Ivy Hoops Online’s writing staff voted on where all eight Ivy women’s and men’s basketball teams would end up for the 2019-20 season. Our projected order of finish for the women:
Taylor Will
Ivy League player carousel
The biggest story of the off-season was Miye Oni being selected in June’s NBA Draft. The Yale junior and reigning Ivy Player of the Year decided to leave school early and leave his name in the draft. Despite falling to the late second round, a perilous spot to making an NBA roster, Oni impressed in the Summer League and earned a guaranteed contract with the Utah Jazz. He is playing just as well in the pre-season and looks to be a real steal for the Jazz.
Brown women’s basketball releases 2019-20 schedule
Looking to bounce back after recent disappointments, Brown’s upcoming 2019-20 schedule was announced by sixth-year head coach Sarah Behn on Wednesday. Like Dartmouth, the 13 game nonconference schedule is heavy on nearby opponents and light on teams that made the postseason.
Over the first half of the season, the Bears will take on local rival Bryant to start the season on November 5, and then take part in the fourth Ocean State Tip-Off in December. Bruno will open up against Rhode Island on December 7 and then face Providence or have another matchup against the Bulldogs the next day.
Brown will also take on fellow New Englanders Maine, Central Connecticut State, UMass Amherst, New Hampshire, Merrimack, Holy Cross and Merrimack, and Fairfield. Before league play starts in mid-January, the team will venture down to the Sunshine State to take on Florida International and South Florida before the start of the new year.
Ivy hoops roundup – Apr. 20, 2019
Harvard men’s basketball post-season banquet:
MVP – Bryce Aiken; Defensive Player of the Year – Justin Bassey
2019-2020 Captains – Seth Towns and Henry Welsh
Harvard women’s basketball post-season banquet:
Co-MVP – Katie Benzan and Madeline Raster; Defensive Player of the Year – Nani Redford; Most Improved Player – Rachel Levy
Brown women’s basketball post-season banquet:
MVP – Shayna Mehta; Most Improved Player – Haley Green
Princeton women’s basketball names Bella Alarie and Taylor Baur co-captains for the 2019-2020 season. Coach Courtney Banghart discussed the two athletes, as well as their goals of another Ivy title and a Sweet 16 run, in the season-ending episode of The Court Report.
Yale coach James Jones just missed out on the St. John’s coaching job, but he did win the 2019 Ben Jobe Award, given by CollegeInsider.com to the top minority coach in Division I basketball.
Penn senior Princess Aghayere was named one of six recipients of the President’s Engagement Prize by university President Amy Gutmann. Awarded annually, the Prizes empower Penn students to design and undertake post-graduation projects that make a positive, lasting difference in the world. Each Prize-winning project will receive $100,000, as well as a $50,000 living stipend per team member. Student recipients will spend the next year implementing their projects.
Aghayere was chosen for her work with Rebound Liberia, which uses basketball as a tool to bridge the literacy gap between men and women and as a mechanism for youth to cope with the trauma and stress of daily life in post-conflict Liberia.
Ancient Eight thoughts – Ivy Friday women’s edition
Eight thoughts on the women’s side:
1. Dartmouth hanging in there
Dartmouth did something it hadn’t done in a decade last night: defeat Yale at home. And the timing was pivotal as the Big Green notched its second win at the wire in the past four games courtesy of a Paula Lenart putback of a missed Isalys Quinones three-pointer with 1.3 seconds left, giving the Big Green a 56-54 victory to lift them to 4-5 in the Ivy standings – within a game of Yale with five outings to go. It was a gutsy win for the Big Green, whose savvy senior guard Cy Lippold suffered an injury versus Princeton last Saturday. Lenart and Quinones put Dartmouth over the top in a defensive battle, and Annie McKenna’s six steals helped stymie the Bulldogs. If Dartmouth can best Brown tonight and sweep Columbia and Cornell in the final weekend, it has a decent chance of tying Yale in the Ivy standings at 8-6, but the Bulldogs would still own the second tiebreaker: highest seed defeated (Yale has topped both Princeton and Harvard, while Dartmouth has beaten neither.) So the Big Green’s road slate at Penn and Princeton next weekend is a huge, if challenging, opportunity to neutralize or even claim the tiebreaker away from Yale.
Ivy women’s hoops Saturday recap
Columbia (7-14, 3-5 Ivy) 83 at Brown (9-15, 1-7) 81
Columbia’s Madison Hardy sank two three-pointers in the last minute to push the Lions over Brown, 83-81, at the Pittzitola Sports Center. The victory was Columbia’s first conference road win and brought the Light Blue into a three-way tie for fifth place. The Bears, which lost their seventh straight contest, ended the night in sole possession of last place.
Ivy women’s hoops Friday recap
Cornell (8-10, 2-5 Ivy) 65 at Brown (9-14, 1-6) 53
The Big Red limited the league’s most prolific offense to only 17 second half points, as it came away with a 65-53 victory over Brown in Providence. With the Bears holding a 42-37 lead four minutes into the third quarter, Cornell finished the frame on a 13-2 run to take a six point lead. A Justine Gaziano layup made the score 57-53 in favor of the Big Red with 3:38 to go, but those would be the last points of the night for the Bears. Cornell then went on an 8-0 run, including a 6-6 performance from the free throw line, to close the game.
Ivy women’s hoops Saturday recap
Harvard (10-7, 3-1 Ivy) 100 at Brown (9-11, 1-3 Ivy) 83
With Brown holding a 51-50 lead one minute into the third quarter, Harvard used two separate runs of 10-0 and 15-3 over the next ten minutes to take a 78-59 advantage. The Bears battled back, going on their own 21-7 run over the next five minutes to make it a 85-80 with four minutes left in regulation. A Justine Gaziano three 30 seconds later made it a 87-83 contest, but the Crimson scored the game’s last 13 points to win going away.
Ivy women’s hoops Friday recap
Princeton (9-8, 1-1 Ivy) 79 at Columbia (5-11, 1-2 Ivy) 64
Friday evening’s action began with an all-time performance from last year’s Ivy League Player of the Year, Princeton’s Bella Alarie. Alarie scored 45 points, besting the previous record of 43 points set by Dartmouth’s Gail Koziara in 1978, while making a conference record 20 field goals. As if that wasn’t enough, the 6′ 4″ forward captured 14 rebounds and added 4 blocks, setting a new Princeton career record of 160.
Ivy women’s hoops weekend review – Jan 26-27, 2019
Sat., Jan. 26
Yale (11-6; 1-1 Ivy) 84 vs Brown (9-9; 1-1 Ivy)
Eight days after being defeated by Brown, 86-71, in Providence, Yale turned the tables on their travel partners in New Haven.