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NEW YORK – In front of a partisan, sold-out crowd at Levien Gymnasium Friday, Ivy League Player of the Year Abbey Hsu used a 20-point, 14 rebound performance to lead her No. 2 Columbia Lions over No. 3 Harvard, 63-61, to set up a long-awaited final showdown with Princeton on Saturday night.
If Hsu, head coach Megan Griffith and the rest of the Lions can slay the Tigers, the program will earn its first-ever Ivy League Tournament title, as well as its inaugural berth in the NCAA Tournament.
The Harvard women’s basketball team used an efficient fourth quarter to overcome a tough challenge from Brown on Saturday afternoon at Lavietes Pavilion.
With the 80-73 victory, the Crimson (15-9, 8-3 Ivy) captured the third ticket to next month’s Ivy League Tournament at Levien Gym. It’ll be the third straight conference postseason appearance for Harvard and the sixth overall.
The Bears (14-10, 5-6), looking for their first Ivy Madness berth since the inaugural tournament in 2017, fell back into a tie with Penn. Both teams remain one game ahead of Yale with three games left in the regular season.
With the season a few weeks away, the Ivy League hosted Women’s Basketball Media Day on Monday, the first of two media availabilities this week. The event was hosted over Zoom for media members and is available on the conference’s YouTube channel.
The preseason media poll was released last Thursday with Princeton earning all 16 first-place votes. Last year’s Ivy Tournament winner and regular season co-champions are the sixth unanimous pick in league history and the first since Penn in 2016-2017.