Ivy Madness: Penn and Princeton Share Ivy Championship

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -  In 2017, the inaugural year of the Ivy basketball tournament for men and women the Penn women claimed an outright regular season title and then rid the world of any controversy by defeating Princeton, the team right behind them, at home in The Palestra for the tourney’s grand prize, an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

The Tigers, though, did get a nice consolation prize the next night bey becoming the first Ivy women’s team to earn an an at-large bid when the NCAA 64-team field was announced.

A year later, both teams were again 1-2 but in reverse order with Princeton claiming both trophies ahead of Penn and then easily defeating the Quakers for the  automatic bid as well as the sixth title in nine seasons — Penn the other three — for Ivy supremacy in the ongoing Courtney Banghart era running the Tigers and Mike McLaughlin era guiding Penn.

And now for the something slightly different in year three of the tourney and completing a decade of excellence for the Guru’s two local Division I teams who are part of the Ancient Eight they have a new description heading into next weekend’s four-team NCAA pursuit at Yale’s John J. Lee Amphitheater down the road in New Haven, Conn.— Ivy women’s co-champions.

With an hour of everyone’s lives about to be annually lopped off by the onset of Daylight Saving Time Saturday night, Princeton and Penn within an hour of each other quickly settle the issue in an unsettled manner as separate but equal rulers of the regular season.

First Princeton paid back Yale for the Bulldogs’ earlier upset of the Tigers in Jadwin Gym in central New Jersey that temporarily put Banghart’s group two games down in the standings behind Penn courtesy also of an Ivy schedule opening surprise triumph by the Quakers at Jadwin Gym in early January.

 A night after Penn rallied from a four-point deficit in the fourth quarter to stay in the deadlock at the top with a 65-56 win Friday at Yale, the Tigers thumped the Bulldogs 80-68 making next weekend a truly neutral site by sending the home team into the stands as spectators awaiting a potential at-large bid to the WNIT.

On Friday, Princeton had little difficulty here in Brown’s Pizzitola Sports Center winning 88-68 over the last place Bears.

Meanwhile, Penn Saturday then easily made it a lost weekend for Brown, other then the celebration of both teams’ seniors — a nice gesture by the home team – by blasting the Bears 75-53 to seal the co-champions label at the top of the standings.

“I just wanted this for them and to share this moment with this group,” McLaughlin said. “This is a pretty special group that found ways in every situation they’ve been in.”

On Friday, Harvard claimed third with an 80-38 wipeout of Cornell at home in the Crimson’s Lavietes Gym in Cambridge, Mass.

The triumph also enabled longtime Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith to become the 20th Division I coach to reach 600 career victories.

Still, the issue of the fourth participant next weekend needed to be decided Saturday and that came about with Cornell getting off the mat from its thrashing 24 hours earlier to beat Dartmouth 57-47 at the Big Green’s Ledee Gym in Hanover, Mass.

Meanwhile, in Saturday’s other result, Harvard beat visiting Columbia 69-56.

Thus in the final pecking order Cornell came out ahead of a three-way Yale, Dartmouth, and Big Red tie for fourth to claim its first Ivy tourney participation.

So, if this were the pre-tourney era then Penn and Princeton would have to have a playoff at a neutral site for the automatic bid.

Thus, to meet again for the NCAA bid next Sunday in the championship for the third straight year is almost like business as had been usual.

But on Saturday, Princeton will first meet Cornell in one semifinal at 6 p.m. while the Quakers at 8:30 p.m. will have to play a Harvard team that beat them in double overtime at home which became the dealbreaker because of a Princeton sweep of the Crimson, contested on the court the second time as it was, that gave the Tigers the number one seed.

The Penn women will again in the building have their male counterparts, the Ivy winners a year ago, who earned the fourth and final tourney men’s slot Saturday in The Palestra back in Philadelphia beating Brown. 

Back here, in terms of Penn or Princeton, both are guaranteed a WNIT bid for the one who does not earn an NCAA trip or likely, if neither ousts Harvard, one will be the WNIT automatic qualifier and the other would be a WNIT at-large invitee. Likewise, an WNIT at-large bid likely could to go to the Crimson as a consolation bid if they fall short of a title.

As it was determined here that Penn was well on the way to victory, some Quakers fans in the stands watching videos on their phones the Tigers prancing around with the regular season trophy wondered , well, then how come there was no standby hardware up here.

The Ivy home office answered that responding to the Guru with a policy statement that in the event of a tie, if one team was the defending champion, they would be allowed to be seen with the trophy for presentation purposes.

However, banners were unfurled in both venues for the purpose of celebratory photos and in a departure from traditional protocol in terms of winning a title on the road, though no ladder climbing was involved, Brown coach Sarah Behn gave the ok for one of the baskets to be lowered in the postgame celebration for the purpose of allowing to Quakers to engage in some net cutting.

At the start of the game, McLaughlin had agreed for Brown to have an injured senior Bears player at the start be involved in an in-bounds play and then a timeout was called to have her quickly removed.

