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Penn broadcaster Vince Curran said he and Penn coach Steve Donahue reviewed the starting lineups for the team’s Ivy opening day game against Brown 20 minutes before tip-off. Shortly afterwards, Donahue inserted first-year guard George Smith into the starting five and it turned out to be the be the smartest move of the afternoon. The Salem, N.H. native had a day to remember, scoring a career-high 23 points to give the Quakers a huge 77-73 victory over the Bears.
ITHACA, N.Y. — Dartmouth held a one-point lead at the half, but Cornell shot 60% in the second half and fended off several late rallies to win the Ivy League opener on Sunday, 79-71.
“It was exactly what the Ivy League is going to be like,” Cornell coach Brian Earl said. “[Dartmouth] knew exactly what we were going to do and we had to fight through it. They are a veteran team. It’s a pretty good win.”
The Princeton Tigers opened the defense of their 2020 Ivy League title Sunday afternoon at Jadwin Gym against the Harvard Crimson. This was the final appearance at Princeton of legendary Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, who is closing her 40-year coaching career at Harvard at the end of the season. The Ivy League is a much better place because of her presence in it.
The opening 10 minutes Sunday afternoon at Brown may have had Penn fans worried and Brown fans jubilant: Not only were the Quakers again missing top-scoring guard Kayla Padilla, but the game was moving at the Bears’ frenetic pace, and Penn’s shots just weren’t falling.
March 7, 2020 was a really long time ago – 667 days to be exact.
That was the last time an Ivy game took place, but the long wait ended Sunday at 1 p.m., when the Yale and Columbia women tipped off at Levien Gym.
Sunday will mark the first Ivy League conference basketball since March 7, 2020, even if two of the eight games in the opening slate (the Princeton at Harvard and Columbia at Yale men’s matchups) have been postponed due to COVID-19 concerns. Here’s what to watch for:
New year, same scheduling challenges.
Before the ball dropped in Times Square to end the challenging year of 2021, the 2022 Ivy League schedule took its first hit from COVID-19 with the announced postponement of Sunday’s Princeton-Harvard men’s basketball game.
Late Friday afternoon, Harvard Athletics put out a statement that the league opener at Lavietes Pavilion could not take place due to “COVID-19 concerns and safety protocols within the Harvard men’s basketball program.” This same reason caused the Crimson to cancel Wednesday’s game at No. 6 Kansas.
For Dayna Smith’s Cornell squad, the start of the 2021-22 season has by no means been easy. In addition to a challenging nonconference slate, the team with just six returners from two seasons ago has battled injuries, illness and COVID-19 protocols through the first seven weeks of the new campaign.
“There’s been zero pouting, zero anger [and] lack of focus,” Smith said. “We’ve practiced with six people, we’ve practiced with seven people … The people we have with us are giving us everything they have.”
You weren’t expecting a close game, were you? If so, you were expecting the Penn women to travel to Morgan State for their first game in 20 days. But with the coronavirus shuffling and scuttling schedules, the Quakers instead were playing host to Division III Ursinus, and the result was an emphatic 89-29 Penn win.