The final remnants of the 2024 Ivy Tournament being packed away for another year (Photo: Rob Browne)
The final day of the 2024 Ivy League Tournament was an incredibly chaotic one, which started hours before the noon tipoff of the thrilling men’s championship and ended with a near-midnight zoom celebratory conference call with Columbia women’s basketball coach Megan Griffith.
For the second day in a row, the tournament provided its fair share of emotional highs and lows. There may still be people who haven’t taken to the thought of Ivy Madness, after eight years and six events, but it is an amazing weekend to celebrate the talented players and coaches and showcase this shouldn’t-be-under-the-radar conference to the nation.
I’m still in a bit of a stupor from the last few days, but I’ll try my best to recount scenes from a lengthy final day:
A great eight greets fans at the 120th Street entrance (photo: Rob Browne)
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.
Pictured is a photo of an Ivy Madness banner hanging on the outside of Jadwin Gym. (Photo by Rob Browne)
Ivy League Tournament V officially started on Thursday afternoon, with the four women’s teams taking part in press conferences and shootarounds for “Live from Ivy Madness.”
This year’s edition, the first-ever tournament to take place in a suburban setting, takes place at Jadwin Gymnasium on the campus of Princeton University. While the campus is incredibly picturesque, and the athletic complex has a lot of beautiful modern buildings that fit in well with each other, the basketball arena continues to be its own unique entity.
The previous locations at Penn, Yale and Harvard had much more intimate environments, whether in the press conference room or the actual arena. This year, everything feels much larger and more spacious. I’m sure most people would see that as a positive, but I liked it more when the reporters and fans were closer to the coaches and players.
As usual, the Ivy League staff and their partners at ESPN are doing a great job getting everything organized. The campus staff are also incredibly helpful.
I can’t explain why, but there seems to be a greater security presence inside the arena than past years. There were several guards going through the media room and arena, even though there was an incredibly small crowd this afternoon. Officials have also limited access to the stairwells and have rotating staff members operating the elevator for everyone. Feels a bit odd that we aren’t allowed to press our own buttons, but I’m sure they have good reasons for doing this.
