Ivy Madness

Three Quakeaways from Penn men’s colossal collapse at Princeton

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The plan Penn coach Steve Donahue oversaw to limit reigning Ivy Player of the Year Tosan Evbuomwan’s effectiveness worked Saturday at Princeton, but his team still lost to the Tigers for an eighth straight outing. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

PRINCETON, N.J. — It is hard to envision a more disheartening end to an Ivy League regular season than the collapse Penn orchestrated on Saturday at Jadwin Gymnasium.

The Quakers (17-12, 9-5 Ivy) squandered a 17-point second-half lead before falling in overtime to Princeton (19-8, 10-4), 77-69, handing a share of the Ivy regular season title to their most bitter rivals.

Penn’s undoing was an offensive outage when it mattered most. After sophomore guard George Smith hit a contested layup to extend the Quakers’ edge to 66-58 with 4:16 to go, the team did not make a shot from the field for the remainder of regulation or overtime, a 9:16 stretch.

The Quakers are now locked into the No. 3 seed for next Saturday’s Ivy League Tournament, which will also be held at Jadwin. They will either get a third crack at Princeton or a rubber match against Yale, depending on the result of Yale’s Saturday night road game against Brown.

All the good feelings from Penn’s eight-game winning streak have disappeared in a flash, replaced by a handful of mostly painful Quakeaways:

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Cornell men keep Ivy Madness hopes alive with victory over Columbia

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ITHACA, N.Y. — Two things needed to happen for the Cornell men to make it to the Ivy League Tournament: beat Columbia and hope Brown loses to Yale.

Part one of that equation has been completed.

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Princeton men’s basketball survives after another second-half collapse

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Despite another stupefying second-half collapse, the Princeton men’s basketball team somehow hung on to defeat the Harvard Crimson at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday, 58-56.  With the win, the Tigers retained a share of first place in the conference standings and guaranteed themselves an opportunity to earn at least a share of the Ivy League title with a win on senior night at Jadwin Gym next Saturday against the Penn Quakers in the regular season finale for both teams.

The Tigers gutted out this hugely important road win despite a harrowing stretch of offensive futility that echoed Princeton’s epic second-half collapse against Yale last weekend.  

Senior guard Ryan Langborg led the Tigers with 18 points and six rebounds while Evan Nelson led Harvard in scoring with 19 points in a losing cause. Chris Ledlum, playing his final game at Lavietes, was held to 14 points (five below his average), but muscled his way to a game-high 11 rebounds for the Crimson, who were eliminated from Ivy Madness on Senior Night by Princeton for the second year in a row.

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Cornell men on a familiar Ivy Madness bubble

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The Ivy League Tournament bubble.

Certainly not uncharted territory for the Cornell men. But after the way the season started to trend for the Big Red, it’s a bit of a surprise we’re talking about this.

Cornell has lost four of its last five games, dropping the team from a tie for first to a tie for fourth. By virtue of a tiebreaker, the Big Red would be in Ivy Madness over Brown since it beat Yale and Penn. The Bears have only beaten Princeton among the trio of teams tied for the conference lead.

But that tiebreaker is by no means safe.

What happened?

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men completing season sweep of Harvard

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Penn senior swingman Lucas Monroe finished just one point shy of a second straight double-double in an 80-72 win at Harvard Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Penn took a huge step towards securing a berth in Ivy Madness on Saturday with a nearly wire-to-wire 80-72 win over Harvard in Cambridge, Mass.

Though the Quakers (14-11, 6-4 Ivy) led the game for 38:59, there were some nervous moments in the second half, as careless turnovers and a scoring drought that spanned 5:51 of game time let the Crimson (12-12, 3-7) close their deficit to as little as three points with 3:37 to go.

Penn only made one field goal in the game’s final 10 minutes — a corner three from sophomore guard George Smith — and relied on 20-23 free throw shooting in the final 3:18 to keep Harvard at bay. Smith hit five three throws in that span, as did senior swingman Lucas Monroe.

