What Happened Last Week: Princeton is 14-0, thanks to another Harvard-killing shot (now with Titanic music!). Penn is the 4-seed, thanks to its own Crimson-beating game-winner. On the women’s side, Penn is the repeat champion, and Brown won a de facto play-in game to punch its Palestra ticket. Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: On To The Palestra”
Last Week in the Ivy League: Princeton clinched at least a share of its 27th championship. Columbia kept its postseason hopes alive by beating Penn, throwing the final week into tiebreaker chaos. The Lady Bulldogs got hot, shaking up the other playoff race. Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Tiebreaker Madness”
Yale seemed to finally have it figured out Friday night, climbing out of an early deficit to grab a three-point halftime lead that probably could have been bigger if not for some poor shot selection and turnovers toward the end. Most importantly, it held host Harvard to 0.84 points per possession, showing some of the defense that led them to the Ivy League title last season.
Alas, the second half was still to come, and streaking Harvard sent them back into the skid they came from, shooting 18-27 from the field (74.1 eFG%) and scoring 1.28 ppp en route to a fairly easy 77-64 win in front of a sellout crowd at Lavietes Pavilion.
Continue reading “Harvard 77, Yale 64: Bulldogs Still Searching For Answers”
Last Week in the Ivy League: Princeton stayed perfect, while Penn stayed in the race. Columbia is reeling from an overtime collapse at Dartmouth, even after getting a reprieve in regulation by a fraction of a second. The first Ivy League Tournament is taking shape, and everyone is still arguing about it. Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Return of the Killer P’s”
Even as things appeared to be spiraling out of control a month ago, Penn coach Steve Donahue continued to maintain that he believed in his team. Every coach says that, of course, but there was something a little different about the way Donahue said it. Or maybe he’s just more convincing than most.
Anyway, the facts (real ones) are that the Quakers were 0-6 in the Ivy League after a loss to Princeton at The Palestra on Feb. 7, some four games behind Columbia for the fourth and final conference tournament berth. The real culprits in that slide were not the defeats to Princeton, but a home loss to Brown and one at Dartmouth.
Continue reading “Penn 71, Yale 55: Quakers Making Own Path To The Palestra”
Devin Cannady’s minutes increased this season, as happens with many players who move from freshmen to sophomores in college basketball. His numbers have not, however. Last season, he torched opponents by shooting 45.6% on three-pointers (48.3% in Ivy League play) and 48.5% overall.
This season, although Cannady moved up from 11.6 to 12.6 points per game, he was shooting 37.9% from behind the arc and 41.0% overall. Amazingly, Princeton was winning anyway, 11 straight heading into Friday night’s game at Yale, which included a game two weeks ago at Harvard in which he was shutout on 0-8 shooting, and a 6-point performance at Penn three days later. In the first meeting against the Bulldogs, Cannady had seven points on 2-11 from the field as Yale nearly stole it before falling 66-58.
Offense isn’t everything, of course, and Cannady has helped the Tigers grab a two-game Ivy League lead in other ways, but there is one conference game that leaps off his stat page: the opener against Brown, where Cannady shredded the Bears for 29 points on 10-14 from the field, 7-9 from three. The result was a 97-66 bludgeoning for Princeton that set the tone for what it has done since.
Continue reading “Princeton 71, Yale 52: Complete Performance From Cannady, Tigers”
Last Week in the Ivy League: Princeton survived a pair of scares to stay perfect. Harvard ended Yale’s two-year win streak in New Haven. After homages to The Palestra, the “ZombieQuakers” finally rose. And we reached the halfway point of Ivy play, which means it’s time for our annual per-possession rankings: Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: Midseason Summary”
Some tend to confuse playing slowly with automatically being poor offensively in basketball circles, but there are many, many teams (looking at you TCU, Virginia, and Saint Mary’s) who play deliberately, but are among the most effective offenses in the country. You can’t really put Yale in that category, but while most of the attention went to their defense (33rd and 70th the last two seasons), they have been a very solid offensive team the last three seasons.
Friday against Dartmouth, they again showed why. With the Big Green taking away the perimeter, Yale went to the basket, making 24-of-40 on two-point shots. While senior captain Anthony Dallier was held to 5 points (and only 3 shots), Alex Copeland stepped up with 14 points on 7-12 shooting. With Miye Oni held to 9, Trey Phills stepped up with 10.
Continue reading “Yale 73, Dartmouth 64: Bulldogs Keep Rolling On”
Last Week in the Ivy League: The first full weekend of back-to-backs, and boy did a lot happen. Three games came down to the wire within minutes, including a bananas finish at Harvard. Columbia is the four-seed frontrunner. Yale swept in New York, staying an extra night due to a mid-game power outage. Replay reviews upon replay reviews. The nerdiest trash talk ever. Continue reading “Ivy League Weekly Roundup: The Mania Begins”
Yale has had plenty of opportunities to make excuses this season if it wanted. Loss of three starters (all post players) to graduation? Sure. Preseason Ivy League Player of the Year Makai Mason (who only scored 31 in an NCAA upset of Baylor last March) gone with a broken foot in the preseason? Yeah, that works. Teams and opposing crowds taking aim at the current kings of the Ivy League? Why not? Letdown after finally breaking through to the NCAA Tournament after 54 years? Could make a case.
Except Yale doesn’t just not want to hear it, they’re taking those potential alibis and shoving them down the throat of the Ivy League in 2016-17. With a hard-fought, but impressive 87-78 win at Columbia, the Bulldogs are not only 4-1 in conference play, but if it gets a win Saturday night in Ithaca over Cornell, would be 5-1 with six of their remaining eight regular season contests in the friendly confines of Lee Amphitheater, where all the Bulldogs have done is won 21 straight games.
If you’re surprised that Yale looks like it will be in the Ivy League hunt once again until the end, they’re not. And they’re curious why you would be.
Continue reading “Yale 87, Columbia 78: Yes, Bulldogs Look Like Ivy Contenders”
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