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It’s usually the Saturday game in the Ivy League back-to-backs when teams have to win ugly, but the Harvard men had to do so on Friday.
In a game in which both offenses struggled, the Crimson survived a game-tying triple at the buzzer to escape with a 56-53 victory over Brown in front of a Hawaiian shirt-wearing Aloha Night crowd at Lavietes Pavilion.
Harvard women’s basketball overcame a 32-point outing by Yale sophomore guard Ciniya Moore and held the Bulldogs at bay, 70-62, at John J. Lee Amphitheater Friday night, powered by a winning performance from Crimson junior guard Karlee White.
Yale men’s basketball averted disaster by outscoring Brown 22-5 to end their game and defeat the Bears at John J. Lee Amphitheater, 81-69, Friday night.
“Really tough, gritty win by the team tonight” Yale coach James Jones said. “Brown had us down and out three times in the game.”
In what may end up being the Ivy League game of the year, Harvard men’s basketball topped Yale, 67-65, on a 28-foot banked trey with under five seconds remaining by Harvard sophomore guard Tey Barbour before a raucous crowd of 2,425 at John J. Lee Amphitheater.
“Very disappointing loss for us. Hats off to Harvard,” Yale coach James Jones said after a long postgame talk with his team.
Prolific production from a trio of Harvard guards, Robert Hinton, Tey Barbour and Chandler Pigge, neutralized a monster 30-point effort from senior forward Landon Lewis and propelled the Crimson men to a 69-59 victory over Brown at the Pizzitola Sports Center on Friday evening.
With the win, Harvard (11-9, 4-2 Ivy) claimed sole possession of second place through the first six conference games of the 2026 season, while Bruno (1-5, 7-12) remained at the bottom of the Ancient Eight.
Ivy Hoops Online correspondent George ‘Toothless Tiger” Clark recaps a 63-53 win for Princeton men’s basketball (7-13, 3-2 Ivy) over Brown (7-11 1-4) at Jadwin Gym Saturday afternoon:
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor a winter storm on the East Coast could keep the No. 20 Princeton women’s basketball team from grinding out another road win, 58-49, over Brown on Saturday afternoon at the Pizzitola Sports Center in Providence, R.I.
Feeling a sense of urgency after starting the 2026 Ivy League campaign with three straight losses, the Cornell men’s basketball team dominated on both sides of the ball to cruise to an 89-67 triumph over Brown at the Pizzitola Sports Center Monday.
The Cornell win marks the fifth straight time in the series that the road team came away victorious.
With the Martin Luther King Jr. Day matinee win, the Big Red (8-9, 1-3 Ivy League) moved into a three-way tie for sixth place in league play with the Bears (7-10, 1-3) and Columbia, which was swept by Bruno and Yale over the holiday weekend.
“Starting 0-3 is never ideal, but we know what team we’re capable of being,” senior guard Cooper Noard told ESPN+ after the game. “It doesn’t matter how the other team is guarding us, it just matters that we have the right energy and the right confidence.”
In a physical battle that featured 17 lead changes and 15 ties over 45 minutes, Brown men’s basketball opened up its largest lead of the game in the extra session and held on for an 86-80 victory over Columbia at the Pizzitola Sports Center on Saturday afternoon.
Mike Martin’s Bears (7-8, 1-2 Ivy League) picked up their first conference win in three tries, while Kevin Hovde’s Lions (12-5, 1-2) dropped their second straight Ancient Eight contest.
“Really, really pleased,” Martin told the ESPN+/NESN broadcast team after the game. “That was a hard, hard-fought game. They’re (Columbia) a heck of a team.”
The Penn women’s basketball visit to Brown didn’t figure on being easy for either team. After all, they spent the past two seasons clawing at each other for the fourth slot in the Ivy League Tournament, with Penn claiming the honor both times.
What they produced Saturday was a classic, a double-overtime win for the Bears that looked easy at the start and easy at the finish but was brilliant and exhausting basketball in between. If this is the sort of thing we can expect for the rest of the season, we’ll have a lot of exciting games to watch, and both Brown and Penn will go to the tournament in March.