The Red and Blue pretty much stuck the dagger in Harvard’s playoff hopes with the victory; Harvard now sits alone in seventh place in the Ivy standings, three full games out of playoff position.

Meanwhile, Penn sits just a game out of first place in the league and controls its own destiny for at least a share of the Ivy crown.

That tantalizing possibility is one of many things Penn fans can chew over from an uplifting win, such as the fact that …

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2024 Ivy League Tournaments moved from Brown to Columbia

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Levien Gym will host the 2024 Ivy League Tournaments, the league announced Wednesday. (Columbia Athletics)

In a surprise Wednesday afternoon announcement, the Ivy League office stated that the 2024 Ivy League men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will be held at Columbia’s Levien Gymnasium. Specific dates for the four-day event have not been posted.

The announcement signals a substantial change in the Ivy League’s rotation of tournament locations set in 2019. Brown was slated to host the tournaments next in 2024.

The Ivy League attributed the move to Levien Gym to gym renovations being finished sooner than expected when the original tourney rotation was announced in a statement Wednesday.  

“The future of the rotation remains under continuous evaluation,” Ivy League spokesman Matt Panto told Ivy Hoops Online in an email Wednesday. “The league is excited to bring the tournaments to Princeton next month and New York City in 2024.”

Brown Athletics did not respond to a request for comment.

“New York City is home to passionate and dedicated alumni and fans from all eight Ivy League institutions,” Ivy League executive director Robin Harris said in Wednesday’s statement. “Coupled with the energy of March Madness and the enthusiasm that this event has built over just a short period of time, the league could not be more excited to host Ivy Madness in the Big Apple.”

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Three Quakeaways from Penn men’s critical 83-68 win over Harvard

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Junior guard Jordan Dingle notched his third straight KenPom Game MVP award with a 27-point performance that included a 4-for-8 showing from three-point range in Penn’s win over Harvard at the Palestra Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

PHILADELPHIA — Penn men’s basketball picked up a potentially season-saving win in style on Saturday at the Palestra, dominating Harvard, 83-68.

The Quakers (11-11, 3-4 Ivy) never trailed en route to their third straight win over the Crimson (12-9, 3-4). They scored 1.19 points per possession, according to KenPom. That marked Penn’s most efficient offensive performance so far in Ivy play.

Junior Jordan Dingle once again dominated Harvard. With Crimson star Noah Kirkwood no longer around to defend Dingle, the guard established his shot early on with a quick eight points in the game’s first five minutes. Dingle finished with 27 points on the afternoon on 18 shots and earned his third straight ‘game MVP’ designation from KenPom.

Dingle’s excellence set the Quakers up to run perhaps their most aesthetically pleasing offensive game plan of the season, one of many happy Quakeaways on the day.

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2022-23 IHO Men’s Preseason Poll

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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.

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Observations from Ivy Madness

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Princeton enjoyed the largest contingent of fans at Lavietes Pavilion throughout Ivy Madness. (photo by Erica Denhoff)

From the notebook of IHO writer Richard Kent on the scene at Ivy Madness: 

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Ivy Madness reporter’s notebook: Day 3

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Princeton women’s basketball’s post-Ivy League Tournament final press conference was one of several revealing pressers during Ivy Madness. (photo by Rob Browne)

 

“This is the business we’ve chosen.” – Brian Earl and Hyman Roth

“We played for, I would say, a good 15 minutes tonight, but that’s not good enough against a good program.” – Columbia head coach Megan Griffith, following the Lions defeat to top-seeded Princeton

No matter what the coaches who did not earn victories on Saturday thought, I felt there were three really good games of college basketball on display at Lavietes Pavilion, including a fantastic opener that saw Princeton escape an upset big from Cornell, 77-73.  Hopefully, West Coast fans woke up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning to catch it.

Here are some random thoughts and observations from the Ancient Eight’s Super Saturday:

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