Since the 95th Academy Award airs Sunday night, here are my choices for the Ivy Madness Oscars from day two of the Ivy League Tournament:
And the Ivy Madness Oscar goes to …
Carrie Moore
Harvard women stun Columbia to advance to Ivy League Tournament final
PRINCETON, N.J. – The Harvard Crimson put an abrupt end to anticipation of a rubber match between regular-season co-champions Princeton and Columbia by defeating the latter in the second of two Ivy League Tournament semifinal games played at Jadwin Gym in an overtime thriller, 72-65.
The No. 3 Crimson advance to face No. 1 Princeton, which defeated Penn earlier Friday, 60-47. The tournament final will be played Saturday at 5 p.m. at Jadwin Gym.
Ivy League Tournament women’s semifinal preview: No. 3 Harvard vs. No. 2 Columbia
No. 2 Columbia (23-4, 12-2 Ivy) vs No. 3 Harvard (16-10, 9-5 Ivy), 7 p.m. or 30 minutes following 4:30 game (Princeton vs Penn), whichever is later (available on ESPN+) at Jadwin Gym
Game #1, 1/14/23: Columbia (home) over Harvard, 82-56
Game #2, 2/17/23: Columbia over Harvard (home), 75-70
Ivy women’s week 10 roundup: Ancient Eight’s top 10
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.
Harvard women wallop Penn, 84-60
The Harvard women staked their claim to a top spot in the Ivies with an emphatic home win Saturday over Penn, 84-60.
Mike McLaughlin’s Quakers are known for a stingy defense — backcourt pressure to slow you down, traps and steals, a mix of zones and man-to-man to keep you off balance. Carrie Moore’s Crimson were ready, time after time getting the ball to the high post and finding players cutting to the basket behind the defense to take the pass for the easy score.
Sophomore Elena Rodriguez was often the beneficiary, and she led all scorers with a career-high 28 points on 11-for-14 shooting. The 6-foot-2 forward also scored from deep (3-for-4), collected 11 rebounds, handed out three assists and collected a pair of steals. On a team with the Ivies’ second-leading scorer in fellow sophomore Harmoni Turner (12 points against Penn to go with an astounding 12 assists and seven rebounds) and two others in the top 10, Rodriguez — a veteran of the Spanish national 16-and-under team — has made huge strides this season and helped make Harvard a power again.
Also in double figures for Harvard, as usual, were Lola Mullaney (19 points on 8-for-17 shooting) and McKenzie Forbes (10 points and seven rebounds). The Crimson, cheered on by a crowd of 1,385 at Lavietes Pavilion, shot 52.5% from the field for the afternoon.
Two players on the court that you’d expect to light up the scoreboard simply didn’t: Penn senior guard Kayla Padilla and junior forward Jordan Obi. Obi had nine points and five assists. Padilla picked up early fouls, played less than her usual 35 minutes and scored just 10 points, all in the second half after Harvard had built a double-digit lead. It was Penn’s other senior guard, Mandy McGurk, who had the hot hand: 27 points on 8-for-19 shooting.
We’ve seen enough of Penn this year to know that a 24-point loss is an anomaly. Seven days before the debacle at Harvard, Penn blew past Yale by 22 points. Most days, Padilla has 10 points before the half — sometimes before the fans have settled down after the Star-Spangled Banner. The last team that scored this many points against Penn in regulation was Tennessee, then ranked No. 4 nationally, in November 2014. (Columbia scored 84 in an overtime game in 2020 — but Penn scored 86.)
It may well be that Columbia and Princeton are the true powerhouses of Ivy women’s basketball this season, as expected; Saturday’s games left Columbia on top with the league season half over and put Princeton, Harvard and Penn into a tie one game back. But this Harvard team has beaten Princeton and now Penn, and no one who saw Saturday’s game would swear that it won’t do so again in the Ivy tournament.
The second half of the Ivy season starts with back-to-backs next weekend. Penn travels to Columbia and Cornell; Harvard hits the road to Yale and Brown.
Yale women escape Harvard with 71-70 overtime victory
Yale was traveling from Hanover to Harvard Friday night and coming off a 97-53 home thrashing by Columbia a week before against a Crimson squad that had taken down mighty Princeton the same day. It seemed like a recipe for defeat.
But first-year coach Dalila Eshe’s team delivered a Saturday night stunner by pulling out a 71-70 overtime win at Lavietes Pavilion.
Harvard women hand Princeton its first Ivy loss in 43 games in conference opener
1,423 days.
That’s how long it had been since Princeton women’s basketball lost a game to an Ivy opponent.
But Harvard snapped the Tigers’ winning streak spanning 42 games, three Ivy League championships and two head coaches at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday afternoon in the Ivy opener for both teams.
Harvard women fade late in loss to UMass on a cold shooting night
Coming off an eight-day layoff, Harvard women’s basketball ran out of gas in the fourth quarter against Bay State rival Massachusetts and suffered its first loss of the season, 77-67, at Lavietes Pavilion Friday night.
2022-23 IHO Women’s Preseason Poll
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.
Princeton women ranked No. 24 in AP preseason poll, poised to be class of Ivy League again
Carla Berube’s Princeton Tigers extended an impressive run of greatness in the 2021-22 season which began over a decade ago under Courtney Banghart.
The Tigers spent most of last season nationally ranked en route to an overall record of 25-5, ending with a near-upset of Indiana in the NCAA Tournament round of 32. The Tigers defeated Kentucky, the SEC Tournament champion, in the first round.
Now the Tigers are ranked again, placing 24th in the Associated Press’ Top 25 released Monday. Princeton was also projected to finish atop the Ivy League in the conference preseason poll released Monday.