So first the final regular standings look like this though as of this writing with no official ivy email yet to arrive in the pre-dawn hours to say who is fifth and sixth the pecking order is:

Princeton 20-9 12-2

Penn 22-5 12-2

Harvard 16-11 9-5

Cornell 12-13 6-8

Dartmouth 13-14 6-8

Yale 16-13 6-8

Columbia 8-19 4-10

Brown 9-21 1-13

As for the game detail both nights in terms of final statistics both nights for both teams, in Princeton’s win here at Brown, the Bears’ Shayna Mehta put up a game-high 27 points while Princeton’s Carlie Littlefield scored 23, reigning Ivy player of the year Bella Alarie, a likely repeat winner, had 19 points, 14 rebounds, four steals, three blocked shots, and three assists, Taylor Baur had her first double double with 13 points and 13 rebounds, and Sydney Jordan had 10 points.

On. Saturday in the arena part of Yale’s Payne Whitney Gym, Alarie, who missed the front end of the season rehabbing a broke shoulder, had 31 points and 13 rebounds, Littlefield scored 20, Gabrielle Rush dealt 10 assists and and Baur grabbed 10 rebounds.

Roxy Barahman had 17 points and 10 assists for Yale.

Princeton got to its ongoing penthouse finish losing seven in a row after an opening win at Rider due to Alarie’s injury as well as several other starters also out and then as the Tigers got healthy, went 19-2, and finished on a 10-game win streak.

Penn, meanwhile, on Friday at Yale led early but an ongoing Bulldog’s 10-0 run knotted the score at 40-40 after three periods and the end of the run at the start of the fourth quarter enabled them to go ahead 44-40.

But the Quakers responded to go back in front and a 10-0 run of their own enabled them to finish out and avoid dropping a game standings-wise behind the Tigers, which could put them out of the championship claim.

Eleah Parker, an all-Ivy and reigning rookie of the year, had a career-high 29 points with 16 rebounds and four blocks and she also tied a career mark converting with nine foul shots. Phoebe Sterba scored 11 points and connected on three triplets.

Fighting a team that needed to win to be in its own building for next week’s championship, Penn committed only six turnovers but forced 15 miscues and collected 15 points out of the defensive mayhem.

Yale’s Baranham was held to 14 points, shooting 5-for-19.

Then here Saturday night, Parker followed her 29-point performance with 26 more against Brown, while Princess Aghayere scored 16, and Sterba tied a program mark with seven three-pointers on the way to 23 points. She shot 8-for-12 overall from the field and 7-for-11 from beyond the arc.

Mehta had 16 points for Brown while Erika Steeves had 11 points and Taylor Will scored 10.

Penn now has six Ivy crowns and four in the last six seasons as part of the McLaughlin era.

It was a surprise year for the Quakers in having lost key players in graduation while Princeton was an overwhelming preseason Ivy pick with Penn coming in second.

“We just progressed,” McLaughlin said. “We just lost so much from the year before in terms of what played and what was sitting behind them.”

But the Quakers rolled early, played their second game at defending NCAA champion and then-No. 1 Notre Dame respectable and ultimately also shared a third Big Five crown at 3-1. 

“Kendall (Grasela), Phoebe Sterba, Princess, obviously Ashley (Russell) and Eleah had good years and great years  the last couple, they have been special,” McLaughlin said.

“We were locked in (this past weekend). The grit and the grind we talk about all the time is huge. You can’t win this without extra possessions and toughness.”

As for next weekend, McLaughlin said, “We will be ready. We won’t bring that up until Monday. You don’t get a chance to always do this. This is a great league, a challenging league, great travel and academics, but we will put a full stop for now and savor the moment. 

“It’s hard to believe. There’s a lot of basketball to be played but we’re still in the moment. But what they accomplished to this point is incredible.”

Russell, a senior, never had a doubt that Penn could maintain the excellence of recent seasons despite the loss of such players through graduation from last year as post presence Michelle Nwokedi and all time career assist leader Anna Ross.

“People would ask us at the beginning of the season, how are you going to recover from losing four starters, how are you going to come back from losing such great players, how are you guys going to be without your graduation seniors from last year,” Russell said.

“Like no one really thought to ask about our new team, we’re just a whole new team and I’m really proud to see this group get a championship. I’m a senior and I couldn’t ask for a better way to finish my senior year,” she continued.

Clutching piece of the cut basketball net, Russell smiled, saying, “We’re looking forward to next weekend but we’re really going to celebrate this. We have great chemistry. We’ve become so close off the court that has been translating on the court.

“I’m just so proud of everyone, 1 through 18, the managers, the coaches. It was really a team effort, especially this weekend. It was really hard last night and just finishing out tonight was a great way to end the year,” she said.

“Maine (a loss at the finish at Navy) was one we could definitely want to have back but it was a great lesson to learn having such a close game to see what would happen in that type of environment and then Notre Dame was such a great experience and we hung with them for a while.

“That sent a message to a lot of people, we’re a whole new team and  we’re better for it.”

As for Brown giving her classmates another senior night at the start of the evening particulars, Russell said, “They’re a very special team. I know a lot of their girls in their senior class. They’re great people and they have a lot of class on the court and even off the court. And I’m just happy to celebrate with my seniors. 

“That was a very nice gesture letting us cut the nets, I didn’t want to rub it in their faces but I’m grateful for getting that opportunity.”