game I call Ancient Nine.
If you’ve seen Immaculate Grid or similar games, this works the same way: fill in each square with a player from the corresponding team who fits that category. For example, if the row was Penn and the column was Ivy Player of the Year, “Jordan Dingle” or “AJ Brodeur” would each be a correct answer.
Here’s today’s grid:
You can play in your head or visit this Google sheet to fill in answers directly (click File -> Make a Copy to get an editable version). Pick your favorite stars, your most hated opponents or the most obscure players you can think of–every square today has at least six possible answers.
When you’re done, see all the correct answers on the second tab (going back to 2010; if you want to go older, that’s great, but you’ll have to check them yourself). Then share your grid with us on social or in the comments below! We’ll have a few more men’s and women’s grids over the next couple weeks.
Q&A with Princeton women’s coach Carla Berube
Ivy Hoops Online caught up with Princeton women’s coach Carla Berube for an in-depth interview:
Q&A with Princeton men’s coach Mitch Henderson
Ivy Hoops Online caught up with Princeton men’s coach Mitch Henderson for an in-depth interview:
Q&A with Yale women’s coach Dalila Eshe
Ivy Hoops Online caught up with Yale women’s coach Dalila Eshe, who is entering her second season at the helm in New Haven. The Bulldogs went 13-14 overall and 7-7 in Ivy League play in 2022-23, a fifth-place finish that wasn’t enough to qualify for the conference tournament. Yale was picked to again finish fifth in the conference in the Ivy League Women’s Basketball Preseason Media Poll released Oct. 12.
2023-24 Ivy women’s media day recap and season preview
With the season a few weeks away, the Ivy League hosted Women’s Basketball Media Day on Monday, the first of two media availabilities this week. The event was hosted over Zoom for media members and is available on the conference’s YouTube channel.
The preseason media poll was released last Thursday with Princeton earning all 16 first-place votes. Last year’s Ivy Tournament winner and regular season co-champions are the sixth unanimous pick in league history and the first since Penn in 2016-2017.
Yale men’s basketball enters Jones’ 25th year at the helm loaded
Seems like you can never have too much money or happiness in life.
The same goes for depth in team sports.
We’ll find out about this last adage in March, as Yale men’s basketball may actually have too much depth. Sound impossible? Not really.
A close look at Dartmouth men’s basketball’s unionization effort
Nearly a decade ago, members of the Northwestern football team tried to unionize.
The National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency charged with protecting employees’ rights to organize and determining whether to have unions as their bargaining representatives, voted unanimously in Aug. 2015 to decline to assert jurisdiction in the case. The NLRB held that asserting jurisdiction over a single team wouldn’t promote stability in labor relations league-wide, as the NCAA and conference maintain significant control over individual teams.
The NLRB noted the decision applied only to the players in the case and didn’t preclude reconsideration of this issue in the future.
Fast forward to 2021, when the United States Supreme Court decided in a 9-0 ruling that antitrust laws prohibit the NCAA from limiting its Division I schools from offering “education-related compensation or benefits” to student-athletes.
Three thoughts about the 2023-24 schedule for Princeton men’s basketball
Coming off an appearance in the Sweet 16 in the 2023 NCAA Tournament, Princeton men’s basketball has announced its schedule for the upcoming season. The Tigers will play a slate of 13 nonconference games against Rutgers, Hofstra, Duquesne, Monmouth, Old Dominion, Northeastern, Bucknell, Furman, Drexel, St. Joseph’s, Bryn Athyn, Delaware Valley and Delaware. Princeton’s 14-game Ivy League schedule begins on Jan. 6, 2024, at home against Harvard.
Here are three thoughts about the schedule and opponents awaiting the two-time defending Ivy League champions:
Q&A with Yale men’s coach James Jones post-Greece trip
Yale men’s basketball went 3-0 on its summer three-game, 10-day trip to Greece it wrapped Monday, led by a surprise leading scorer, sophomore forward Nick Townsend. The Bulldogs opened play by besting the Thessaloniki All-Stars, 91-75, before 89-79 and 100-94 wins over the University of Calgary, wrapping . We caught up with coach James Jones, who is entering his 25th year at Yale’s helm, upon his return: