Home of the Roundball Poets
As the calendar moves into February, we have reached the midpoint of the Ivy season. While this weekend brings the first back-to-back games of the season, Saturday night looks to be the more pivotal evening for the women’s division. Each game pits teams from the four tiers of the conference against one another.
Just nine days after snapping an 18-game losing streak against Penn, the Columbia women on Friday stretched their winning streak against the Quakers to two, this time in Philadelphia, 66-57.
The Columbia women started slow but found fifth gear after halftime to race past Penn, 61-56, on Wednesday night in New York — breaking an 18-game losing streak against the Quakers that stretched back to 2011.
After running out to a 24-point lead over the first 7:30 of the game, the Columbia women surprisingly found themselves in a battle with Cornell on Thursday night. In a typically intense physical battle between the Empire State rivals, the Lions used the offense of Kitty Henderson and the rebounding of Kaitlyn Davis to come away with a 57-46 victory at Levien Gymnasium.
With the win, the Light Blue are 3-0 in league play (12-0 overall) for the first time in program history and remain tied with Princeton for first place. For the Red, the defeat was their first of the year when holding an opponent to 60 points or less and they are now 1-3 in the conference (6-9 overall).
Could there really be a season-defining game as early as Jan. 7?
It’s not only possible, it’s probable.
It’s Princeton-Columbia at Levien Gym Friday at 7 p.m.
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:
Columbia’s Carly Rivera, held scoreless through regulation, hit three straight triples late in the second overtime to help the Lions break away from Georgetown and secure a hard-fought 66-56 victory Sunday.
With the win, the Light Blue move to 5-0 for the first time in program history.
Announcers and writers around the nation focused a lot of attention to the 600-plus days between games for the Ivy League. While many expected the teams to be a bit rusty out of the gates, the Ancient Eight acquitted itself quite well in the season’s first week.
Thirteen of the league’s 16 teams had at least one win, with the Princeton and Columbia women notching three victories each. The Brown men almost upset No. 19 UNC without their top player, and the Princeton men just missed out on winning the Asheville Championship.
Check out some of the highlights from a very successful and welcome week of Ivy hoops:
Fresh off a program-high third-place selection in the 2022 Ivy preseason poll, the Columbia women looked ready for even greater heights as they took down Hampton, 78-56, in the season opener at Levien Gymnasium on Tuesday night.
The Lions (1-0), as usual, were led by their dynamic All-Ivy duo of Abbey Hsu and Sienna Durr. Hsu led all scorers with 22 points on 50% shooting and five three-pointers. Durr finished with 14 points with 57% shooting and a pair of treys. Kaitlyn Davis and Duke transfer Jaida Patrick, added 14 and nine points, respectively.
One day after releasing the conference’s preseason poll, the Ivy League moved one step closer to normal by hosting the 2021-22 Media Day for women’s basketball Tuesday. For the first time, the league used a Zoom format to create a stronger connection between the coaches, players and the media.
In Monday’s poll, three-time defending champion Princeton was again picked as the top team with 122 total points and 12 first-place votes. Penn, the 2019 co-champion, was selected No. 2 with three first-place votes and 108 points. The next three teams were close, with only six points separating Columbia, Yale and Harvard.
The Lions, which earned their first Ivy League Tournament berth in 2020 before the tourney was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved up to third with 87 points. The Bulldogs, a third-place team in 2020, dropped to fourth at 82 points. The Crimson, which finished fifth in 2020, received one first-place vote but missed the upper division by one point.
Cornell, the 2020 seventh-place squad, moved up to sixth for 2022 with 41 points. Dartmouth and Brown, two teams with new coaching staffs, ended up with the last two spots, with the Big Green’s 29 points two ahead of the Bears.
Tuesday’s Media Day revealed the four tiers apparent in the preseason poll. But there could be a slight reordering near the top.