Columbia and Harvard women’s basketball will square off for a fourth time this season Sunday at 4 p.m. at Levien Gym on ESPN3.
This time, a WNIT Fab 4 berth is on the line.
McKenzie Forbes
And the Ivy Madness Oscar goes to …
Since the 95th Academy Award airs Sunday night, here are my choices for the Ivy Madness Oscars from day two of the Ivy League Tournament:
Harvard women stun Columbia to advance to Ivy League Tournament final
PRINCETON, N.J. – The Harvard Crimson put an abrupt end to anticipation of a rubber match between regular-season co-champions Princeton and Columbia by defeating the latter in the second of two Ivy League Tournament semifinal games played at Jadwin Gym in an overtime thriller, 72-65.
The No. 3 Crimson advance to face No. 1 Princeton, which defeated Penn earlier Friday, 60-47. The tournament final will be played Saturday at 5 p.m. at Jadwin Gym.
Ivy women’s week nine roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top 10
The conference’s next-to-last weekend began on Friday night with a nationally televised game between Princeton and Harvard, two of the four teams headed to the Ivy Tournament. The last time they met in January, the Crimson came away with a 67-59 victory, ending the Tigers’ 42-game Ivy League win streak.
Playing in front of more than 1,700 fans at Jadwin Gymnasium, Harvard took a 14-12 lead after the first quarter. The visitors used a late 13-2 run to open up a 12-point lead before Princeton cut it to 10, 30-20, at the half.
Harvard women wallop Penn, 84-60
The Harvard women staked their claim to a top spot in the Ivies with an emphatic home win Saturday over Penn, 84-60.
Mike McLaughlin’s Quakers are known for a stingy defense — backcourt pressure to slow you down, traps and steals, a mix of zones and man-to-man to keep you off balance. Carrie Moore’s Crimson were ready, time after time getting the ball to the high post and finding players cutting to the basket behind the defense to take the pass for the easy score.
Sophomore Elena Rodriguez was often the beneficiary, and she led all scorers with a career-high 28 points on 11-for-14 shooting. The 6-foot-2 forward also scored from deep (3-for-4), collected 11 rebounds, handed out three assists and collected a pair of steals. On a team with the Ivies’ second-leading scorer in fellow sophomore Harmoni Turner (12 points against Penn to go with an astounding 12 assists and seven rebounds) and two others in the top 10, Rodriguez — a veteran of the Spanish national 16-and-under team — has made huge strides this season and helped make Harvard a power again.
Also in double figures for Harvard, as usual, were Lola Mullaney (19 points on 8-for-17 shooting) and McKenzie Forbes (10 points and seven rebounds). The Crimson, cheered on by a crowd of 1,385 at Lavietes Pavilion, shot 52.5% from the field for the afternoon.
Two players on the court that you’d expect to light up the scoreboard simply didn’t: Penn senior guard Kayla Padilla and junior forward Jordan Obi. Obi had nine points and five assists. Padilla picked up early fouls, played less than her usual 35 minutes and scored just 10 points, all in the second half after Harvard had built a double-digit lead. It was Penn’s other senior guard, Mandy McGurk, who had the hot hand: 27 points on 8-for-19 shooting.
We’ve seen enough of Penn this year to know that a 24-point loss is an anomaly. Seven days before the debacle at Harvard, Penn blew past Yale by 22 points. Most days, Padilla has 10 points before the half — sometimes before the fans have settled down after the Star-Spangled Banner. The last team that scored this many points against Penn in regulation was Tennessee, then ranked No. 4 nationally, in November 2014. (Columbia scored 84 in an overtime game in 2020 — but Penn scored 86.)
It may well be that Columbia and Princeton are the true powerhouses of Ivy women’s basketball this season, as expected; Saturday’s games left Columbia on top with the league season half over and put Princeton, Harvard and Penn into a tie one game back. But this Harvard team has beaten Princeton and now Penn, and no one who saw Saturday’s game would swear that it won’t do so again in the Ivy tournament.
The second half of the Ivy season starts with back-to-backs next weekend. Penn travels to Columbia and Cornell; Harvard hits the road to Yale and Brown.
Columbia women notch dominant win over Harvard in return home
In its first Ivy play at Levien Gym this season, Columbia pulled off a happy homecoming by hamstringing Harvard in an 82-56 romp.
