A number of Ivy Leaguers earned postseason award recognition. Penn’s Michelle Nwokedi was named to the ECAC first team, while Cornell’s Nia Marshall and Harvard’s Katie Benzan were named to the second team. Princeton’s Steven Cook was named to the NABC District 13 first team, while fellow Tigers Spencer Weisz and Devin Cannady, as well as Harvard’s Bryce Aiken, Brown’s Steven Spieth and Dartmouth’s Evan Boudreaux were selected for the second team. Aiken was also chosen for the ECAC second team. Cook was also named to the Allstate NABC Good Works team and CoSida Academic All-America. Weisz, the men’s Ivy League Player of the Year, was chosen an Honorable Mention All-America. Tigers’ coach Mitch Henderson was selected as the NABC District 13 Coach of the Year, as well as chosen as one of 20 finalists for the Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year.
Evan Boudreaux
IHO 2016-17 All-Ivy Awards
The voting for this year’s IHO All-Ivy Awards was more varied and wide open than ever, as well as substantially different from the Ivy League’s awards announced Wednesday. Here’s what the site’s writers combined to come up with …
Mitch Henderson finds the perfect pitch for Princeton
For Mitch Henderson, the climb to the top of the Ivy League mountain has been anything but easy.
Critics point out his teams’ surprising inability to close the sale in some past seasons and his struggles with Harvard and Yale as indications of something missing in his program. Supporters point out he is young, smart and has brought a vision for the long haul. He has developed a new culture and identity for Tiger basketball that bears his unmistakable imprint.
The Tigers’ 14-0 march through the 2016-17 Ivy schedule, making Henderson the odds-on favorite for Coach of the Year honors, tips the scales in favor of the supporters’ case.
Let’s take a closer look at what Henderson has done, particularly over the last three seasons as he put the building blocks of the current juggernaut in place.
Ivy weekend roundup – Feb. 27, 2017
One impressive Ivy winning streak continued this weekend, while another very consequentially ended.
Princeton upped its consecutive win total to 15, effectively clinching the No. 1 seed in the inaugural Ivy League Tournament, to be played March 11 and March 12 at the Palestra. The last four Tiger victories have been by double digits, and Princeton’s defense is shutting down opponent after opponent.
Penn, though, couldn’t escape the Empire State unscathed, suffering a crucial 70-67 defeat at Columbia that snapped both the Red and Blue’s five-game winning streak and the Lions’ five-game losing skid, keeping Columbia very much in the race for the inaugural Ivy League Tournament’s No. 4 seed.
But that race isn’t what most Ivy supporters thought it was as recently as this past weekend. On Sunday morning, in response to a question from Mike James (@ivybball), the Ivy League confirmed that second tiebreaker for the No. 4 seed doesn’t just take into account the No. 4 candidates’ records versus tournament qualifiers from No. 1 through No. 3, which is how most Ivy observers interpreted the tiebreaker (which can be read at the #IvyMadness site here). Instead, the tiebreaker would be the highest Ivy that one No. 4 candidate beat that other didn’t, even if that tiebreak goes as low as Brown or Cornell.
Ivy weekend roundup – Feb. 20, 2017
This was a momentous weekend for Ivy League basketball. First-place Princeton ran its winning streak to 13 games (10 in Ivy competition) in dominant fashion. Penn, meanwhile, snagged the No. 4 slot in the Ivy standings, erasing a Columbia four-game lead over the Red and Blue in the standings in just nine days courtesy of an equally dominant road sweep of Brown and Yale, a watermark back-to-back sequence for a long dormant program.
Ivy weekend roundup – Feb. 13, 2017
As IHO writer Rob Browne pointed out to me Sunday night, this was a topsy-turvy weekend for Ivy hoops. Comebacks came and went, winning and losing streaks were snapped and the race for the league tournament No. 4 seed got muddled:
Ivy weekend roundup
With the first full Ivy weekend in the books, the conference standings are rounding into shape. The current standings offer a clear top four building momentum toward the first ever Ivy men’s basketball tournament and a clear bottom four looking for a second wind.
Ivy weekend roundup – Jan. 30, 2017
Our Ivy weekend roundup features a raucous rematch, some Red and Crimson splitting, a No. 4 stepping to the fore and late-game strategy deja vu.
Previewing Penn-Princeton and Harvard-Dartmouth
IHO breaks down the two games comprising Saturday evening’s Ivy conference play-opening slate:
Penn at Princeton, 7 p.m.
Last season: Princeton beat Penn twice by a combined three points, and the Ps’ last meeting at Jadwin Gym on March 12 put a scare into the Tigers, who were outscored 40-23 over the final 14:52 in a 72-71 victory over the Red and Blue. Princeton committed 16 turnovers, its highest amount in Ivy play last season, and then-freshman Penn guard Tyler Hamilton came out of nowhere to provide 11 points, seven rebounds, three assists and three steals in 37 minutes, easily the best performance of his Penn career.
Don’t look now, but Dartmouth has won three in a row
As 2016 came to a close, Dartmouth faced off against its in-state rival, New Hampshire, for the 67th time. After a frenetic last minute of action, the Big Green came away with a 63-62 victory and their first home win in the series since 2004. More importantly, Dartmouth has now won three in a row, after losing its first nine contests of the season.