NCAA

Off the Bench: Mateen Rafiq of Cornell men’s basketball

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Ivy League hoopsters are Division I athletes on the court and exceptionally accomplished and eclectic humans off it. Ivy Hoops Online presents the latest edition of our Off the Bench series that takes fans inside the stories that you might not otherwise know from the stands or through your screen. 

Mateen Rafiq ‘28, a rising junior on the Cornell men’s basketball team, is our next featured player. Rafiq’s humility, discipline and ambitions are outsized (no matter that he is a 6-foot-0 guard), and there’s no doubt he is building toward something bigger.

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Kent: Does Ivy League hear alarm bells with another departure?

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With the news that Alexander Lesburt Jr. is pulling a Caden Pierce at Brown men’s basketball, sitting out his senior season and entering the portal, the alarm bells are getting louder and louder.

First, as to Lesburt. He was expected to be a key player for Mike Martin after averaging 10.3 points and 3.6 rebounds per game last season and is a skilled three-point shooter. But he is no longer on the team, Brown announced Tuesday, noting he left the program to preserve his final year of eligibility.

Numerous Ivy players in basketball and other sports are exploring this three-year graduation route to obtain a coveted Ivy League degree and get another payday year elsewhere.

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Xaivian Lee’s portaling leaves Princeton men’s basketball at a crossroads

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Princeton junior guard Xaivian Lee (1) drives to the hoop against Yale sophomore center Samson Aleton (10) at the Ivy League Tournament in Providence, R.I. on March 15, 2025. (Steve Silverman | Ivy Hoops Online)

The Xaivian Lee era at Princeton appears to be over.

According to a report posted today by ESPN, the First-Team All-Ivy junior guard has entered the transfer portal. The report states that Lee will also enter the NBA Draft while simultaneously keeping his options open to transfer to another program for his final year of collegiate eligibility.

A year ago, Lee similarly tested the NBA Draft waters before returning to Princeton for his junior year.

Lee’s likely departure from Princeton, while not entirely unexpected, is the latest development in what already is shaping up to be a  tumultuous offseason for the Princeton men’s basketball program.

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Breaking down the NLRB decision finding Dartmouth men’s basketball players are employees

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A National Labor Relations Board director ordered a union election for 15 Dartmouth men’s basketball players Monday in a ruling that found the players are employees of the university.

The result could be the first labor union for NCAA athletes.

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Not just nitpicking over NET-picking

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NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt (MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference)

Editor’s note: Dan Gavitt is NCAA senior vice president of basketball.

Hey Dan, I’m back. It’s been a few weeks since my last note to you on the repugnant new NIT policy eliminating the automatic bid for mid-major conference champions who do not win their conference tournaments.

I have another request. It’s about that NET thing. Time to scrap it, or at least modify it. It only favors the big boys. You know that. We know that. Everyone knows that.

The biggest problem is the TVI (team value index), which is meant to reward teams for beating quality opponents. How does it work with teams who can’t get quadrant-one and even quadrant-two-type games out of conference, even on the road?

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Not just nitpicking over NIT-picking

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Dan Gavitt is NCAA senior vice president of basketball and NIT board chair. (MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference)

Editor’s note: Dan Gavitt is the son of the great Dave Gavitt, the driving force behind the creation of the Big East. The younger Gavitt is NIT board chair and NCAA senior vice president of basketball, and he has backed a new NIT policy which eliminates the automatic bid for mid-major conference champions who do not win their conference tournaments.

Dear Dan:

What would your father say?

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A close look at Dartmouth men’s basketball’s unionization effort

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Nearly a decade ago, members of the Northwestern football team tried to unionize.

The National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency charged with protecting employees’ rights to organize and determining whether to have unions as their bargaining representatives, voted unanimously in Aug. 2015 to decline to assert jurisdiction in the case. The NLRB held that asserting jurisdiction over a single team wouldn’t promote stability in labor relations league-wide, as the NCAA and conference maintain significant control over individual teams.

The NLRB noted the decision applied only to the players in the case and didn’t preclude reconsideration of this issue in the future.

Fast forward to 2021, when the United States Supreme Court decided in a 9-0 ruling that antitrust laws prohibit the NCAA from limiting its Division I schools from offering “education-related compensation or benefits” to student-athletes.

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Inside Ivy Hoops 4-11-23

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Ivy Hoops Online editor Mike Tony and IHO writer Rob Browne discuss memorable postseason runs for Princeton men’s and women’s basketball and Columbia and Harvard in the WNIT, the new “Big 5” (really City 6) Classic, the prospect and potential impact of athletic scholarships for Ivy hoopsters and much more:

Uncertainty grows for Ivy League aid after antitrust exemption expires

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Congress did something of great significance to Ivy League sports Friday.

It did nothing at all.

Congress allowed a section of the Higher Education Act allowing key antitrust protection for the Ivy League to expire. The expiration increases the Ivy League’s exposure to legal challenges to its refusal to grant academic and athletic scholarships.

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