ITHACA, N.Y. — Two things needed to happen for the Cornell men to make it to the Ivy League Tournament: beat Columbia and hope Brown loses to Yale.
Part one of that equation has been completed.
Princeton women push back to power past Penn, 71-52
Editor’s note: Princeton-Penn is always a big deal, and our Toothless Tiger and Palestra Pete combine to recap Saturday night’s P vs. P action in audio and written form below:
It was The Kaitlyn Chen Show, but more than that, it was The Princeton Defense Show at Penn on Friday night, and the Tigers roared back (sorry) from a first-half deficit to beat the Quakers handily, 71-52.
In some respects, the game was meaningless: For weeks we’ve known that the top two women’s teams going into the Ivy League Tournament would be Princeton and Columbia, and that they would face Penn and Harvard in the first-round games. But pride counts, too, and Princeton knew it needed this win to get a share of its fifth straight regular-season title.
On the Penn side, too, the stakes were emotional: This was Senior Night, and Princeton was the only Ivy the graduating Penn players had never beaten. Truth is, they’d never come very close: The 15-point loss in January at Princeton was their closest score. Their best chance probably would have come in the COVID-canceled Ivy tournament of 2020, or more likely the canceled season that followed, when the career of Penn’s last dominant center, Eleah Parker, would have overlapped with that of forward Jordan Obi.
Ivy women’s week nine roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top 10
The conference’s next-to-last weekend began on Friday night with a nationally televised game between Princeton and Harvard, two of the four teams headed to the Ivy Tournament. The last time they met in January, the Crimson came away with a 67-59 victory, ending the Tigers’ 42-game Ivy League win streak.
Playing in front of more than 1,700 fans at Jadwin Gymnasium, Harvard took a 14-12 lead after the first quarter. The visitors used a late 13-2 run to open up a 12-point lead before Princeton cut it to 10, 30-20, at the half.
Princeton men’s basketball survives after another second-half collapse
Despite another stupefying second-half collapse, the Princeton men’s basketball team somehow hung on to defeat the Harvard Crimson at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday, 58-56. With the win, the Tigers retained a share of first place in the conference standings and guaranteed themselves an opportunity to earn at least a share of the Ivy League title with a win on senior night at Jadwin Gym next Saturday against the Penn Quakers in the regular season finale for both teams.
The Tigers gutted out this hugely important road win despite a harrowing stretch of offensive futility that echoed Princeton’s epic second-half collapse against Yale last weekend.
Senior guard Ryan Langborg led the Tigers with 18 points and six rebounds while Evan Nelson led Harvard in scoring with 19 points in a losing cause. Chris Ledlum, playing his final game at Lavietes, was held to 14 points (five below his average), but muscled his way to a game-high 11 rebounds for the Crimson, who were eliminated from Ivy Madness on Senior Night by Princeton for the second year in a row.
Ivy men’s week nine roundup: Ancient Eight’s top 10
In the league’s penultimate weekend, each of the three first place teams won, while Brown pulled a game ahead of Cornell for fourth place.
Penn and Dartmouth had their offenses clicking at the Palestra on Saturday afternoon.
The Quakers shot 73% from two and 42% from three, while the Big Green made 62% from inside the arc and 45% from outside. With most shots going in from the field, the Red & Blue pulled away for their eighth straight win on the strength of their free throw shooting (17-for-18 vs 8-for-14) and rebounding (28-21).
The victory allowed Penn to remain in first place, while the defeat ended Dartmouth’s chance for their first Ivy Tournament berth.
Trying to rebound from a huge second half collapse against Yale last weekend, Princeton used a 10-2 run over the last five minutes of the opening half to take a 37-23 halftime lead at Harvard. The Tigers upped their advantage to 18 at the 15-minute mark of the second half, but the Crimson used a 20-4 run to make it a two-point game with five minutes left in regulation.
Contrary to last week, the Orange & Black would not give up the lead.
The teams combined to make one of the next ten shots from the field, as Princeton held a three-point advantage with twenty seconds remaining. An Evan Nelson layup cut the deficit to one, but Ryan Langborg sank two free throws to make it 56-53. Tigers coach Mitch Henderson followed Jon Rothstein’s advice and fouled Nelson, who missed the first of a one-and-one. Caden Pierce came down with the rebound and hit both free throws to put the game away.
