Harmoni Turner

Ivy women’s week five roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top 10

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As the opening half of the conference schedule came to a close on Saturday, Columbia used a dominant performance over last-place Dartmouth to claim sole possession of first place.  Penn, which entered the weekend tied with the Lions, fell from the top slot after giving up a season-high 84 points during a lopsided 24-point defeat at Harvard.  Princeton, which started out tied with Harvard and Yale, used a masterful defensive performance to beat Yale by 49 points and keep pace with the Crimson.  In Saturday’s Ivy opening game, Cornell used a 10-1 run early in the fourth quarter to pull away from Brown and get the league’s only road win. 

Saturday results
Cornell over Brown, 66-61
Princeton over Yale, 79-30
Columbia over Dartmouth, 79-50
Harvard over Penn, 84-60

Standings 
Columbia 6-1 (17-3 overall)
Princeton 5-2 (14-5)
Penn 5-2 (13-7)
Harvard 5-2 (12-7)
Yale 4-3 (10-10)
Cornell 2-5 (9-11)
Brown 1-6 (8-11)
Dartmouth 0-7 (2-19)

As the second half of the Ivy schedule begins this weekend, all eyes will focus on Levien Gymnasium as Columbia welcomes the Ps to NYC.  The league leaders will look for payback on Friday night against the Quakers, who pulled away late in the fourth quarter at home against the Lions on January 7.  On Saturday, Columbia, which beat Princeton by three in an overtime thriller on January 6, will try to make it two in a row against four-time defending champs.  The Tigers haven’t been swept by an Ivy opponent since losing to Penn three times in 2017, but the dreaded Friday night bus trip from Ithaca to Manhattan and a start time 20 hours after finishing the game at Cornell will certainly pose added challenges.

Fri., Feb. 3
Princeton at Cornell, 6:00 p.m.
Harvard at Yale, 6:00 p.m.
Penn at Columbia, 6:00 p.m.
Dartmouth at Brown, 7:00 p.m.

Sat., Feb. 4
Penn at Cornell, 4:00 p.m.
Princeton at Columbia, 4:00 p.m.
Dartmouth at Yale, 4:00 p.m.
Harvard at Brown, 5:00 p.m.

Below are 10 of the top performances from the weekend:

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Harvard women wallop Penn, 84-60

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Sophomore forward Elena Rodriguez led all scorers with a career-high 28 points to lead Harvard to an 84-60 win over Penn at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)
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

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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.

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Harvard women hand Princeton its first Ivy loss in 43 games in conference opener

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Junior guard Lola Mullaney helped power Harvard to a win over Princeton at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday afternoon that marked the Tigers’ first loss in Ivy play since Feb. 8, 2019. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

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.

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Harvard women fade late in loss to UMass on a cold shooting night

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Junior guard Lola Mullaney posted 15 points, going 5-for-17 from three-point range in Harvard’s 77-67 loss to UMass Friday night. The Crimson died by the three, launching 40 of their 61 field goal attempts from beyond the arc and hitting just 11 of them. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

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.

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2022-23 IHO Women’s Preseason Poll

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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.

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No. 1 Princeton hangs on to top No. 4 Harvard in Ivy League Tournament women’s semifinal

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Princeton senior guard Abby Meyers posted 22 points and seven rebounds in Princeton’s 72-67 Ivy League Tournament semifinal win over Harvard Friday. (photo by Erica Denhoff)

When hostilities got underway in the first Ivy League Tournament action in three years, it was obvious that the Crimson were inspired by the gravity of the situation. They gave the Tigers all they could handle.

In the end, however, the Tigers held on in the closest Ivy game in Carla Berube’s two-season career at Princeton, 72-67. The Tigers needed six straight free throws from Kaitlyn Chen and Grace Stone in the closing moments.

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2021-22 IHO All-Ivy Women’s Awards

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The Ivy League announced its major women’s awards Tuesday, but we know this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Ivy Hoops Online’s 2021-22 All-Ivy Awards, as determined by IHO’s contributors:

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Columbia women defeat Harvard, punch ticket to Ivy Madness

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Jaida Patrick scored a season-high 20 points and Abbey Hsu set the program record for three pointers in a season, as the Columbia women (18-4, 9-1 Ivy) held off a determined Harvard (12-11, 6-5 Ivy), 74-70, to earn a spot in the 2022 Ivy League Tournament.

The victory not only ensured the Lions their second straight ticket to the league’s postseason party, but it also tied the school record for wins in a Division I season and an Ivy League campaign (2009-10).

For the first time in the calendar year, the Lions welcomed the general public to Levien Gymnasium and 1,000-plus members of the campus community came out to cheer them on in the team’s annual Play4Kay game to support the Kay Yow Foundation’s fight against cancers that affect women.

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