Ivy Hoops Roundup: Feb. 7

This weekend’s Ivy basketball results may best be compared to Bill Belichick’s Super Bowl wardrobe: boring and predictable.

Of the eight total Ancient Eight tilts Friday and Saturday, only one game was won by a team with a worse record going in — Yale over Penn, and that can hardly be considered an upset.

So here’s the skinny on what went down this weekend, although you could probably figure it out on your own.

Double trouble. Yale center Greg Mangano recorded two double-doubles in the Elis’ weekend sweep of Penn (4-1 Ivy) and Princeton (2-3).

Saturday’s surprise for Yale (5-1) was arguably sophomore forward Jeremiah Kreisberg, known by his teammates as “The Hebrew Hammer.” After a rough January, Kreisberg racked up six first-half points, had two assists and took two charges on the defensive end against the Tigers.

“I texted Jeremiah last night telling him that I had full confidence in him for the game,” Bulldogs coach James Jones told the Yale Daily News Saturday. Now that’s some good coaching right there.

In a New York minute. Both of Columbia’s games came down to the final minute against Dartmouth and Harvard, with the Lions splitting the results.

Against the Big Green (0-6), the hard fought non-conference wins the Light Blue (2-4) recorded over Elon and Division III Swarthmore finally paid off. Against competition the Lions are accustomed to facing, they avoided an embarrassing loss to the Ivy bottom-feeders when Mark Cisco banked in the winning bucket with under 10 seconds remaining to win, 64-62.

Facing the Crimson (6-0) on Saturday, Columbia again took the game down to the wire, but ultimately fell short, 57-52.

Harvard held the Lions to their second-lowest total of the season. “I would take that every day of the week and twice on Sunday,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker told The Crimson. So would the Quakers and their seventh-ranked defense in the Ivy League.

It’s Miller time. After falling to the Crimson in Cambridge, Mass., Cornell’s 10th straight loss in as many away games, the Big Red must have been happy to realize they would next be playing Dartmouth. (Author’s Note: This might be the most mismatched traveling pair in the history of Ivy Basketball and a source of delight for every Ivy League team.)

One of the top performances of the weekend has to be that of Cornell freshman Shonn Miller, who notched 15 points and 10 rebounds in his third career double-double. His performance earned him Ivy Rookie of the Week honors and helped the team to a 68-59 win.

Swept away. Brown fell twice on its home floor this weekend: Friday to Princeton and Saturday to Penn. Neither game was close for the Bears (1-5), whose only Ivy win thus far came against Dartmouth.

“We just got outplayed from the beginning until the end,” Brown coach Jesse Agel told The Brown Daily Herald. It likely wasn’t the first time he mouthed these words this year.

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