The win sets up a showdown with long-time rival Penn to claim at least a piece of the regular season championship.
Despite being without Matt Knowling for the second straight game, Yale posted a convincing win over Cornell in the team’s final game at the John J. Lee Amphitheater. The Bulldogs, who were up 34-28 at the half, stretched their lead to 21 by the 11-minute mark and the Big Red didn’t get any closer than 11 points the rest of the way.
The win was Yale’s eighth in the last nine games and allowed them to keep pace with the Ps. It was also the 200th regular season Ivy victory for coach James Jones. Jones, who is wrapping up his 24th year in New Haven, is 200-121 in league play and 110 conference wins away from former Princeton coach Pete Carril.
For Cornell, Saturday’s defeat was the fifth in their last six games and puts them on the wrong side of the Ivy Tournament bubble with one game to go.
Brown had a 14-point lead in the first half, but Columbia used four three-pointers in the latter part of the half to cut the Bears lead to five at the break. The game was tied at 59 with 8:30 to go, but a 9-0 run over the next two minutes gave Bruno enough of a cushion to dash the Lions’ hopes of getting their third league win.
The win breaks Brown’s two game losing streak and allows Bruno to control its own destiny for the program’s first-ever spot in Ivy Madness.
Jarvis’ “out-of-body experience” lifts shorthanded Yale men past Cornell
Yale completed its revenge tour of teams against defeated the Bulldogs earlier in the season with a decisive 76-58 win over Cornell at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday.
And oh, what a Senior Night it was for senior forward EJ Jarvis.
Penn women get through warmup at Dartmouth, 54-37
It was a game of limited importance. The Penn women, in third place and assured of a spot in the Ivy tournament, made the long road trip to Hanover, N.H., for what was supposed to be a tune-up at Dartmouth, which had yet to win an Ivy game.
But Penn wasn’t playing like a team contending for a title Saturday — shooting poorly and turning the ball over repeatedly coming off a disappointing loss at upstart Brown a week earlier.
Penn held just a one-point lead when Dartmouth junior guard Mia Curtis grabbed the rebound after a Penn miss with three seconds on the clock and hustled the ball downcourt to senior forward Emma Koch for the layup at the buzzer — putting the Big Green ahead, 12-11, after one quarter.
Three Quakeaways from Penn men taking care of business in win over Dartmouth
PHILADELPHIA — Penn is one win away from at least a share of the Ivy League regular season championship after a businesslike 89-79 win over Dartmouth at the Palestra on Senior Day.
The Quakers never trailed after the 16-minute mark of the first half, but there were some dicey moments along the way. At one point, a 9-0 Big Green run midway through the second half cut the visiting team’s deficit to 64-61 and forced Penn coach Steve Donahue into a timeout with 9:19 to play.
Coming out of the break, junior forward Max Martz proved to be Penn’s stopper.
Martz got a mismatch in the post against Dartmouth’s Ryan Cornish, backed down the guard and drained a righty hook to extend the Red and Blue’s lead back to five. He then went on to add two three-pointers from the corner and a second jumper over the next four-plus minutes to hold Dartmouth at bay. Martz finished the afternoon with 18 points and a team-high KenPom offensive rating of 163 points per 100 possessions.
Penn will need a performance like that from Martz next Saturday at Princeton in arguably the team’s biggest regular-season game in five years.
During the long wait, Quakers fans will have plenty to ruminate on, such as how …
Cornell men’s offense sputters in key loss at Yale
In a critical game in the fight for an Ivy Madness berth, the Cornell men’s offense never made the trip up to New Haven.
The Big Red scored fewer than 60 points for the second consecutive game, losing 76-58 to Yale for their fifth loss in the last six games
The loss takes Cornell out of the driver’s seat for the final spot in Ivy Madness.
Q&A with Yale men’s sophomore guard Bez Mbeng
Yale sophomore guard Bez Mbeng leads his team in assists at 4.1 per game and in steals with a total of 36. The 6-foot-4 Potomac, Md. native who coach James Jones told Ivy Hoops Online is the best on-ball defender he’s ever coached. IHO caught up with Mbeng for an interview in advance of Yale’s game against Cornell Saturday night: