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SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — It wasn’t pretty, but Columbia got its biggest road win of the young season.
The Lions (7-4) took the short ride to South Orange, New Jersey and beat Seton Hall (6-2) on a Perri Page layup with 0.7 seconds left, 54–53. Facing an unrelenting Seton Hall defense, the Lions never led in the second half until the final second.
At the Cancun Challenge, Columbia women’s basketball played much improved basketball against quality opponents, as junior guard and reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Riley Weiss rounded into midseason shape.
Prior to the tournament, Weiss averaged 16.2 points per game. In these three games, she averaged over 27, notably shooting 48.3% overall and 42.3% from three, both numbers higher than any previous single game.
In three days of play, the Lions (4-4) lost a close shootout to Kansas State (5–3), 95–92; powered past perennial mid-major power South Dakota State (6–2), 80–67; and lost 80–63 against Courtney Banghart-led No. 12 North Carolina (8–1).
In front of a boisterous Education Day crowd of New York City schoolkids, Columbia women’s basketball struggled to get anything going and went down to a 66-48 defeat to Saint Joseph’s at Levien Gymnasium on Thursday afternoon.
With the win, the Hawks improved to 4-1 on the season and get ready for a Monday Big 5 matchup against Penn. Meanwhile, the Lions lost their second consecutive game and fall to 2-2 on the year.
In a battle between two of the nation’s premier mid-major teams, Richmond women’s basketball used hot three-point shooting to come away from Levien Gymnasium with a 77-67 win Saturday night.
Both teams, which made it to the NCAA Tournament and won a game last year, have aspirations of returning to the Big Dance in 2026. A victory for the Spiders (3-1) helps their overall resume, in case they cannot secure the Atlantic 10’s automatic bid in March. Despite the unfavorable result, the Lions (2-1), as often is the case, will find valuable lessons as they move forward with their difficult nonconference schedule.
The release of the Ivy League preseason media poll and 2025-26 Media Day revealed Princeton as the favorite heading into the 2025-26 season, followed by three-time defending champion Columbia, 2025 Ivy Madness title-holder Harvard in third and Penn rounding out the upper half of the conference.
Brown, which has tied the Quakers for fourth place the last two years, is the clear choice for the fifth slot. Dartmouth, Cornell and Yale are pegged for the last three spots, with the Big Green one point ahead of the Big Red and seven points in front of the Bulldogs.
The 2025-26 Ivy women’s basketball season tips off Friday, so it’s time for Ivy Hoops Online’s preseason poll – not to be confused with the Ivy League-released media preseason poll. Here’s how our contributors collectively predict the league will shake out, with select observations from some of them:
In a historic season of firsts, the Columbia women’s basketball team couldn’t get a NCAA Tournament Round of 64 win, falling on Saturday afternoon to the West Virginia Mountaineers, 78-59, in Chapel Hill, N.C.
The Mountaineers, who used a furious rally in the third quarter to defeat Princeton in last year’s NCAA Tournament Round of 64, ousted another Ivy foe on Saturday, dominating Columbia wire-to-wire.
Columbia is used to turning over its opponents with relentless full court pressure, but there’s an old saying in basketball that team’s that press don’t like to be pressed themselves, and that adage proved correct on Saturday as West Virginia’s signature zone press wreaked havoc on the Lions, forcing 25 turnovers, including 11 in the first quarter.
“West Virginia is a great team and a super-unique team in the women’s game,” Columbia coach Megan Griffith said postgame. “I think what they do not a lot of teams do, right, and especially defensively. March Madness is who can make the other team the most uncomfortable, and I thought they did that successfully to start the game. You know, forcing 11 turnovers.”
Twenty minutes from a second straight defeat in the NCAA Tournament’s First Four, the Columbia women’s basketball team “heard what they needed to hear” from coach Megan Griffith and overcame a 13-point deficit to defeat Washington 63-60 at Carmichael Arena on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Thursday night.
Thursday night’s NCAA victory, the first ever for the Lions’ program, propelled Columbia (24-6) into a first-round matchup against No. 6 West Virginia on Saturday at 2 p.m. on ESPNEWS. The Huskies (19-14), making their first appearance in the Big Dance since 2017, look to use this experience as motivation for next season.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Despite having multiple double-digit leads, the No. 1-seeded Columbia women couldn’t find a way to dominate No. 4 Penn and had to fight for a full 40 minutes to secure a 60-54 victory in Friday’s opening semifinal of the 2025 Ivy Tournament.
“Credit to them (Penn) for getting to this point and giving us their best,” coach Megan Griffith told the media in the postgame press conference. “Conversely, in our locker room, I don’t think we played our best, but that’s honestly what you’re going to get again in these games.”
With the win, the Lions (23-6) head to the program’s third-ever conference final. A victory in Saturday night’s contest against No. 3 Harvard. which won an instant classic against No. 2 Princeton in the nightcap, would give Columbia its first-ever Ivy Madness title, as well as the Ancient Eight’s automatic bid.
For Penn (15-13), the season is over and the drought for an Ivy League Tournament title now extends to eight years.
“I thought we really played well enough to put them (Columbia) in jeopardy,” Penn coach Mike McLaughlin said. “I’m just so proud that they hung in there … and gave ourselves an opportunity to beat a really good team tonight.”
Two minutes defined a season so far for the Columbia Lions. And for the Princeton Tigers.