
Princeton coaching and Dartmouth playing legend Courtney Banghart spent 45 minutes in conversation with Ivy Hoops Online contributor Steve Silverman.
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Princeton coaching and Dartmouth playing legend Courtney Banghart spent 45 minutes in conversation with Ivy Hoops Online contributor Steve Silverman.
Call it what you want, leaderless or rudderless. That’s what some Ivy League coaches, alumni and donors are saying right now in droves. And it is spot on. Those terms apply to the recent Ivy mandate further restricting the ability of its student-athletes to receive NIL compensation.
Nothing exemplifies this more than the recent Ivy mandate further restricting the ability of its student-athletes to receive NIL.

PROVIDENCE, R.I.- Day two at Ivy Madness started in the mid-morning with the four participants on the men’s side of the ledger.
In a very nice gesture, the Ivy League memorialized a seat for Washington Post sportswriter John Feinstein, who unexpectedly passed away at 68 Thursday. Despite attending Duke, John was a big fan of Ivy League sports, attending several Ivy League tournaments and writing about the conference’s gridiron in this past November’s “The Ancient Eight: College Football’s Ivy League and the Game They Play Today.”
Yale arrives as the regular season champion and heavy favorite to the be the first No. 1 seed to win the conference tournament since Princeton did it in 2017.
While this is the fifth time at Ivy Madness for No. 2 Cornell, it is the first time the Big Red enter as a semifinal favorite and are being led by former player and longtime assistant Jon Jaques.
Speaking of first timers, Dave McLaughlin and Dartmouth are making their inaugural appearance at the Ivy League’s Big Dance. The Big Green are looking to emulate Brown, which upset higher-seeded Princeton last year in its debut tournament last year.
Dartmouth was picked eighth in the preseason media poll and ended up third. On the other hand, the Tigers were picked to repeat as regular-season champions but ended up fourth. They clinched their seventh top-four finish in the tournament era on the final day of the season.
As the top seed, Yale opted to hang out for an extra hour and gave the opening slot to Princeton. After the Bulldogs’ press conference, Cornell and Dartmouth followed in the traditional No. 2 and No. 3-seed slots.
Below are highlights from the four media sessions:
Editor’s note: Here are Steve Silverman’s reactions to Ivy League All-Ivy awards for players and coaches for the 2024-25 women’s basketball season announced Tuesday. Ivy Hoops Online’s 2024-25 Men’s and Women’s All-Ivy Awards are soon to come.:
The field is set for Ivy Madness.
Penn finished with a higher NCAA NET ranking (No. 162) than Brown (No. 184), the Ivy League confirmed Sunday morning, making the Quakers the fourth and final team to clinch an Ivy League Tournament berth with the Bears on the outside looking into the tourney to be held on their home floor at the Pizzitola Sports Center.
The full women’s and men’s slate for the Ivy League Tournaments are below, with automatic bids going to the tourney winners:

HANOVER, N.H. – The Harvard women’s basketball team knew its Ivy League Tournament place was secure heading into Saturday’s regular season finale Saturday afternoon against Dartmouth.
But as much as they probably didn’t want to look too closely at it, the Crimson also knew their hopes of an NCAA Tournament at-large berth was in a very precarious spot, listed as one of the Last Four In or dreaded Last Four Out on most bracketologies in the last two weeks.
So, even though Dartmouth was banged up and coming in on an 11-game losing streak, Harvard left nothing to chance on Dartmouth’s Senior Day, using their pressure to dominate from the opening tip, eventually posting a 74-40 victory at Leede Arena.
“We just really wanted to finish the regular season on a high note,” Harvard coach Carrie Moore said. “We didn’t feel great about how we played last weekend, so we wanted to get back to how we know we can play, and I felt we did that, especially the upperclassmen who set the tone early.”
Despite missing out on the Ivy League tournament, the Harvard men finished the season on a high note, adding a 66-58 defeat of third-place Dartmouth to last week’s upset of regular-season champion Yale.
The Saturday matinee victory at Lavietes Pavilion, coupled with Brown’s defeat to the Elis, leaves the Crimson (12-15, 7-7 Ivy) in fifth place, one game ahead of the Bears and only one game away from a three-way tie for third with the Big Green and Princeton.
Despite the disappointing result, Dartmouth (14-13, 8-6) can hang its hat on an incredibly successful regular season, one in which the team bettered its eighth-place position in the league’s preseason media poll and earned its first appearance in Ivy Madness.
Twenty-four hours after winning an emotional, high-stakes contest at Harvard, Princeton women’s basketball needed to be on guard against a letdown as they took the court at Leede Arena in Hanover for a Saturday showdown with the Dartmouth Big Green.
Despite being aware of the dangers of complacency, the Tigers came out flat against a motivated Dartmouth squad and made just enough plays to scrape out a 67-55 win over the last-place Big Green.
It was Yale-Harvard, so ignore the records. The Crimson ended Yale’s 13-game winning streak, 74-69, before a crowd of 1,636 at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday, handing the visitors their first loss in Ivy League play.
“I thought they had a really good game plan,” coach James Jones said. “Hopefully we can take this as a learning tool going into our last game (at Brown) and the Ivy tournament.”