Lavietes Pavilion

Breaking down Harvard’s 2017-18 women’s and men’s schedules

by

Harvard women’s basketball tries to keep upper division streak alive

The Harvard women’s basketball team released its 2017-18 schedule and hopes to build on its post-season Ivy Tournament appearance and first-round WNIT victory in 2016-17.  This will be the 36th season for legendary head coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, who is the only coach to ever guide a No. 16 seed in a victory over a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.  Smith’s teams have been in the Ivy upper division for 32 of her 35 seasons at Harvard, while placing in the top three each of the last 14 years.  With the continuation of the postseason Ivy Tournament, the odds look strong for the Crimson to return to the Palestra in early March.

Read more

Ivy weekend roundup – Feb. 27, 2017

by

One impressive Ivy winning streak continued this weekend, while another very consequentially ended.

Princeton upped its consecutive win total to 15, effectively clinching the No. 1 seed in the inaugural Ivy League Tournament, to be played March 11 and March 12 at the Palestra. The last four Tiger victories have been by double digits, and Princeton’s defense is shutting down opponent after opponent.

Penn, though, couldn’t escape the Empire State unscathed, suffering a crucial 70-67 defeat at Columbia that snapped both the Red and Blue’s five-game winning streak and the Lions’ five-game losing skid, keeping Columbia very much in the race for the inaugural Ivy League Tournament’s No. 4 seed.

But that race isn’t what most Ivy supporters thought it was as recently as this past weekend. On Sunday morning, in response to a question from Mike James (@ivybball), the Ivy League confirmed that second tiebreaker for the No. 4 seed doesn’t just take into account the No. 4 candidates’ records versus tournament qualifiers from No. 1 through No. 3, which is how most Ivy observers interpreted the tiebreaker (which can be read at the #IvyMadness site here). Instead, the tiebreaker would be the highest Ivy that one No. 4 candidate beat that other didn’t, even if that tiebreak goes as low as Brown or Cornell.

Read more

Ivy weekend roundup – Feb. 20, 2017

by

This was a momentous weekend for Ivy League basketball. First-place Princeton ran its winning streak to 13 games (10 in Ivy competition) in dominant fashion. Penn, meanwhile, snagged the No. 4 slot in the Ivy standings, erasing a Columbia four-game lead over the Red and Blue in the standings in just nine days courtesy of an equally dominant road sweep of Brown and Yale, a watermark back-to-back sequence for a long dormant program.

Read more

Ivy weekend roundup

by

With the first full Ivy weekend in the books, the conference standings are rounding into shape. The current standings offer a clear top four building momentum toward the first ever Ivy men’s basketball tournament and a clear bottom four looking for a second wind.

Read more

Princeton grinds it out in key wins at Harvard and Dartmouth

by

After two very difficult road wins at Dartmouth and Harvard, the Princeton Tigers extended their winning streak to an impressive eight games, including five league contests to start down the road to the Palestra. The one consistent thread for the Tigers during this run has been rock-ribbed defense, anchored by sophomore guard Myles Stephens, who is building an All-Ivy caliber resume. A huge ingredient for the Tigers has been the senior leadership from Spencer Weisz and Steven Cook, without whose contributions a tough win at Dartmouth would have been even more difficult and an improbable comeback at Harvard impossible.

Read more

Tracking Yale’s rise to championship history

by

 

The Yale basketball team celebrates its selection in the 2015-16 NCAA Tournament, in which it defeated Baylor in the first round in Providence, 79-75. It was Yale’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1962. (Hartford Courant)

It would be easy to point back to last season’s heartbreaking collapse and say that this year’s title run started simmering from the moment Javier Duren’s runner rimmed out at the Palestra on March 14, 2015. Certainly, that would be a convenient starting point for this narrative of redemption that culminated in this year’s seeding upset of the Baylor Bears. But anyone who’s been following the Bulldogs knows that this journey towards a title to call our own started long before that.

How did we get here?

There have been countless close calls since James Jones took the reins back at the turn of the century: the three-way tiebreaker in ’02 with Penn and Princeton, the thrilling up-tempo ’07 squad led by Eric Flato and Casey Hughes that started 9-2, beating undefeated Penn and sparking the only (non-Princeton) court storming I’ve ever witnessed at John J. Lee, the dangerous Greg Mangano-Reggie Willhite-Austin Morgan trio that raced out to fast start in ’12. But it wasn’t until Justin Sears arrived in New Haven that following summer that Jones could finally build around a true superstar in blue. And while getting to the Promised Land required contributions from everyone on this year’s squad from Blake Reynolds to Khaliq Ghani to Makai Mason, this was clearly Sears’ team.

But first, let’s go back to where it all began, back to a time when Yale basketball conjured up images of January hope and February despair, not the March ecstasy that we’ve come to know.

Read more

Ivy Saturday roundup

by

Penn 92, Cornell 84

Don’t look now, but Penn’s now fourth in the Ivy League standings. It’s an upper-tier slot the Quakers owe to an overeager Cornell defense that kept leaving Penn coach Steve Donahue’s players open in his return to Ithaca after leading the Big Red to three straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 2007-08 through 2009-10. Donahue was received warmly before the game, and then basketball happened. That meant more hero ball from Cornell, who didn’t have a starter other than freshman guard Matt Morgan score until 7:54 was left in the game. Of course, Robert Hatter added 21 points off the bench to complement Morgan’s 28-point performance, but Penn won courtesy of going 29-for-35 from the foul line and a career-high 25 points from freshman Jackson Donahue. Senior center Darien Nelson-Henry added 16 rebounds, 15 points and six assists, benefiting from Cornell’s defense of Penn’s ball screens. Cornell hasn’t had a winning season since Donahue left Cornell, and this season isn’t likely to break that sub-.500 streak.

Read more

Ivy Saturday roundup

by

Columbia 79, Cornell 68

Cornell’s gameplan was sound: Don’t sag in too much responding to Columbia interior attacks and try to disrupt the Lions with physicality on the perimeter. Cornell’s gameplan didn’t matter.

Columbia shot 13-for-24 (54.2 percent) from beyond the arc to pull away in the second half. A trio of Lions – Luke Petrasek, Maodo Lo and C.J. Davis – hit at least three treys, enough to make up for several bunnies missed inside and playing at a faster pace than coach Kyle Smith probably wanted. Cornell missed Robert Hatter for the second game in this series but benefited from freshman guard Matt Morgan’s 26 points on 9-for-23 shooting. For more on the game, read our Ian Wenik’s instant analysis.

Read more

Harvard outlasts tough Dartmouth squad in Ivy opener

by
Harvard is 1-0 on the young Ivy season after a hard-fought 77-70 win over Dartmouth on Saturday afternoon at Lavietes Pavilion in Cambridge. Uncertainty loomed heading in, as Tommy McCarthy and Patrick Steeves were both questionable due to injuries sustained a week ago during a tight loss to Vermont (a game in which both were dearly missed). Against Dartmouth, McCarthy played only 16 minutes, while Steeves proved he was fully healthy by scoring a career-high 20 points.

Read more

Harvard Season Preview: Watch Out For the “Rebuilding” Crimson

by

Even after five straight Ivy titles and two NCAA Tournament wins, leading this year’s Harvard team to another title would probably be the greatest accomplishment of Tommy Amaker’s career. It’s not that Harvard doesn’t have talent – but other teams may have much more proven talent. Here are my thoughts about the ‘15-’16 Harvard basketball team, taking into account the players’ performances on October 16 at Crimson Madness (the season’s kickoff practice and scrimmage at Lavietes Pavilion, which is open to the public) and how last season unfolded.

Read more