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Penn’s Monday night season opener at Iona, the preseason favorite to win the MAAC, was a generally miserable affair after the under-eight media timeout of the first half. The Gaels used a 36-4 run which spanned the end of the first half and beginning of the second half to put the Quakers away and turn the final 12-plus minutes of the game into garbage time.
Things won’t get easier this week for Penn. The Quakers will be double-digit (potentially 15-point-plus) underdogs when they travel to Columbia, Mo. to face Missouri on Friday. They’ll likely be underdogs at home on Sunday against Towson, the preseason favorite to win the CAA and a potential No. 12 seed when March rolls around.
Here are some questions Penn will need to answer as it navigates a difficult first week of the season (and beyond):
Returning over 96% of the team’s points, rebounds and minutes from last year’s WNIT quarterfinal team, expectations are high for the Columbia women this season. The Lions took their initial step toward the program’s first ever NCAA Tournament bid with a 77-69 victory over Memphis at the Elma Roane Fieldhouse on Monday night.
The game was knotted at seven halfway through the opening frame, but the Tigers finished the quarter on a 11-2 run. Down eight with just over a minute to go, the Lions returned the favor and ended the half on 8-2 run to cut the deficit to two. Memphis extended the lead to four, 54-50, after three quarters.
But the game would quickly turn in Columbia’s favor.
Five takes on the Penn men’s season-opening blowout loss at Iona Monday night, a startling stumble out of the gate for the Ivy preseason favorite against the MAAC preseason favorite:
Presenting Ivy Hoops Online writer George Clark’s audio reports on Princeton’s Jadwin Gym doubleheader consisting of a women’s matchup with Temple and a men’s showdown versus Hofstra.
How the No. 24 Princeton women dispatched Temple, 67-49, in a characteristically defense-oriented game at Jadwin:
What sparked the Hofstra 12-1 run that secured the Pride an 83-77 victory over the Tigers and how coach Mitch Henderson retooled the starting lineup after key departures from last year’s Ivy title team:
Only five points separated the top three teams in the Ivy League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll, and our final tabulation was even tighter. Just three points separated the team atop IHO contributors’ preseason poll.
Yale gets the slight nod here, with our contributors trusting James Jones to lead the Bulldogs to their fifth Ivy League title in an eight-season span in a bid to represent the conference in the NCAA Tournament for a third straight time. Penn, the Ivy League preseason poll’s top team above Princeton by a single point, also finished a single point above Princeton in our standings. Our contributors saw potential for success in a roster that returns most of the key players from last year’s squad that placed third in the Ivy standings. We’ve got Princeton pegged to finish third, aided in their quest to repeat as Ivy League champions by returning 2021-22 Ivy Player of the Year Tosan Evbuomwan but losing significant backcourt production from last year’s conference title team.
Harvard was the clear No. 4 finisher in our poll, a showing that would improve upon the disappointing sixth-place result that locked the Crimson out of the Ivy League Tournament on its home floor last season. We have Cornell ranked slightly ahead of Brown as the Big Red look to build on last season’s overachieving Ivy League Tournament berth and the Bears look to bounce back from an underachieving sixth-place finish (tied with Harvard) a season ago. Columbia and Dartmouth tied in our voting tally at the bottom of the standings as both programs look to secure their first Ivy League Tournament appearances.
It’s still Princeton’s conference until another Ivy proves that it isn’t. Our contributors are united in believing that the Tigers will stay on top in 2022-23, with Megan Griffith’s ascendant Columbia program again placing second.
But there wasn’t consensus on how the rest of the top half of the league will fill out.
Penn could break back into the Ivy League Tournament after missing it for the first time last season, but we expect the Red & Blue to draw stiff competition from Harvard and Yale in their first years under new coaches.
Will #2bidivy happen in the league for only the second time in conference history? It very well could, and the bottom half of the conference is likely to be substantially stronger this season as Brown and Dartmouth return more experienced rosters under coaches that now have a year of Ivy play under their belts.
Dartmouth men’s coach David McLaughlin joins Ivy Hoops Online writer and host Steve Silverman to reflect on the recruiting impact of the Ivy League’s lack of athletic scholarships, how to find a team’s identity, losing longtime backcourt standout Brendan Barry, embracing uncertainty in his team’s rotation going into this season, and much more:
In case you missed them, check out Steve’s interviews with Dartmouth women’s coach Adrienne Shibles here, Cornell men’s coach Brian Earl here, Cornell women’s coach Dayna Smith here, Brown men’s coach Mike Martin here, and Brown women’s coach Monique LeBlanc here.
Brown women’s coach Monique LeBlanc joins Ivy Hoops Online writer and host Steve Silverman to reflect on her journey from Prudential Financial into coaching, getting her top six scorers back from last season and expectations for 2021-22 rookie standout Isabella Mauricio, a large incoming first-year class, what a successful 2022-23 campaign would be for her program and more:
in case you missed it, check out Steve’s interviews with Cornell men’s coach Brian Earl here, Cornell women’s coach Dayna Smith here, Brown men’s coach Mike Martin here and Dartmouth women’s coach Adrienne Shibles here.
Dartmouth women’s coach Adrienne Shibles joins Ivy Hoops Online writer and host Steve Silverman to reflect on her coaching philosophy, a learning curve in recruiting coming from Division III Bowdoin, whether the Ivy League should reconsider not allowing athletic scholarships, how the “grit index” works, her overview of the team’s top four scorers from a year ago returning, and much more:
in case you missed it, check out Steve’s interviews with Cornell men’s coach Brian Earl here, Cornell women’s coach Dayna Smith here and Brown men’s coach Mike Martin here.