Coming off a heartbreaking loss at Penn last Saturday that followed a triumphant overtime victory at Princeton, Columbia (14-3, 3-1 Ivy) was hunting for a bounceback win. The Lions got off to a rocky start, turning the ball over nine times in the first quarter alone but got out of the quarter with an 18-13 lead over Harvard (9-7, 2-2).
Harvard senior guard McKenzie Forbes’ quarter-ending layup started an 8-2 Harvard run that included a three from junior guard Lola Mullaney early in the second which gave the Crimson a 21-20 lead – their last of the game.
Despite a five three-pointer performance from Mullaney, it wasn’t enough, as the Lions would go on to outscore the Crimson 18-8 to close out the second quarter going into halftime with a 38-29 lead. Columbia’s offense came alive in the third quarter, including a 10-0 run that gave the Lions a 17-point lead. Columbia outscored Harvard 26-9 in the quarter to take a commanding 26-point lead entering the fourth. The Lions opened up the fourth with a layup from senior guard/forward Kaitlyn Davis, giving them a 28-point lead, their largest of the afternoon.
Senior guard Jaida Patrick and junior guard Abbey Hsu led the way for the Lions, each totaling 15 points and Hsu knocking down three triples. But the Lions got everyone involved, posting 23 assists with four players scoring in double digits and 10 registering buckets. Senior guard Carly Rivera led the team with five dimes.
The Lions also owned the boards, outrebounding Harvard 56 -20, including 23-6 on the offensive glass. Davis led the team with a game-high 11 boards while sophomore guard Kitty Henderson recorded nine, tying her season-high and bringing her one rebound short of a double-double.
On the other end, Harvard found itself in foul trouble for most of the game, committing 21 fouls. Forbes fouled out in the fourth quarter, while senior guard Maggie McCarthy and first-year guard Saniyah Glenn-Bello each committed four fouls.
2021-22 Ivy Rookie of the Year Harmoni Turner came off the bench for Harvard, logging 25 minutes, Turner tied a season scoring low with just five points on 2-for-8 field-goal shooting.
Columbia will look to keep the momentum going as it travels to Ithaca on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for a battle with Cornell (8-8, 1-2) at 2 p.m.
Harvard women hand Princeton its first Ivy loss in 43 games in conference opener
1,423 days.
That’s how long it had been since Princeton women’s basketball lost a game to an Ivy opponent.
But Harvard snapped the Tigers’ winning streak spanning 42 games, three Ivy League championships and two head coaches at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday afternoon in the Ivy opener for both teams.
2022-23 IHO Women’s Preseason Poll
It’s still Princeton’s conference until another Ivy proves that it isn’t. Our contributors are united in believing that the Tigers will stay on top in 2022-23, with Megan Griffith’s ascendant Columbia program again placing second.
But there wasn’t consensus on how the rest of the top half of the league will fill out.
Penn could break back into the Ivy League Tournament after missing it for the first time last season, but we expect the Red & Blue to draw stiff competition from Harvard and Yale in their first years under new coaches.
Will #2bidivy happen in the league for only the second time in conference history? It very well could, and the bottom half of the conference is likely to be substantially stronger this season as Brown and Dartmouth return more experienced rosters under coaches that now have a year of Ivy play under their belts.
Ivy Madness reporter’s notebook: Days 1 & 2
“As we battle in the WBCA (Women’s Basketball Coaches Association), they’re always talking about “create this environment.” Any time I talk equity with anyone, they always say there’s more pressure on a man because the gyms are full, and the bands are playing. The opposite is true. It’s much easier to play in a (packed) venue like this. It’s very, very hard for women all over the country and play in empty gyms without bands, fighting their schools for support to get the bands there and to get the cheerleaders there. There’s been huge growth at Harvard, but there’s such a long way to go. It’s really wonderful for the athletes to play in this kind of venue and it’s fun to watch as well.” – soon-to-be retiring Harvard women’s coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, talking about the boisterous atmosphere during her team’s 72-67 loss to No. 1 seed Princeton
Some random thoughts after two great days at the 2022 Ivy League Tournament:
No. 1 Princeton hangs on to top No. 4 Harvard in Ivy League Tournament women’s semifinal
When hostilities got underway in the first Ivy League Tournament action in three years, it was obvious that the Crimson were inspired by the gravity of the situation. They gave the Tigers all they could handle.
In the end, however, the Tigers held on in the closest Ivy game in Carla Berube’s two-season career at Princeton, 72-67. The Tigers needed six straight free throws from Kaitlyn Chen and Grace Stone in the closing moments.