Ivy Hoops Online contributor Steve Silverman caught up with first-year Dartmouth women’s basketball coach Linda Cimino Monday to discuss her key influences on the path to taking over in Hanover, plans to strengthen the program, takeaways from her team’s home loss to Siena Sunday, first-year guard Nina Minicozzi’s strong work ethic, how she’d define a successful first season as coach and much more:
Mia Curtis
2023-24 Ivy women’s media day recap and season preview
With the season a few weeks away, the Ivy League hosted Women’s Basketball Media Day on Monday, the first of two media availabilities this week. The event was hosted over Zoom for media members and is available on the conference’s YouTube channel.
The preseason media poll was released last Thursday with Princeton earning all 16 first-place votes. Last year’s Ivy Tournament winner and regular season co-champions are the sixth unanimous pick in league history and the first since Penn in 2016-2017.
Penn women get through warmup at Dartmouth, 54-37
It was a game of limited importance. The Penn women, in third place and assured of a spot in the Ivy tournament, made the long road trip to Hanover, N.H., for what was supposed to be a tune-up at Dartmouth, which had yet to win an Ivy game.
But Penn wasn’t playing like a team contending for a title Saturday — shooting poorly and turning the ball over repeatedly coming off a disappointing loss at upstart Brown a week earlier.
Penn held just a one-point lead when Dartmouth junior guard Mia Curtis grabbed the rebound after a Penn miss with three seconds on the clock and hustled the ball downcourt to senior forward Emma Koch for the layup at the buzzer — putting the Big Green ahead, 12-11, after one quarter.
Davis’ triple-double leads Columbia women past Dartmouth
A career-first triple-double performance from senior forward Kaitlyn Davis helped ensure Columbia never trailed in a dominant 79-50 victory against Dartmouth Saturday at Levien Gym.
The Lions (17-3, 6-1 Ivy) entered the game as one of three teams in the country to use the same starting lineup all season. That changed against Dartmouth (2-19, 0-7) as coach Megan Griffith decided to rest sophomore guard Kitty Henderson due to a minor injury. Senior guard Carly Rivera made her first start of the season.
“Going into this week not knowing if she [Kitty] was going to be in or not, we just made sure everybody understood who’s going to take those points, who’s going to take those rebounds, who’s going to take those assists,” Griffith said. “And so them understanding the total team buy-in of, one of us falls down, we all pick it up as a group.”
Penn women breeze past Dartmouth, 69-57
Four starters scored in double figures to push the Penn women to a convincing 69-57 win over Dartmouth Saturday afternoon. It’s the 11th win in a row for Penn (12-5, 4-0 Ivy), the last 10 of them in the friendly confines of the Palestra.
The young Dartmouth team (2-16, 0-4) showed potential that belies its record and its position as the Ancient Eighth. Still, Penn led all the way, and the game was never in serious doubt after the first quarter, when the Quakers built an 18-10 lead. A three by Dartmouth junior guard Mekkena Boyd cut the Penn lead to six early in the third quarter, but junior forward Jordan Obi answered with a three of her own, and the lead never dropped below nine again.
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.
Princeton men survive, women thrive in wins over Dartmouth counterparts
Both Tiger teams fared well against their Dartmouth opponents Saturday.