Justin Simon

Fran McCaffery returns to Penn as new head men’s basketball coach

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New Penn head coach Fran McCaffery has an overall record of 548-207, while taking four different programs to the NCAA Tournament. (Iowa Athletics)

With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, it appears you can go home again… even if it takes 42 years.

Former Iowa men’s basketball coach and 1982 Penn alum Fran McCaffery was named Penn’s new coach in a Penn Athletics announcement Thursday.

The hire will be a homecoming for McCaffery, who grew up in Northwest Philadelphia, attended La Salle College High School and played for the Quakers from 1979 to 1982.

“I am thrilled to bring Fran back to Penn and Philadelphia as our next head men’s basketball coach,” Penn director of athletics Alanna Wren said in the press release. “Fran has had success at every level of Division I and is passionate about restoring our program to glory. His energy and enthusiasm for leading young men was apparent throughout the process and he has proven to be committed to player development and relationship-building with his student-athletes throughout his storied career.”

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Handicapping the Columbia and Penn men’s basketball coaching changes

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The Penn and Columbia men’s basketball coaching jobs are both open. There has been much speculation and more rumors.

What we know is neither team is in the postseason, but some of the candidates are. Penn has hired Georgia-based Parker Executive Search, an executive search firm.

Columbia athletic director Peter Pilling is handling the Columbia search. Pilling made a great hire on the women’s side in Megan Griffith in 2016 and should know talent when he sees it. He was at Ivy Madness on Friday and Saturday and played all conversations close to the vest. Every candidate will want to know definitively if there will be some form of NIL available.

The candidates and the odds:

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The Steve Donahue era ends for Penn men’s basketball

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Penn is moving on from coach Steve Donahue after the Quakers went 131-130 and 63-63 in Ivy League play in his 10 years at the helm. (Steve Donahue X page)

After a disappointing 8-19 season and a second consecutive seventh-place Ivy League campaign, Penn men’s basketball coach Steve Donahue was fired by Alanna Wren on Monday morning.

With tenures at Cornell, Boston College and Penn, Donahue’s 23-year overall record is 331-344. Through his nine years at Penn, the coach finished at 131-130 overall and 63-63 mark in league play.  

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily Pennsylvanian, all three of Donahue’s assistants, Nat Graham, Joe Milalich Jr., and Kris Saulny, have also been released by the university.

“Steve has been steadfast in his commitment to the program and the development of our student-athletes. I’ve always had great respect for his commitment to Ivy values, and he has been a strong representative of Penn during his career,” Wren noted in Penn Athletics’ news release. “Unfortunately, the competitive success on the court has not been up to our standards. While difficult, a change in leadership is necessary to provide the championship-caliber experience our student-athletes, alumni and fans expect.”

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Q&A with Yale men’s basketball senior forward Jack Molloy

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Yale senior forward Jack Molloy is averaging 2.5 points and 1.2 rebounds per game in 2024-25. (Yale Athletics)

Ivy Hoops Online recently caught up with Yale senior forward and Greenwich, Conn. native Jack Molloy:

Ivy Hoops Online: Growing-up in Greenwich, were you interested in Yale sports?

Jack Molloy: I didn’t start following Ivy sports until my freshman year in high school. I was really thinking about Wesleyan or Amherst. New Heights AAU took me and I went to Elite Camp at Yale and the coaches thought I could play here.

IHO: What was the camp like?

JM: So fun. Legitimate 12 hours of basketball. Constantly playing pickup. (Yale associate head) coach (Justin) Simon showed me around campus.

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Seth Towns continues protesting as Ivy hoops community continues to speak out

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Recent Harvard graduate and Ohio State graduate transfer Seth Towns continued to protest  in downtown Columbus Sunday, a day after he was detained following a nonviolent protest there in response to the death of unarmed black people at the hands of police officers across America.

Using a bullhorn, Towns, a Columbus native and 2017-18 Ivy Player of the Year, stressed the importance of protesting against racial injustice and led the crowd in a chant of “We have a voice.”

“This is not our choice,” Towns said. “This is our duty as people in a democracy … Everybody who I love has texted me and said ‘Stay out of harm’s way. While you’re out there protesting, stay out of harm’s way.’ But I’m always in harm’s way.”’

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Ivy League coaching carousel

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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.

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Reporter’s Notebook: A trip to Duke

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Our Richard Kent chronicles Yale”s trip to Durham to face defending national champion No. 6 Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium Wednesday. Yale lost to Duke, 80-61, but Kent astutely observed a whole lot more than a final score.

Tuesday 6 p.m. Time for the Yale hard practice in Cameron Indoor Stadium. The building seemed a lot smaller in person and loads of camera phone pictures were taken before the practice started. Then the team and certainly the coaches were all business. Coach James Jones was as intense as I have ever seen him. The practice was orchestrated to the minute. Assistant coach Justin Simon, a former Bulldog himself, was in charge of the Duke scouting report. He was focused to a large extent on the Duke post players and wanted to be certain that forwards Justin Sears and Brandon Sherrod were positioned properly. Both players seemed to pick up the report easily and Sears was focused on working on his short-range side jumper and free throws.

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