Tommy Amaker

Be thankful for Ivy League basketball

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It’s Thanksgiving, and our cups runneth over with sumptuous Ivy hoops results.  

Last Monday, the Penn men’s team gobbled up a nationally ranked Villanova team at the Palestra.  A day earlier, the Princeton women’s team visited Middle Tennessee State, the defending Conference USA champions, and pulled the rug on the Blue Raiders’ 49-game home court winning streak.  Five days later, the Tigers came within a whisker of upsetting No. 3 UCLA at Pauley Pavilion.  

Last Saturday, the Columbia men, picked to finish last in the Ivy League, toppled Temple, 78-73, in an upset that virtually no one even seemed to notice.

But wait, there’s more.  The Brown women’s team, picked to finish sixth in the Ivy League this season, lowered the boom on Providence and Georgetown in back-to-back games.  The Bears may not win the Ivy crown, but apparently they are contenders in the Big East.  

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Harvard men’s basketball splits Bay State back-to-back

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Malik Mack, the reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Week and the conference’s leading scorer, put up a career-high 32 points as Harvard men’s basketball came back late at Massachusetts and outlasted the Minutemen for a 76-71 overtime win Friday evening.

With the hard-fought victory, Harvard started the year 4-0, the first time the team swept its opening quartet of games since the 2013-14 season. The streak ended early Saturday night as the Crimson fell to Boston College, 73-64.

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

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With the season a few weeks away, the Ivy League hosted its Men’s Basketball Media Day on Thursday. the second of two hoops-themed media availabilities. The event was hosted over Zoom for media members and is available on the conference’s YouTube channel.

The preseason media poll was released on Tuesday with Yale, last year’s regular season co-champions, securing the top spot. Princeton, which used its Ivy League Tournament title victory as a springboard to a Sweet 16 NCAA Tournament run, was picked second.

The Bulldogs received 14 of 16 first-place votes, while the Tigers earned the other two top votes.

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Princeton men’s basketball survives after another second-half collapse

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Despite another stupefying second-half collapse, the Princeton men’s basketball team somehow hung on to defeat the Harvard Crimson at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday, 58-56.  With the win, the Tigers retained a share of first place in the conference standings and guaranteed themselves an opportunity to earn at least a share of the Ivy League title with a win on senior night at Jadwin Gym next Saturday against the Penn Quakers in the regular season finale for both teams.

The Tigers gutted out this hugely important road win despite a harrowing stretch of offensive futility that echoed Princeton’s epic second-half collapse against Yale last weekend.  

Senior guard Ryan Langborg led the Tigers with 18 points and six rebounds while Evan Nelson led Harvard in scoring with 19 points in a losing cause. Chris Ledlum, playing his final game at Lavietes, was held to 14 points (five below his average), but muscled his way to a game-high 11 rebounds for the Crimson, who were eliminated from Ivy Madness on Senior Night by Princeton for the second year in a row.

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Yale men hold off Harvard to sweep season series again

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Junior forward Matt Knowling led all scorers with 18 points on 9-for-13 shooting in 35 minutes in Yale’s win over Harvard Friday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Yale men’s basketball picked up where its scorching hot hands left off last Saturday against Princeton, building a 19-point second-half lead and surviving a late comeback rush from Harvard to notch a 68-57 win at Lavietes Pavilion.

Harvard (12-10, 3-5 Ivy) had trailed 48-29 with 16:25 remaining but in the next 14 minutes of game seized enough momentum to trail by just five points, 62-57. Yale salted away the game from the free-throw line in the final minute after a defensive clampdown.

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Yale men fend off Harvard, 58-54, for first Ivy conference win

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Yale senior forward EJ Jarvis helped lift his team past Harvard to notch the Bulldogs’ first Ivy conference win in three games Saturday night. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

“It’s Yale-Harvard. There is no other game like it.”

That quote from Yale men’s senior forward EJ Jarvis was spot on, and so was another:

“This was a must-win game.”

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Ivy men’s hoops observations as league play approaches

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With conference play in the 2022-23 Ivy League men’s basketball season fast approaching, let’s take a look back at the nonconference results for each team and examine each program – listed by season winning percentage:

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Harvard men’s basketball alum Charlie Baker named next NCAA president

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Baker

In a Thursday morning announcement, Massachusetts governor and former Harvard men’s basketball alum, Charlie Baker was named the next president of the NCAA.

Baker, a two-term governor who chose not to run for re-election this past November, will assume his new role on March 1, 2023.  Maura Healey, the present state attorney general and a former Crimson women’s basketball captain, will take over for Baker on January 5.

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Harvard men’s second-half rally falls short in loss at Fordham

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Something had to give on Sunday afternoon at Rose Hill Gymnasium, with both Harvard and Fordham riding four-game winning streaks.  Unfortunately for the Crimson, the Rams withstood a late second-half rally and emerged with the hard-fought 68-60 victory in the Bronx.

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2022-23 IHO Men’s Preseason Poll

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Only five points separated the top three teams in the Ivy League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll, and our final tabulation was even tighter. Just three points separated the team atop IHO contributors’ preseason poll.

Yale gets the slight nod here, with our contributors trusting James Jones to lead the Bulldogs to their fifth Ivy League title in an eight-season span in a bid to represent the conference in the NCAA Tournament for a third straight time. Penn, the Ivy League preseason poll’s top team above Princeton by a single point, also finished a single point above Princeton in our standings. Our contributors saw potential for success in a roster that returns most of the key players from last year’s squad that placed third in the Ivy standings. We’ve got Princeton pegged to finish third, aided in their quest to repeat as Ivy League champions by returning 2021-22 Ivy Player of the Year Tosan Evbuomwan but losing significant backcourt production from last year’s conference title team.

Harvard was the clear No. 4 finisher in our poll, a showing that would improve upon the disappointing sixth-place result that locked the Crimson out of the Ivy League Tournament on its home floor last season. We have Cornell ranked slightly ahead of Brown as the Big Red look to build on last season’s overachieving Ivy League Tournament berth and the Bears look to bounce back from an underachieving sixth-place finish (tied with Harvard) a season ago. Columbia and Dartmouth tied in our voting tally at the bottom of the standings as both programs look to secure their first Ivy League Tournament appearances.

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