Monique LeBlanc

2023-24 Ivy women’s media day recap and season preview

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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.

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Ivy women’s week 10 roundup: Ancient Eight’s top 10

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Heading into the last two days of the regular season, Columbia and Princeton were tied for first, while Penn held a one-game lead over Harvard for third place.  After the Lions, Tigers and Crimson each grabbed a win, the Ivy League Tournament semifinal matchups of Columbia against Harvard and Princeton versus Penn had been set.  What needed to be determined was the seeding of the four teams and the timing of the two matchups.

When the updated NCAA NET rankings were posted on Sunday morning, Princeton’s convincing road victory over upper division Penn combined with Columbia’s narrow escape at home against seventh-place Cornell resulted in the Tigers overcoming an 11-position difference from last week and taking the No. 1 seed away from the Lions.

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Rookies spark bounce-back win for Brown women over Penn

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Ivy back-to-backs can bring out the worst and best in teams, often in the same weekend.

Coming off an 80-37 drubbing against Princeton at the Pizzitola Sports Center in which it got outscored 33-2 in the third quarter, Brown rebounded 22 hours later with a 68-59 win over Penn.

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2022-23 IHO Women’s Preseason Poll

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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.

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2022-23 Ivy season lookahead with Brown women’s coach Monique LeBlanc

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Brown women’s coach Monique LeBlanc joins Ivy Hoops Online writer and host Steve Silverman to reflect on her journey from Prudential Financial into coaching, getting her top six scorers back from last season and expectations for 2021-22 rookie standout Isabella Mauricio, a large incoming first-year class, what a successful 2022-23 campaign would be for her program and more:

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in case you missed it, check out Steve’s interviews with Cornell men’s coach Brian Earl here, Cornell women’s coach Dayna Smith here, Brown men’s coach Mike Martin here and Dartmouth women’s coach Adrienne Shibles here. 

Penn women beat Brown behind Lakstigala’s career night

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Senior Mia Lakstigala is a dependable, versatile Penn player — a 6-footer who collects rebounds but also handles the ball and sinks threes. And she did it all well Saturday night for a career-high 21 points plus seven rebounds as the Quakers beat Brown, 67-53, in her second-to-last game at the Palestra.

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Ivy weekend preview: What to watch for now that there’s finally something to watch

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Sunday will mark the first Ivy League conference basketball since March 7, 2020, even if two of the eight games in the opening slate (the Princeton at Harvard and Columbia at Yale men’s matchups) have been postponed due to COVID-19 concerns. Here’s what to watch for:

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Young rosters hamper the Ivy’s newest coaches in their debuts

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While Tuesday night was the return to action for most of the Ancient Eight in 20 months, it was the debut for the league’s two newest coaches.  Brown’s Monique LeBlanc was hired after the end of the 2019-20 campaign, but the pandemic kept her off the court for an additional year. Dartmouth’s Adrienne Shibles, meanwhile, came to Hanover in May.

With few returning veterans players on either roster, both coaches face major rebuilding efforts and their teams were picked in the last two spots in the recent preseason poll.

Dartmouth welcomed Rhode Island, the No. 2 rated team in the A-10, while Brown traveled down I-95 to take on Fairfield, picked for third in the MAAC.

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Ivy League women’s basketball Media Day roundup

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One day after releasing the conference’s preseason poll, the Ivy League moved one step closer to normal by hosting the 2021-22 Media Day for women’s basketball Tuesday.  For the first time, the league used a Zoom format to create a stronger connection between the coaches, players and the media.

In Monday’s poll, three-time defending champion Princeton was again picked as the top team with 122 total points and 12 first-place votes.  Penn, the 2019 co-champion, was selected No. 2 with three first-place votes and 108 points. The next three teams were close, with only six points separating Columbia, Yale and Harvard.

The Lions, which earned their first Ivy League Tournament berth in 2020 before the tourney was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved up to third with 87 points. The Bulldogs, a third-place team in 2020, dropped to fourth at 82 points.  The Crimson, which finished fifth in 2020, received one first-place vote but missed the upper division by one point.

Cornell, the 2020 seventh-place squad, moved up to sixth for 2022 with 41 points.  Dartmouth and Brown, two teams with new coaching staffs, ended up with the last two spots, with the Big Green’s 29 points two ahead of the Bears.

Tuesday’s Media Day revealed the four tiers apparent in the preseason poll. But there could be a slight reordering near the top.

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Ivy League 2021-22 season preview: Buy, hold and sell edition

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ were looking up at the end of last week, but more importantly, it’s a good time to be bullish about Ivy League basketball. There’s going to be an actual Ivy hoops season this year, and we’re here to herald its return together. Here’s how Ivy Hoops Online contributors feel about some of the storylines within that greater, happy story as the 2021-22 campaign approaches.

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