Wisconsin

No. 4 Columbia women’s basketball smothers No. 3 Wisconsin to punch WBIT title game ticket

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In like a lamb, out like a Lion. Right?

That’s how March has played out for Columbia women’s basketball. After two losses to Harvard, including a nail-biter in the Ivy League semifinal, the Lions entered the WBIT as a team on a mission.

Steamrolling St. John’s and North Dakota State and escaping against California, they earned their way to the semifinal in Wichita, Kan.

In their final game of March, the Lions continued their postseason winning ways. Never trailing, Columbia suffocated Wisconsin defensively while doing just enough offensively to earn a comfortable win and punch their ticket to the WBIT final by a score of 67-50.

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Late collapse sinks Harvard women’s basketball at Wisconsin, Columbia triumphs at Cal in WBIT quarterfinals

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With Harvard up 56-49 with 39 seconds left in regulation, a quarterfinal WBIT win looked inevitable and many Wisconsin fans could be seen heading to the exit of the Kohl Center.

The Badgers, though, had faith in themselves, hitting big shots and forcing multiple Crimson turnovers to improbably send the game into overtime.

Wisconsin held onto a one-point lead with three seconds left on the scoreboard when 5-foot-2 senior guard Ronnie Porter was called for a foul against Harvard’s Abigail Wright that would send the junior forward to the line for two free throws.

Given an extra challenge call in overtime, the Badgers’ coaching staff asked for a review and the call was ultimately reversed, sending the home team and their fans into a frenzy.

After graduate guard Destiny Howell sank two free throws, Harvard junior guard Karlee White had one last chance to send the game into double overtime, but her three-pointer from the top of the key hit high off the backboard and the Crimson season ended with a 64-61 defeat.

Had Harvard won, it would have faced Columbia in a WBIT semifinal matchup after the Lions, as a No. 4 seed, topped No. 3 California on the road, 74-68, after the Harvard-Wisconsin game Thursday night.

Columbia held off the Golden Bears by finishing the game on an 8-2 run in the final 2:06 after the hosts pulled ahead at 67-66, a run strung together with key shots from junior guard Riley Weiss and senior guard/forward Perri Page. Those two combined to deliver 46 of Columbia’s 74 points, setting up the Lions to face Wisconsin in a semifinal showdown in Wichita, Kan. Monday at a time to be determined.

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Ivy news roundup – Apr. 23, 2017

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Brown

Marketing hoops in China

Sophomore forward Erika Steeves was named one of five Brown student-athletes who earned a Royce Fellowship, which will support Steeves as she works with the NBA, the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), and Chinese sport officials to study the growing market for amateur and professional basketball in China.

Columbia

Columbia women to go south of the border in November

The Columbia women’s basketball team has been invited to participate in the 2017 Cancun Challenge at the Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula.  In the 10-team tournament, they will be in the 4 team Mayan Division along with Arizona State, Green Bay and 2016 national runner-up Mississippi State.  Each of these teams had 20-plus victories in their 2016-17 seasons.  While the schedule for the November 23-25 Challenge does not come out until June, the four teams in last year’s Mayan Division played three games in three days against each of the teams in the group.  So, the Lions should get their chance to beat the team that ended UConn’s 111-game winning streak.

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Jesse Agel Out at Brown

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Jesse Agel leaves Brown with a 39-79 overall record in four disappointing seasons. (Photo Credit: brownbears.com)

Head Coach Jesse Agel was fired on Monday after four years as the head coach of Brown. Agel”s Ivy record was 14-42 during his tenure, winning 3, 5,

4, and 2 league games respectively in the years since 2008-09. The Bears struggled in all four seasons, especially on the defensive end, as Brown ranked 7th or 8th in defensive efficiency every year. The most frustrating part for Brown fans was that Agel did manage to attract some solid talent to Providence; he was simply unable to put it all together. This final year was a disaster for reasons at least partially beyond Agel”s control as the entire starting five of the Bears” squad suffered injuries that kept them out of games at some point in the season, including two projected starters being out for the whole season in Tucker Halpern and Rafael Maia.

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Postseason Projections

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We're back with an updated version of Postseason Projections as four Ivy teams fight it out for a slot in a March tournament.

The top half of the Ivy marched on towards the postseason last weekend, as Penn and Yale picked up important sweeps. Penn”s huge victory over Harvard gives the Quakers are real shot at stealing the NCAA bid, while Yale now sits one win away from that 20-win mark that historically has meant an invite to play somewhere in March. (Only two teams hit 20 wins and were not invited to a postseason tournament last season, and neither had an RPI as high as Yale”s.) For Harvard, the upset loss at home means that the Crimson need to go to New York and get two W”s to ensure that, at worst, they”ll get a shot at revenge against Penn in a playoff. Princeton”s loss at Harvard all but ended their NCAA hopes, though a strong finish could still propel them onto the NIT bubble. Let”s look at what some smart people around the Internet are saying about Ivy postseason chances, and then I”ll give my updated projections on where each top half team will end up.

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