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It felt like a typical Ivy League game — hard-fought and not always pretty. But from the moment the Cornell and Dartmouth men tipped Sunday afternoon, it immediately felt like whoever had the most grit would walk away with a 1-0 conference record.
That team was Cornell.
With conference play in the 2022-23 Ivy League men’s basketball season fast approaching, let’s take a look back at the nonconference results for each team and examine each program – listed by season winning percentage:
Ivy Hoops Online editor Mike Tony is joined by IHO writer Rob Browne to discuss the highlights of Ivy men’s and women’s basketball through this season’s nonconference slate, what to watch for as league play starts this weekend and much more:
This Ivy League men’s basketball season, Brown men’s basketball will open its conference season against Penn.
Brown and the Red & Blue have formed a bit of a rivalry in recent years, facing off in key battles in the last three seasons vying for a berth in the Ivy League Tournament.
Brown has come up just a bit short in these moments and is yet to win an Ivy tourney bid. The Penn Band adds a raucous element on the road.
But here’s a group who won’t be in Providence for the matchup: the vast majority of Brown students.
ITHACA, N.Y. — After consecutive losses to Miami and Syracuse of the ACC, the Cornell men needed a bounce-back victory.
They got it in the biggest way.
What do Hofstra, Colgate, Siena, Loyola Chicago, UMass and Vermont all have in common? They are all solid mid-major men’s basketball programs and willing to travel to the home gym of a top Ivy team.
It doesn’t seem like a big deal on the surface, but it is.
Consider Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights have one natural rival in their 153 years of playing college sports. Not Penn State. Not Syracuse.
Princeton.
Five takes on the Penn men’s season-opening blowout loss at Iona Monday night, a startling stumble out of the gate for the Ivy preseason favorite against the MAAC preseason favorite:
Only five points separated the top three teams in the Ivy League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll, and our final tabulation was even tighter. Just three points separated the team atop IHO contributors’ preseason poll.
Yale gets the slight nod here, with our contributors trusting James Jones to lead the Bulldogs to their fifth Ivy League title in an eight-season span in a bid to represent the conference in the NCAA Tournament for a third straight time. Penn, the Ivy League preseason poll’s top team above Princeton by a single point, also finished a single point above Princeton in our standings. Our contributors saw potential for success in a roster that returns most of the key players from last year’s squad that placed third in the Ivy standings. We’ve got Princeton pegged to finish third, aided in their quest to repeat as Ivy League champions by returning 2021-22 Ivy Player of the Year Tosan Evbuomwan but losing significant backcourt production from last year’s conference title team.
Harvard was the clear No. 4 finisher in our poll, a showing that would improve upon the disappointing sixth-place result that locked the Crimson out of the Ivy League Tournament on its home floor last season. We have Cornell ranked slightly ahead of Brown as the Big Red look to build on last season’s overachieving Ivy League Tournament berth and the Bears look to bounce back from an underachieving sixth-place finish (tied with Harvard) a season ago. Columbia and Dartmouth tied in our voting tally at the bottom of the standings as both programs look to secure their first Ivy League Tournament appearances.
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.
Dartmouth women’s coach Adrienne Shibles joins Ivy Hoops Online writer and host Steve Silverman to reflect on her coaching philosophy, a learning curve in recruiting coming from Division III Bowdoin, whether the Ivy League should reconsider not allowing athletic scholarships, how the “grit index” works, her overview of the team’s top four scorers from a year ago returning, and much more:
in case you missed it, check out Steve’s interviews with Cornell men’s coach Brian Earl here, Cornell women’s coach Dayna Smith here and Brown men’s coach Mike Martin here.