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Danny Wolf, a 2023-24 First-Team All-Ivy selection as a sophomore forward for Yale, has become the latest top-shelf Ivy talent to enter the transfer portal, extending a string of standouts leaving or poised to leave the Ivy League.
Ivy Hoops Online caught up with Yale coach James Jones Wednesday following his return from Spokane, Wash., where his team notched the second ever NCAA Tournament win in program history last week with a triumph over Auburn before falling to San Diego State in the Round of 32:
Another great day in the books at Columbia University and Levien Gymnasium.
Four good press conferences, two very good semifinal games and lots of tasty food (including pizza!) in the media room. It’s really hard to beat a day like that.
Some things of note from an Ivy hoops Friday:
NEW YORK – Welcome to Ivy Madness VI!
For the first time, the Ivy League Tournament visits New York City, home to the largest collection of Ancient Eight alumni and Levien Gymnasium. The 2,700-seat arena, situated on the heart of the Columbia campus, is the fourth smallest venue in the conference and fans are right on top of the action.
When packed, which it often has been for the 2023 and 2024 regular season championship women’s team, it can get incredibly loud and cause problems for opposing players. Fortunately for league, fans and ESPN, Levien will be packed. As of Thursday evening, the Saturday women’s final is sold out, as well as the Saturday men’s semifinals and Sunday men’s final.
There are a small number of tickets remaining for the second women’s semifinal, featuring No. 2 Columbia and No. 3 Harvard, as well as a larger number of tickets for the opening game, which pits No. 1 Princeton against long-time rival No. 4 Penn.
Over the next several days, Ivy Hoops Online will be in Morningside Heights (and watching the world-wide leader) to bring you all the action. With lots of great coverage from George Clark, Steve Silverman, Palestra Pete and Richard Kent, I’ll be around to fill in the spaces and scarf down as many snacks as possible.
Penn’s Ivy campaign came to a miserable end on Saturday night as the Quakers made history for all the wrong reasons.
The Quakers turned in a defensive no-show against rival Princeton in a 105-83 loss at the Palestra. The 100-piece was the first time either Penn (11-18, 3-11 Ivy) or Princeton (24-3, 12-2) scored 100 points in a rivalry that has spanned 250 games (shoutout to Ivy Hoops Online contributor Steven Tydings for the lookup).
Princeton sealed an outright Ivy League title and kept its hopes of attaining an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament alive with the breezy victory. The Tigers never trailed on Saturday night and shot an absurd 17-for-27 from three-point range, good for a 63% clip. Princeton has now beaten Penn 11 times in a row.
After a nonconference campaign that inspired reason for genuine hope, Penn wound up posting its worst Ivy season since 1956-57. That iteration of the Red and Blue also went 3-11 in league play.
What could Penn fans take away from a moribund evening?
The lead-up to the season finale for the Dartmouth men’s basketball team was like no other in program history.
In fact, it was like no other in NCAA history.
Three times in the Ivy Tournament era, Mike Martin’s Brown teams have tied for fourth place only to lose out on a postseason bid due to being on the wrong side of the league’s tiebreakers. After a thrilling overtime victory over Harvard on Friday night and a blowout win against Dartmouth on Saturday, the Bears earned its first trip to Ivy Madness.
Brown (11-17, 7-6 Ivy) seemed out of the race for the tournament after starting off league play at 2-6 and hosting only two more games in the Pizzitola Sports Center. Three weeks later, Bruno, winners of five straight, is a serious threat to challenge Princeton, Yale and Cornell for the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
After the weekend, Harvard (14-12, 5-8), which also lost to Yale on Saturday, missed out on its third straight conference tournament and can do no better than fifth place. Dartmouth (5-21, 1-12), which has never made it to Ivy Madness and was defeated by the Bulldogs on Friday, is locked into last place and plans on holding its historic unionization vote on Tuesday before welcoming the Crimson in the Tuesday season finale for both teams.
Yale men’s basketball picked the right time of the year to peak.
The Bulldogs thrashed Harvard, 80-60, at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday night to move to persist in sharing the Ivy League’s top slot with Princeton.
“We had as good a start to finish as we have had in a long time,” coach James Jones said.
The dagger is officially in Penn’s season after the Quakers took a difficult-to-swallow road defeat at Harvard, 74-70.
Penn (10-16, 2-9 Ivy) completed a comeback from 17 points down in the second half after Clark Slajchert drained an open three from the right wing off an offensive rebound to tie the game at 62 with 5:45 to play.
But the Quakers were ultimately undone by a terrible break on a 50/50 ball when it mattered most.
With Penn down two points and the clock ticking below 3:45 to play, junior Nick Spinoso poked the ball free from Harvard’s Louis Lesmond in the post. Freshman Sam Brown dove but couldn’t come up with the loose ball. Instead, Harvard’s Malik Mack was able to recover it and swing the ball to Lesmond for an open corner three out of the scramble. Lesmond drained the shot to put the Crimson (14-10, 5-6) up two possessions.
Truth be told, Penn’s season effectively ended well before Saturday. That’s what happens when you lose eight games in a row during a 14-game conference season.
All that’s left to play for now is pride and future development. There’s plenty to rue about Saturday, starting with how …