Home of the Roundball Poets
The Ivy League announced Thursday evening that winter sports for the 2020-21 season were cancelled in an effort to mitigate transmission of COVID-19. Was eliminating Ivy hoops the right move? Our contributors offer their thoughts:
Princeton (AP No. 21, Coaches No. 17) pulled off another patented second-half runaway at Levien Gym Friday night and made history in the process.
The Tigers looked like they could be in for their first real fight of Ivy League play as the Lions trimmed their lead to 36-31 1:56 into the third quarter.
But Princeton outscored Columbia 19-8 the rest of the quarter en route to a 77-52 win to stay unbeaten in conference action.
Columbia rode its stingy second half defense, Abbey Hsu’s hot fourth quarter shooting and its deep bench to beat Harvard, 62-57, notching its fifth straight win and moving within a game of its first-ever birth in the Ivy Tournament.
Harvard (14-10, 5-6 Ivy) entered Friday night’s contest on a three-game losing streak, including an 89-64 defeat at Columbia (16-8, 7-4) two weeks ago. The Crimson hoped a return to Lavietes Pavilion, where the team was 8-2 on the season, would help turn the tide and return team back to the league’s upper division.
After Yale cut a 16-point third-quarter deficit to two early in the fourth quarter, Columbia got four three-pointers from four different players to pull away and grab a 74-65 win over the Bulldogs at the John J. Lee Amphitheater on Saturday evening.
The two teams battled evenly through most of the first quarter, when Tori Andrew hit a driving left side layup to put Yale (16-7, 6-4 Ivy) up 13-11. The Lions (15-8, 6-4) responded with a 21-2 run between the last two minutes of the first quarter and the first 3:15 of the second frame to open up a 17-point lead.
Columbia used 12-0 and 18-3 first half runs to open up a 26-point halftime lead and cruised to a 89-64 victory over Harvard on Saturday night at Levien Gym.
Harvard took an 11-10 lead right after the first media timeout, but that would prove to be the highlight of the night for the Crimson as Columbia (13-8, 4-4 Ivy) dominated the last 34 minutes.
Leading by only three at the half, Yale used a 50-point effort over the last 20 minutes to convincingly beat Columbia, 85-60, taking the first leg of its Empire State weekend.
A battle between two of the Ivy’s up-and-coming programs started with the visitors jumping out to a quick 10-0 start. The Lions (10-6, 1-2 Ivy) battled back to tie the game at 15 by the end of the first quarter, with 12 of those points being scored by Ivy rookies Abbey Hsu, Hannah Pratt (a sophomore who missed all last year), Kaitlyn Davis and Carly Rivera.
The second quarter was a back-and-forth affair with four lead changes and four ties, leaving the game knotted at 32 after Rivera nailed a jumper from the right baseline with just under a minute to go. Yale senior Roxy Barahman calmly sank a shot from the top of the key, beyond the men’s line, to put the Bulldogs up 35-32 to finish the half.
ITHACA, N.Y. – Freshman Shannon Mulroy scored a career-high 27 points off of seven threes as the Big Red prevailed past the Columbia Lions at Newman Arena in overtime, 80-77, avenging their 10-point loss to Columbia last weekend.
“We were just working the ball around and whoever was open was gonna shoot it, and I just happened to be open,” said Mulroy. “Whoever’s open would knock them down.”
“We took care of the ball,” said Big Red coach Dayna Smith. “We mixed up our defenses a little more; we kept people in front of us and didn’t allow as much penetration.”