Editor’s note: Cornell men’s basketball got its first win against ACC competition since 1951 Tuesday evening at Haas Pavilion, topping California, 88-80, to improve to 7-3 and drop the Golden Bears to 6-4. Clovis, Calif. native and junior forward AK Okereke led the Big Red with 24 points on 10-for-18 shooting, adding six rebounds, three blocks and three steals. Below are photos from the Big Red’s big win:
Jon Jaques
Cornell men’s basketball throttles Iona, 84-68
Behind a career-high of 20 points from junior guard Cooper Noard, Cornell men’s basketball improved to 4-2 with an 84-68 win over Iona at the Hynes Center Monday.
Impressions from Ivy League men’s basketball Media Day
The Ivy League hosted media day on Tuesday for the upcoming men’s basketball season.
Here’s one key impression from interviews with players and coaches from each of the eight Ancient Eight programs:
Ivy men’s basketball Media Day highlights
With the non-conference schedule set to begin in less than three weeks, the Ivy League held its annual Media Day on Tuesday afternoon. The three-hour event, hosted by Lance Medow, featured coaches and players from each of the eight programs.
Fans can check out the recording on the conference’s YouTube channel.
Below are some highlights:
Princeton men picked as preseason Ivy favorites in media poll
Princeton, last year’s undisputed regular season champions, were picked to take home the 2025 Ivy title in the preseason media poll released on Tuesday.
Led by junior forward Caden Pierce, the 2024 Player of the Year, and first team All-Ivy junior guard Xaivian Lee, Mitch Henderson’s Tigers picked up 15 of 16 first place votes and 127 of a maximum 128 points.
Jon Jaques tabbed next Cornell men’s basketball head coach
Cornell men’s basketball didn’t have to go far to find its next head coach.
Ivy hoops roundup – A new Floor, opened coaching doors and promotions galore
Before commencing with the rest of the Ivy hoops roundup, a note of sorrow about the passing of James “Booney” Salters, the 1980 Penn grad whose dynamic scoring and passing made him one of the best guards in men’s program history.
Salters died July 7. He was 64.
Penn made the NCAA Tournament in all three of Salters’ three seasons with the Red & Blue. The Penn Athletics and Philadelphia Big 5 Hall of Famer captained the often overlooked 1979-80 Penn team that advanced to the second round of the Big Dance, leading the squad in scoring and sinking the game-winning shot to triumph over Princeton, 50-49, in an Ivy League playoff matchup.
Ivy League coaching carousel
After three years without any head coaching changes, things changed in a big way at the end of April. Princeton’s Courtney Banghart left after 12 seasons and seven Ivy titles to rebuild the program at the University of North Carolina. The Tigers search lasted a month, ending with the hiring of former UConn guard and long-time Tufts head coach Carla Berube.
On the men’s side, the conference almost lost James Jones to St. John’s, but the Yale coach finished as the Red Storm’s runner-up. Weeks later, Jones signed an extension that will keep him in New Haven until the end of the 2025-2026 campaign. In May, Brown’s Mike Martin was reported to be at Holy Cross interviewing for the Crusaders job, but a probable extension kept him in Providence.
Several Ivy assistants made the jump to head coaching positions with Columbia’s (and former Harvard’s) Kenny Blakeney heading to Howard, Penn’s Bernadette Laukaitis returning to Holy Family, Brown’s Tyler Simms going to Clark, and Brown’s Sara Binkhorst moving to Wheaton.
In the off-season’s strangest coaching news, Dartmouth promoted assistant coach Pete Hutchins to associate head coach on March 19th, only to see him jump to an assistant coaching position at George Mason on May 2nd.
The complete list of changes, from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020, for all 16 Ivy teams are noted below.
Cornell all-time moment No. 1: The 2010 Sweet 16 run
We’ve counted down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective.
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We Cornell did last because they are the Men of Last Call.
Over the course of writing the most memorable moments in Cornell basketball history, I’ve tried to lay out a story – the path a school with no discernible basketball pedigree took to becoming the top story of the biggest event in all of college sports.
It didn’t happen overnight.
Eventually, a novice group of freshmen with potential became young guns taking the league by storm and finished as savvy veterans playing with a purpose. After two straight defeats in the NCAA Tournament, the novelty of seeing the Cornell logo on college basketball’s biggest stage had worn off for the eight-man senior class. It was the last chance for the group who turned around Cornell basketball to become the first Ivy League team since 1998 to win an NCAA Tournament game. It was a mindset that had permeated throughout the whole team even before the season began.
“Obviously the first goal is to win the league and make it three in a row and then hopefully get to the tournament again and definitely win a game or two, Sweet 16 at least, and see where we go from there.” freshman Peter McMillan said in Nov. 2009. “I definitely think we can win a lot of NCAA Tournament games, get kinda far, you know, make some noise,” fellow freshman Errick Peck added.
Cornell all-time moment No. 5: Winning the MSG Holiday Festival
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Cornell is next because there’s nothing quite like radio calls of memorable crunchtime moments…
Everyone knows where this countdown is heading. Cornell had to win a lot of games to build itself up to winning three straight Ivy League championships and reach the Sweet 16. Some stand out more than others. We talked about beating Northwestern in 2006; a win that showed the rest of the league Cornell was for real. Next, Cornell had to make that statement to the rest of the country. Their chance – the 2009 MSG Holiday Festival.