McKenzie Forbes, Abbey Hsu and Kaitlyn Davis each heard their name called during Monday’s WNBA Draft in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Ivy League)
While most of the nation’s attention was focused on Caitlin Clark being selected by the Indiana Fever at the top of the WNBA Draft, Ivy League fans celebrated the selection of Columbia’s Abbey Hsu and Kaitlyn Davis and Harvard’s McKenzie Forbes in the third round of Monday night’s event.
Hsu was a senior guard for two-time regular-season champion Columbia and the 2023-24 Ivy League Player of the Year, while Davis, who played with Hsu at Columbia for three seasons and was a two-time First-Team All-Ivy forward, spent her graduate transfer season as a starter for Southern California. Forbes, a 2021-22 Second Team All-Ivy guard/forward who started her career at California before transferring to Harvard for her final three undergraduate years, joined Davis in the starting lineup for the Trojans.
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Greetings from Iowa City, Iowa, the heartland of girls and women’s basketball.
Your faithful Ivy Hoops Online correspondent grew up in the Hawkeye State, so covering Princeton women’s basketball at this venue has been a nice homecoming for me. In fact, the last time I visited Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City was for a Boston concert with a group of my high school buddies 45 years ago. To be honest, I barely remember the concert, other than it was loud.
But one thing I remember clearly from those long ago days is how important girls’ high school basketball was to the state of Iowa. Back then, the girls’ game was quite different than today. Each team played six players at a time, three on offense and three on defense, and neither the offensive nor the defensive players were allowed to cross the half-court line.
Women’s basketball has come a long way since then, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the passion for the sport. When I was growing up here, no event was more important to the people of Iowa than the girls’ high school basketball tournament, which took place every year at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in downtown Des Moines.
Now, the chief passion in the state is Caitlin Clark and the University of Iowa women’s basketball team. The No. 1 Hawkeyes kick off the first round of games here Saturday afternoon against the No. 16 Holy Cross Crusaders. Later in the day, the No. 9 Princeton Tigers will face off against the No. 8 West Virginia Mountaineers.
Surrounded by photographers, Caitlin Clark walks down the hallway of Carver-Hawkeye Arena to a pregame press conference. (Photo by Steve Silverman)
How big of a circus is the Caitlin Clark show here in Iowa City? So big, that a gaggle of cameramen and reporters from all over the nation this morning staked out the Iowa women’s locker room in the bowels of Carver-Hawkeye Arena just to get a glimpse of the star player as she walked down the hallway to the team’s pregame day press conference. Then, after the player part of the press conference ended and it was time for coach Lisa Bluder to take questions from the media, nearly every reporter shuffled out of the room, leaving only yours truly and a couple of others to ask questions of the person who actually runs the team.
Here are some other impressions, news, and notes from Iowa City on the day before the round one games begin:
Snow flurries fall upon the entrance to Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City Friday. (Photo by Steve Silverman)
IOWA CITY, Iowa – As the curtain rises on first-round games from Iowa City in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, all eyes will focus on Caitlin Clark and her No. 1 Iowa Hawkeyes. Clark has ignited an explosion of interest in women’s college basketball with her electrifying shooting and record-breaking scoring.
But there are three other teams competing in the Iowa City pod this weekend, including the No. 9 Princeton women’s basketball team (25-4, 15-1 Ivy), which begins play in No. 8 West Virginia Mountaineers (24-7, 13-7 Big 12).
Let’s take an in-depth look at how these two teams from vastly different places in the women’s college basketball landscape match up against each other:
Princeton’s Carla Berube and Columbia’s Megan Griffith talk prior to Saturday’s Ivy League championship (Photo: Rob Browne)
Following Princeton’s victory over Columbia in Saturday night’s Ivy League championship, the thought of two conference teams making into the field of 68 seemed improbable. However, Sunday night’s selection show provided a pleasant surprise for everyone connected to the Ancient Eight, with the announcement of an automatic qualifier spot for the Tigers and an at-large bid for the Lions.
This year’s decision marks the second time the Ivies have sent two teams to the Big Dance, with Princeton claiming the second bid and Penn taking the automatic spot in 2016.
