Brown basketball veterans’ lawsuit against Ivy schools ripe for appeal

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United States District of Connecticut Judge Alvin Thompson, a Princeton and Yale Law School graduate, handed a significant victory to the Ivy League Thursday.

Thompson granted an Ivy League motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by two former Brown basketball players alleges that the Ivy League not offering athletic scholarships violates the Sherman Antitrust Act by price-fixing, raising the net price of education that Ivy athletes pay and suppressing compensation for the athletic services they provide Ivy schools.

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Princeton men picked as preseason Ivy favorites in media poll

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Princeton, last year’s undisputed regular season champions, were picked to take home the 2025 Ivy title in the preseason media poll released on Tuesday.

Led by junior forward Caden Pierce, the 2024 Player of the Year, and first team All-Ivy junior guard Xaivian Lee, Mitch Henderson’s Tigers picked up 15 of 16 first place votes and 127 of a maximum 128 points.

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Brown’s Nana Owusu-Anane at risk to miss 2024-25 season

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Brown’s Nana Owusu-Anane underwent left shoulder surgery this week and the recovery timeline is expected to keep the senior forward out of action through March, according to Bill Koch of the Providence Journal,

“We obviously feel so badly for Nana, and our main focus is getting him the support and treatment that he needs,” Brown head coach Mike Martin said in a statement to the Journal published Friday. “He’s in great hands with the medical team that is in place, and I know that he’ll attack his recovery like he always does and will come back from this better than he was before.”

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Q&A with Yale men’s basketball coach James Jones

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(James Jones’s Twitter page)

Ivy Hoops Online caught up with James Jones as he begins his 26th year at Yale with early-season September workouts to prepare his team for the 2024-25 slate:

IHO: What are the strengths of your team this season?

JJ: Confidence, which comes from our success. We are smaller than we have been with a higher work ethic. Everyone on the team has it. Last season we had a good work ethic, but not like this.

IHO: Talk about John Poulakidas and Bez Mbeng, both seniors.

JJ: They are comparable to any of our top two seniors over the years. Like Brandon Sherrod and Justin Sears.

IHO: Who are some guys that you think might have breakout seasons?

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Princeton women’s basketball releases return matchup-heavy 2024-25 schedule

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Non conference schedule
(Princeton Athletics)

The Princeton women’s basketball team, winner of five consecutive Ivy League Tournament championships, released its schedule this week for the 2024-25 season.

For the Tigers, it’s déjà vu all over again. Of the 27 games included on the schedule, only four involve new opponents compared to a season ago. That’s largely due to Princeton playing return matchups against nine nonconference opponents from the 2023-24 campaign.

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Check out The Madness of Ivy Basketball

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Ivy Hoops Online contributor Richard Kent has a new book out that entertainingly excels at making sense of its own title:  The Madness of Ivy Basketball. The work includes thoughtful recaps of the 2023-24 seasons for individual Ivy programs, a primer on Dartmouth men’s basketball’s historic unionization effort, reasons to be excited about the 2024-25 campaign and contributions from fellow IHO contributor Rob Browne and a bevy of other Ivy roundball experts. It’s available at Amazon here.

 

Princeton’s Kaitlyn Chen on choosing UConn for grad transfer season

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Kaitlyn Chen is University of Connecticut-bound. (Kaitlyn Chen Instagram page)

Next week, Kaitlyn Chen will graduate from Princeton University as one of the most decorated basketball players in the history of Old Nassau.

The senior point guard and former Ivy League Player of the Year recently announced she will enroll next fall at the University of Connecticut to play for the legendary Geno Auriemma as a graduate transfer.

Chen told Ivy Hoops Online she will pursue a master’s degree in sports management at UConn.

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Five things I think I think about Penn men’s basketball, post-Ethan Roberts commitment

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The great Peter King, dean of football writers in America, retired earlier this year. I would put King — the longtime Sports Illustrated columnist and reporter — right up there with Lawrence Taylor, my father and Steve Sabol among the people who helped spark my lifelong love affair (obsession?) with sports.

In honor of King, I have a few more thoughts than usual on Penn’s position in the Ivy League landscape — and college basketball at large — after it picked up a high-upside transfer in the form of ex-Drake guard Ethan Roberts, a sophomore, last week.

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