The peculiar case of the Brown Bears

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Tyrese Martin missed a free throw, Zach Hunsaker grabbed the defensive rebound and the Brown Bears dribbled it out. It was over. Brown had picked up a win over the 8-3 Rhode Island Rams of the Atlantic 10, who had only one previous loss against a nonranked team and none against a non-power five team. Brown had capped its Division I nonconference schedule with arguably its most impressive win of the season. The Bears had gotten contributions from both their star upperclassmen and their budding underclassmen.

The only nagging feeling came from this question: Why hadn’t they been playing like this all year?

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Penn-Princeton rematch: Keys to the game

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Penn may have been the host of its matchup with Princeton Saturday, but it was the Tigers who made themselves at home at the Palestra.

The Tigers, fueled by Ryan Schweiger’s career-high 27 points, defeated the Quakers 78-64 in their first meeting of the year. The two teams will meet again on Friday at Jadwin Gym. The Quakers will need to make several adjustments to walk away victorious. Here are the keys to victory for both teams.

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Princeton’s studs shine under the Palestra lights

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Mike Tony’s excellent breakdown of Saturday night’s Penn-Princeton collision leaves little left unsaid, but let me add some comments from the Tiger perspective for the sake of context.

No one expected either team to dominate the other, although the early line favored the Quakers by 10. As game time approached a lot of people grabbed the points moving the line to seven or less by tip-off.

Shockingly, the score was tied on only two occasions in the first three minutes. From that point on Penn managed to get within four just once, with 3:48 remaining in the first period. Schwieger then found another gear, canning eight of his career-high 27 in the closing moments of the first half. A Jaelin Llewellyn three-pointer helped as well, as the Tigers ran the lead from four to 12, 39-27, at the end of the half.

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Cornell finishes nonconference play on high note with win over ETSU

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Cornell women’s basketball finished the nonconference portion of its schedule strong Saturday with a 71-43 victory over the visiting ETSU Buccaneers.

The Big Red got off to a rough start as they turned the ball over six times and trailed by three at the end of the first quarter.

“We were not executing on offense, missing shots, and rebounding is our thing and we had five [offensive] boards in the first half and that’s not much, [we] gotta get second chances,” coach Dayna Smith said.

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How Penn arrived at another letdown against Princeton

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Princeton shot just 2-for-11 from deep, got outscored by double-digits in second-chance and fastbreak points and didn’t score a field goal in the game’s final 6:37.

And yet the Tigers never trailed en route to a surprisingly easy 78-64 win over Penn at the Palestra Saturday night, their sixth win there against Penn in six seasons (including their 2017 Ivy League Tournament quarterfinal victory).

So what did Penn (7-5, 0-1 Ivy) do wrong against Princeton (5-8, 1-0) this time?

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Inside Ivy Hoops – Jan. 4, 2020

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In the season debut episode of Inside Ivy Hoops taped Friday evening, Ivy Hoops Online editor Mike Tony is IHO writers Rob Browne and George Clark, who discuss the IHO staff’s Ivy men’s and women’s power rankings and women’s and men’s players of the 2010s as voted on by IHO staff writers (all in that order), plus we preview tonight’s Princeton-Penn matchup:


(Editor’s note: This episode was lightly edited for clarity. We regretfully neglected to discuss the Brown women, who finished last in our Ivy women’s power rankings. Brown stands at 6-7 and has won three of its last four games, but the Bears have struggled defensively and shooting efficiency. It’s hard to see them making a run at an Ivy League Tournament appearance unless they shore up both areas in conference play.)

 

Full Leede Arena makes Dartmouth dream, even in loss

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Let’s be honest with ourselves, the Ivy League is never going to win any Division I attendance titles. But what some of the homely and aging facilities in the Ancient Eight lack in size or amenities, they can make up for in old-school college basketball atmosphere, which anyone who has attended a big game at Lavietes Pavilion (home of this season’s Ivy League Tournament) or Lee Amphitheater can attest to after their ears take a couple of hours to adjust to normality.

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