“Is there even a clock in March?” – Yale head coach Allison Guth in response to a question about the possibility of playing two games against higher seeds in 26 hours
Ivy Madness
Cornell men finish regular season with convincing victory over Columbia
Saturday’s regular season finale didn’t mean much for the Cornell men, but in a different way than they are used to. The Big Red had already clinched the No. 4 seed in next weekend’s Ivy League Tournament and could not improve their standing in any way.
But Cornell did gain more of one thing — momentum.
Princeton women overpower Penn to claim outright Ivy crown
Senior Night at Jadwin Gym attracted a nice crowd to bid farewell to Abby Meyers prior to the Tigers taking on their nearby rivals, the Penn Quakers. The Tigers and their superstar senior did not disappoint.
Princeton responded with a resounding 69-43 win to claim the outright Ivy League regular season title.
Once the fiercest rivalry in the league, lately, Penn-Princeton matchups have been one-sided affairs. The teams met for the first time this season in January at The Palestra. Led by Julia Cunningham’s 22 points, the Tigers exploded for an 18-point run in the first period en route to a 70-50 win.
Missing Henderson but not shooting touch, Princeton men bounce back at Columbia
What promised to be a chaotic weekend for the Tigers got off to a troubling start when the head coach had to leave the team after a failed COVID-19 test.
Five thoughts about the Ivy League men’s race
As we near the halfway mark of the 2022 Ivy League season, here are five thoughts about the state of the race for the men’s league title:
Ivy Madness presale begins Monday, with general sale to start Wednesday
Following the cancellation of the 2020 Ivy League Tournament at Harvard and the loss of the 2020-21 season, conference officials decided to return its double dose of final fours to Lavietes Pavilion on March 11-13, 2022. On Monday morning, the Ivy League sent out an announcement to past tournament ticketholders that there would be a 48-hour presale with the general public being able to purchase tickets starting 10 a.m. Wednesday.
The 2020 schedule, which extended the event from two days to three, will be in effect for this year’s version of Ivy Madness. As a result, the women’s semifinals will be played on Fri., Mar. 11 with the No. 1 vs. No. 4 matchup at 4:30 p.m. and the No. 2 vs No. 3 contest at 7:30 p.m. On Saturday, the men’s semifinals will consist of the No. 1 vs. No. 4 game at 11 a.m. and the No. 2 vs. No. 3 battle will begin at 2 p.m. The women’s final will take place at 5 p.m. that same day. On Selection Sunday, the men’s final will begin at noon.
Penn men cruise over Columbia to take No. 4 seed in Ivy Madness as AJ Brodeur makes history
Penn senior forward AJ Brodeur set three program records in his final game at the Palestra as the Quakers easily dispatched Columbia, 85-65, on a historic night at the Palestra to earn the No. 4 seed in the Ivy League Tournament.
The Red & Blue (16-11, 8-6 Ivy) nabbed their fourth straight Ivy League Tournament berth, knocking Brown (also 8-6 in Ivy play) on the strength of a Brodeur triple-double: 21 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. Penn split the season series with Brown but held the second tiebreaker, a better record against league top seed Yale.
Brodeur’s triple-double was the first in program history, a feat that followed two more records from the Northborough, Mass. native.
With the game well in hand in the second half, the focus became whether Brodeur would pass Ernie Beck ’53 to become the all-time leading scorer.
Report: League officials makes changes to the Ivy Tournament
As the college basketball world gets ready to tip off on Tuesday night, the Ivy League has its eyes on its end-of-year tournament.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Tannenwald reported late Monday morning that the conference has decided to move each of the women’s events up one day making Ivy Madness a four-day event.
Prior to the 2018 Ivy Tournament, the Harvard Magazine’s David Tannenwald wrote “A Gendered Schedule”, a piece that described the frustration that a number of Ivy women’s basketball coaches had with the schedule from the inaugural tournament in 2017. That year, the women’s semifinals were played in the late morning and evening, book-ending the men’s semifinals. Despite the conference’s best intentions, the coaches and their teams felt like second-class citizens in an event that was supposed to reflect equality.
How to fix Ivy Madness
While Harvard and Yale were fighting for their March Madness lives in New Haven several months ago, I was flying (first class, of course) towards Asia in a hurtling, subsonic piece of aluminum. As we chased the sun eastward, I indolently pulled up my window shade and looked out upon the vast, barren, frigidness that is the Arctic Ocean. Then, through the miracle of Wi-Fi (you know, that powerful, invisible force that allows our planet to torment one another through magic), I proceeded to watch the Bulldogs dismantle their arch rivals before a, well, ”mostly filled” John J. Lee Amphitheater. Regardless of how the crowd appeared on site, I can assure you it did not “show well” at 33,000 feet on a 15-inch screen. In fact, the view from my window of Arctic Ocean seemed to be an appropriate metaphor for the vast sea of empty seats above the hardwood. (I exaggerate, naturally, but not too much.)
Ivy League Tournament at Yale lived up to definition of ‘atmosphere’
Merriam-Webster defines atmosphere as a “surrounding influence or environment.”
Working from that definition, the recently concluded Ivy League Tournament was a huge success.
With 2,633 occupying the 2,800-seat John J. Lee Amphitheater, the fans were treated to some very special games which created quite an atmosphere.