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With the non-conference schedule set to begin in less than three weeks, the Ivy League held its annual Media Day on Tuesday afternoon. The three-hour event, hosted by Lance Medow, featured coaches and players from each of the eight programs.
Fans can check out the recording on the conference’s YouTube channel.
Below are some highlights:
Junior guard John Poulakidas delivered a season-high 23 points on 8-for-14 shooting to lead Yale to a hard fought 86-78 overtime win at Howard Wednesday.
Yale (9-6) played the game with team scoring and rebounding leader sophomore center Danny Wolf out with an illness.
The Bulldogs squandered a 16-point lead (67-51). A trey by former Harvard nemesis and grad forward Seth Towns, the 2017-18 Ivy Player of the Year, plus a dunk by junior guard Bryce Harris dunk in the last minute of regulation sent the game into overtime.
But the visitors dominated the extra session.
It was a game of runs by both teams.
Yale went on a first-half 11-point run to lead by 17-7, and the Bison answered with their own 7-0 run to knot the score at 20.
Howard (5-10) switched to a 2-3 zone, which flummoxed Yale for portions of the first half.
Yale led 36-31 at the half. Poulakidas posted 16 first-half points.
The Bulldogs were in control for most of the second half until Howard (5-10) went on an 18-4 run to send the game into overtime.
“Great team effort, really rebounded well, which made all the difference in the game,” Yale coach James Jones said.
Yale won the rebounding war, 47-28, hauling in 21 offensive boards that led to 31 second-chance points.
Senior forward Matt Knowling notched 14 points, eight rebounds and five assists, while junior guard Bez Mbeng registered 14 points. Sophomore forward Casey Simmons pitched in with 11 points and a game-high 11 rebounds off the bench.
Nine Yale players logged 10 minutes or more, as Jones is still searching for a rotation for the Ivy slate.
Junior guard Marcus Dockery led Howard with 21 points. Towns contributed 17 points and six rebounds.
Yale opens Ivy play at Brown on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
Penn rebounded from Saturday’s loss to Kentucky with one of its cleanest and most efficient performances of the season. The Quakers scored 1.2 points per possession and hit 12 three-pointers in a 78-68 win over Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference favorite Howard at the Palestra.
Penn (7-5) took a series of early punches to the mouth from the Bison. Howard started the game on a 7-0 run and then added a 15-2 flurry midway through the first half to build a 28-17 lead.
Clark Slajchert almost singlehandedly flipped the game around for the Quakers. Slajchert scored all 20 of his points in a stretch that spanned the final eight-plus minutes of the first half and first two minutes of the second half.
The senior put Penn ahead for good with 1:34 to go in the first half when he drained an open three from the right wing through heavy contact from Howard guard Isaiah Warfield during his follow-through. Slajchert finished off the four-point play at the free throw line, then added another three 29 seconds later off a slick feed from freshman Sam Brown.
Penn fans have plenty of happy Quakeaways to hold onto as the team heads into a long layoff for finals, starting with how …
As we enter the July 4th holiday weekend, we at Ivy Hoops Online wanted to round up some postseason updates:
Recent Harvard graduate and Ohio State graduate transfer Seth Towns continued to protest in downtown Columbus Sunday, a day after he was detained following a nonviolent protest there in response to the death of unarmed black people at the hands of police officers across America.
Using a bullhorn, Towns, a Columbus native and 2017-18 Ivy Player of the Year, stressed the importance of protesting against racial injustice and led the crowd in a chant of “We have a voice.”
“This is not our choice,” Towns said. “This is our duty as people in a democracy … Everybody who I love has texted me and said ‘Stay out of harm’s way. While you’re out there protesting, stay out of harm’s way.’ But I’m always in harm’s way.”’
Just a day after graduating from Harvard, former Ivy Player of the Year Seth Towns was detained and subsequently released by police Friday in his hometown of Columbus after he protested nonviolently in response to the death of unarmed black people at the hands of police officers across America.
The protest in Columbus was one of many sparked by the video record of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis while three other officers stood nearby Monday.
Seth Towns addressed the incident on Twitter Saturday afternoon, noting that he was as proud of his nonviolent protest in downtown Columbus to cry out against the deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician fatally shot in her home by police in March.
Columbia graduate transfer Patrick Tapé is headed for Duke.
Tapé will be immediately eligible after sitting out this season, as his loss proved a significant blow for the Lions. Tapé averaged 6.9 points and 5.1 rebounds per game in three seasons for Columbia, establishing himself as a strong inside presence and efficient scorer. He was an All-Ivy honorable mention as a junior in 2018-19, averaging 11.3 points and 5.9 rebounds per contest.
The 6-foot-10, 220-pound Charlotte, N.C. native was in the top 10 of ESPN’s graduate transfer rankings and told ESPN that choosing Duke over Syracuse, USC and Ohio State came down to proximity.
“[It was] really just being close to home and having my family come see me, the excellent tradition they have there and the opportunity to play for the best coach of all time,” Tapé said.
Tapé’s decision was the inverse of Harvard graduate transfer Seth Towns’s decision to commit to Ohio State over Duke.
Seth Towns is taking his talents back to Columbus.
The former Harvard forward and 2017-18 Ivy League Player of the Year announced Saturday night that he was committing to Ohio State as a graduate transfer.
A Columbus native, Towns noted his gratitude for his time with Harvard basketball, which consisted of two seasons in which he averaged 14.2 points and five rebounds. The 6-foot-7, 215-pound standout earned Ivy POY honors as a sophomore before suffering an injury down the stretch of the 2018 Ivy League Tournament final, an eventual loss to Penn at the Palestra.
Things have not calmed down after Tuesday afternoon’s bombshell announcement from the Ivy League and its eight presidents that this weekend’s Ivy League Tournaments were canceled, making the league the first conference to cancel tournament play.
The conference likes to refer to its tournament as Ivy Madness. To paraphrase Harvard senior Seth Towns, the 2018 Player of the Year, it’s more like Ivy Mayhem.
Kobe Bryant’s impact on the game of basketball and the people who have a passion for it has been incalculable, and his sudden death at 41 following a helicopter crash that killed his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others near Los Angeles Sunday put into perspective just how much Bryant mattered to those who have been Ivy League hoopsters.