Tyler Patch

Ivy League women’s basketball Media Day roundup

by

One day after releasing the conference’s preseason poll, the Ivy League moved one step closer to normal by hosting the 2021-22 Media Day for women’s basketball Tuesday.  For the first time, the league used a Zoom format to create a stronger connection between the coaches, players and the media.

In Monday’s poll, three-time defending champion Princeton was again picked as the top team with 122 total points and 12 first-place votes.  Penn, the 2019 co-champion, was selected No. 2 with three first-place votes and 108 points. The next three teams were close, with only six points separating Columbia, Yale and Harvard.

The Lions, which earned their first Ivy League Tournament berth in 2020 before the tourney was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved up to third with 87 points. The Bulldogs, a third-place team in 2020, dropped to fourth at 82 points.  The Crimson, which finished fifth in 2020, received one first-place vote but missed the upper division by one point.

Cornell, the 2020 seventh-place squad, moved up to sixth for 2022 with 41 points.  Dartmouth and Brown, two teams with new coaching staffs, ended up with the last two spots, with the Big Green’s 29 points two ahead of the Bears.

Tuesday’s Media Day revealed the four tiers apparent in the preseason poll. But there could be a slight reordering near the top.

Read more

Brown chooses Monique LeBlanc as its new women’s head coach

by
Monique LeBlanc takes over the helm of the Bown women’s basketball program after a nine-year tenure at Merrimack. (Brown Athletics)

On Friday afternoon, Brown Athletic Director Jack Hayes announced the hiring of Monique LeBlanc as the Bears’ new women’s basketball coach, the fifth in program history.

LeBlanc, a native of Cumberland, R.I., will arrive in Providence after a nine-year tenure at Merrimack College.  This past season, when the Warriors made the jump from Division II to Division I, LeBlanc had her best season with a 20-10 record and a 13-5 third-place finish in the Northeast Conference.

Read more

Inside Ivy Hoops – Feb. 1, 2018

by

Going Inside Ivy Hoops with Brett Franklin and Jill Glessner this week are Ivy Hoops Online writer Richard Kent, Brown women’s basketball assistant coach Tyler Patch and Columbia men’s head coach Jim Engles.

On the women’s side, Jill and Brett highlight Harvard’s home cooking, Penn winning the Big 5, Ivy back-to-backs creeping up on Dartmouth and the intrigue of contrasting styles with Friday’s Penn at Brown matchup. On the men’s side, they consider how many bitterly close losses Dartmouth can continue to swallow, Penn’s formidable frontcourt and more:

 

IHO’s Yale beat writer Richard Kent joins Brett and Jill on the expert hotline about when he expects Makai Mason to return for Yale, Trey Phills’s standout season, why the Yale men have a better shot at beating Princeton than Penn this weekend, whether the Yale women can claim an Ivy League Tournament berth this season and how Bella Alarie flew under Duke’s recruiting radar:

 

Tyler Patch discusses his path to becoming an assistant at Brown, the recruiting and execution that created Brown’s high-octane uptempo offense, lessons learned from the Bears’ back-to-back Ivy nail-biter losses last weekend and more.

 

Jim Engles reflects on his unique time at NJIT, Columbia starting this season with seven road games and Mike Smith’s relationship with NBA player Jimmy Butler while looking ahead to the Lions hosting Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend: