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It was supposed to be a tune-up game for the beginning of the Ivy League season.
But the Le Moyne Dolphins of the Northeast Conference gave the Princeton women’s basketball team all it could handle Sunday in a 66-55 win for the Tigers at Ted Grant Court in Syracuse, N.Y.
As we enter the July 4th holiday weekend, we at Ivy Hoops Online wanted to round up some postseason updates:
The Dalila Eshe era has begun in New Haven.
Yale Athletics named Eshe head coach of Yale women’s basketball Monday, 17 days after Loyola Chicago announced that Allison Guth was leaving Yale to take over there.
Eshe comes from Princeton, where she was an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for three seasons under Carla Berube.
Eshe will be introduced at a press conference Wednesday at 11:30 a.m., inside John J. Lee Amphitheater, Yale Athletics announced.
Guth had won 99 games in six seasons, during which the Bulldogs set the single-season program win record twice during her tenure at Yale.
Now it’s up to Eshe, a former WNBA Draft pick, to build on that success.
Cannady completing a comeback
Devin Cannady is nearing the end of a 10-day contract with the Orlando Magic that has marked an extraordinary comeback from a devastating injury for the former Princeton standout.
Cannady signed the contract March 31, making the jump from the Lakeland Magic of the NBA G League, where he had been averaging 15.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 16 games and 11 starts.
“Is there even a clock in March?” – Yale head coach Allison Guth in response to a question about the possibility of playing two games against higher seeds in 26 hours
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.
After spending the last two years at Mercer University as a graduate assistant, former Dartmouth star Cy Lippold will be returning to the Ancient Eight as an assistant coach at Columbia.
The Bronx native, who was IHO’s Most Improved Player in 2017-2018 and Honorable Mention in 2018-2019, will be assisting with development of the guards as well as scouting, team strategy, recruiting operations and analytics, according to Columbia Athletics.
“We are thrilled to welcome Cy to the Columbia women’s basketball family,” coach Megan Griffith said. “Her strong background in leadership development and firsthand experience as an Ivy student-athlete are unmatched. I am confident she will make an immediate impact on our program.”
The slew of top-flight talent leaving the Ivy League just keep gets bigger.
Together again as Tar Heels
Princeton women’s senior guard Carlie Littlefield delivered the news on Twitter Monday that she’ll be reuniting with Courtney Banghart, the coach she played for at Princeton as a rookie and sophomore, at North Carolina. An Economics major at Princeton, Littlefield will play at UNC as a graduate transfer and earn a Master of Business Administration degree there.
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: