Mataya Gayle

Columbia women’s basketball claws past Penn, 74-59

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The Columbia women’s basketball team opened the defense of its Ivy League title by putting Penn deep in a hole early on, watching as Penn charged back to take the lead at halftime, and then reclaiming the game comfortably, 74-59, Saturday at the Palestra.
“It’s a great first game for us to learn a lot,” Columbia head coach Megan Griffith told reporters afterward.
“We talked about making a statement,” Griffith said. “Regardless of who [the opponent] is, especially when you’re playing against, one, a good team, and, two, a really good coach.”

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Freshmen shoot Penn women’s basketball past La Salle, 74-63

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Penn and La Salle were playing a perfectly good women’s basketball Friday afternoon when the Quakers’ Sarah Miller turned it into a sharpshooting match, leading to a Penn win, 74-63. 

The 5-foot-10 guard from Phoenix scored a bucket in the first quarter, but she really took off in the second with four straight threes, then added a fifth in the third quarter before her first miss of the day. All in all, she went 6-for-7 plus 4-for-4 on foul shots for a game-high 21 points. Fellow freshman Katie Collins also had a 6-for-7 day, though closer to the basket and in less spectacular fashion, finishing with 12 points and 11 rebounds. 

The win was coach Mike McLaughlin’s 250th at Penn.  

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Penn women’s basketball loses in overtime to UC Irvine, 72-68

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The Penn women’s basketball team took another few steps forward Thursday night at the Palestra but came up short in overtime, 72-68, against the University of California at Irvine.
Both sides were tantalizingly close to taking the win in regulation. With a bit more than five minutes left, a three-pointer on a fast break put Irvine up, 60-57. And as the next three minutes ticked away, neither team could score until Penn freshman forward Katie Collins took a pass from Saniah Caldwell and hit a three to tie the game again. A layup for Irvine was quickly followed by another Penn three, this one from freshman Ashna Tambe on a feed from Mataya Gayle. And that one-point Penn lead lasted through an excruciating 90 seconds of missed shots and turnovers for both sides until Irvine’s Hunter Hernandez missed one foul shot but sank the second with five seconds left to send the game into overtime.

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Penn women’s basketball picks itself up after falling to Saint Joseph’s

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No matter what sport you’ve been around, you’ve probably heard it said: A W is a W. An ugly win counts just as much in the record books.
But the opposite isn’t necessarily true, and the Penn women’s basketball team recorded a pretty good loss Friday night to an excellent Saint Joseph’s squad, 68-57, at the Palestra.
For context, look back a year and a day to the last time the two teams met: a 77-49 blowout for the Hawks on their way to a 28-win season (and a Big 5 championship). If anything, the Hawks are stronger this year, while the Quakers are trying to compensate for the loss of All-Ivy forward Jordan Obi to graduation and spark plug guard Ese Ogbevire to injury.

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Penn women’s basketball tops Maine, 56-52

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Beautiful though Maine may be, any visitor from warmer places can be forgiven for feeling a chill there. (Palestra Pete himself froze his butt off one Memorial Day weekend long ago.) And the Penn women’s basketball team stepped onto the University of Maine’s court Sunday with cold shooting hands. But after that frigid start, the Quakers overtook the Maine Black Bears for a 56-52 win.
Maine had a 7-0 lead before Swedish-born Penn senior Stina Almqvist (no doubt advantaged in cold climates) put in a left-handed scoop. Another Maine basket reclaimed the seven-point advantage, but soon it was the home team that had the cold hands as Penn started a 10-point run.

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Penn women’s basketball shows off its youth brigade

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The last time we saw the Penn women’s basketball team, it was within seconds of a stunning upset of Princeton in Ivy Madness. Penn may well have succeeded but for an egregious foul call.
The last time we saw the Quakers, forward Jordan Obi was one of the Ivies’ premier players, a 6-foot-1 senior forward with guard skills and linebacker strength.
Now Obi has brought her number zero to the roster of the No. 22 Kentucky Wildcats, and Penn coach Mike McLaughlin is looking through an intriguing collection of new pieces to put together the puzzle of another Ivy contender. He showed them off Saturday at the Palestra in the annual Red and Blue Scrimmage.

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Ivy women’s basketball Media Day highlights

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As the 2024-25 season quickly approaches, the Ivy League hosted its annual women’s basketball Media Day on Thursday. The three-hour event, hosted by Lance Medow, can be viewed on the conference’s YouTube channel.

Prior to the event, the league announced the results of its preseason poll.

Princeton, which has claimed the Ancient Eight title for the last six years, was picked first with 122 out of a possible 128 points and 10 first-place votes.  Columbia, which has tied for the top spot in each of the last two seasons, came in second with 110 points and five first-place votes.

Harvard, which has finished the last two years in third placed, was tabbed for third in 2025, earning 101 points and one first-place spot. 

Penn, the final participant in last year’s Ivy tournament, was picked fourth with 75 votes, while Brown, which finished last year tied with Penn for fourth, was four points back in fifth place.

Sixth place went to Yale, which was as high as third place in 2022, with 48 votes. 

While Cornell and Dartmouth ended last season tied for seventh place, the Big Red got the nod for seventh in this year’s poll with 30 points and the Big Green were eighth with 19 points.  

Below are highlights from this year’s virtual Media Day:

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Reporter’s Notebook: Ivy Madness day four

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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:

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How No. 1 Princeton women’s basketball held on to defeat No. 4 Penn, 59-54, in Ivy League Tournament semifinal

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NEW YORK – The No. 1 Princeton women’s basketball team withstood a furious rally by the No. 4 Penn Quakers on Friday evening to advance to the championship game of the Ivy League Tournament in a 59-54 victory.  

The Tigers entered the contest with an 11-game winning streak against their rivals from Philadelphia.  The 12th win was anything but easy.  The Tigers were led by sophomore Madison St. Rose, who tallied 19 points, all but three of them coming in the second half.

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