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After a month-long search, Cornell athletic director Nicki Moore announced the hiring of Emily Garner as the new women’s basketball head coach on Thursday afternoon.
Garner, who becomes the eighth head coach in Big Red history, arrives in Ithaca after leading Trinity College to a 124-55 record over the last eight seasons, including a 96-35 mark over the last five years.
Another great day in the books at Columbia University and Levien Gymnasium.
Four good press conferences, two very good semifinal games and lots of tasty food (including pizza!) in the media room. It’s really hard to beat a day like that.
Some things of note from an Ivy hoops Friday:
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.
As we enter the July 4th holiday weekend, we at Ivy Hoops Online wanted to round up some postseason updates:
Dartmouth women’s basketball has chosen its third head coach since 2021.
Dartmouth athletics and recreation director Mike Harrity announced the selection of Linda Cimino as the program’s new head coach Tuesday.
Just shy of two years into her tenure, Adrienne Shibles as stepped down as Dartmouth women’s basketball coach.
Dartmouth Athletics announced Shibles’ departure Monday in a short statement.
“We are thankful to Adrienne for her contributions to Dartmouth Athletics and wish her all the best moving forward,” athletics and recreation director Mike Harrity said in the statement.
Heading into the last two days of the regular season, Columbia and Princeton were tied for first, while Penn held a one-game lead over Harvard for third place. After the Lions, Tigers and Crimson each grabbed a win, the Ivy League Tournament semifinal matchups of Columbia against Harvard and Princeton versus Penn had been set. What needed to be determined was the seeding of the four teams and the timing of the two matchups.
When the updated NCAA NET rankings were posted on Sunday morning, Princeton’s convincing road victory over upper division Penn combined with Columbia’s narrow escape at home against seventh-place Cornell resulted in the Tigers overcoming an 11-position difference from last week and taking the No. 1 seed away from the Lions.
It’s still Princeton’s conference until another Ivy proves that it isn’t. Our contributors are united in believing that the Tigers will stay on top in 2022-23, with Megan Griffith’s ascendant Columbia program again placing second.
But there wasn’t consensus on how the rest of the top half of the league will fill out.
Penn could break back into the Ivy League Tournament after missing it for the first time last season, but we expect the Red & Blue to draw stiff competition from Harvard and Yale in their first years under new coaches.
Will #2bidivy happen in the league for only the second time in conference history? It very well could, and the bottom half of the conference is likely to be substantially stronger this season as Brown and Dartmouth return more experienced rosters under coaches that now have a year of Ivy play under their belts.
Dartmouth women’s coach Adrienne Shibles joins Ivy Hoops Online writer and host Steve Silverman to reflect on her coaching philosophy, a learning curve in recruiting coming from Division III Bowdoin, whether the Ivy League should reconsider not allowing athletic scholarships, how the “grit index” works, her overview of the team’s top four scorers from a year ago returning, and much more:
in case you missed it, check out Steve’s interviews with Cornell men’s coach Brian Earl here, Cornell women’s coach Dayna Smith here and Brown men’s coach Mike Martin here.