Women's Basketball 22-23

The women's basketball team won't receive too much play on eLynah this winter, especially since it's picked to finish 6th in the Ivies. But the team does deserve a shoutout for beating a winless Hartford team by 51 points (89-38) Monday night. After starting the season 1-3, Cornell has won 5 out of 6, losing only to Rutgers of the Big Ten.
Hartford, meanwhile, is making the transition from Division I to Division III, but is still playing in Division I this season. It was a controversial decision to do so, especially since the announcement was made two years ago after the men's basketball team qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time. The coach who led them to the NCAAs, John Gallagher, resigned the day before Hartford's season opener this year after claiming that the school refused to let the team bring an athletic trainer with them to an away game.

dbilmes
The coach who led them to the NCAAs, John Gallagher, resigned the day before Hartford's season opener this year after claiming that the school refused to let the team bring an athletic trainer with them to an away game.

Cripe! Our son is a prep school AT and he or the other trainer go to away games. Of course when parents are paying Ivy prices for a prep school education, they probably expect a trainer watches after their well-being.

Yeah, Hartford athletics are a mess right now, but you have to respect a team taking care of business like that.

I don't follow the women nearly as much as the men, but they seem to playing well and Ivy womens' teams can make some noise. Princeton flirts with the top 25 annually and I'm pretty sure Columbia won the women's NIT.

mountainred
Princeton flirts with the top 25 annually and I'm pretty sure Columbia won the women's NIT.

There have been two NITs:

Early NIT:
The tournament mattered and was arguably more important than the NCAA tournament.

Bill Bradley
In the 1940s, when the NCAA tournament was less than 10 years old, the National Invitation Tournament, a saturnalia held in New York at Madison Square Garden by the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association, was the most glamorous of the post-season tournaments and generally had the better teams. The winner of the National Invitation Tournament was regarded as more of a national champion than the actual, titular, national champion, or winner of the NCAA tournament.

Sinking NIT:
* 1951, NCAAs expand from 8 to 16 teams
* 1970, Al McGuire spuns NCAA at-large bid for Marquette, plays and wins NIT
* 1971, NCAA requires a team play in the NCAAs if it gets a bid, or be left out of future tournaments
* 1975, NCAA expands to 32 teams, allows >1 bid per league
* 1977, NIT moves early rounds out of Madison Square Garden, lower costs, less national media coverage
* 1980, to 48 teams
* 1983, to 52 teams
* 1985, to 64, pretty much marking the NIT's descent to mediocrity
* 2005, NCAA buys out the NIT and pays the NIT overseer Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) $57 million and its anti-trust claims to go away.
* 2011, NCAAs expand to 68, uses the term "First Four" for the two play-in games, and calls that the first round. All the more reason to believe the C in NCAA stands for cartel.
* 2023, semifinals and finals of the NIT will played other than at MSG. 2023, UNLV; 2024, Butler University.


Columbia women's basketball? Pretty bad over most of its history including the Barnard years. Columbia says its best year ever was 2022, 25-7, advancing as far as the WNIT quarterfinals behind Kitty Henderson, hometown North Curl Curl, Australia.

billhoward

mountainred
Princeton flirts with the top 25 annually and I'm pretty sure Columbia won the women's NIT.

There have been two NITs:

Men’s and women’s?

RichH

billhoward

mountainred
Princeton flirts with the top 25 annually and I'm pretty sure Columbia won the women's NIT.

There have been two NITs:

Men’s and women’s?

and Pre-season and post-season, for both men and women.

I stand corrected that the Lions only made the QF of the women's NIT, but that is still a big climb for that program. Sure the NIT isn't what it was, but I would enjoy any post-season CU hoops.

dbilmes
The women's basketball team won't receive too much play on eLynah this winter, especially since it's picked to finish 6th in the Ivies. But the team does deserve a shoutout for beating a winless Hartford team by 51 points (89-38) Monday night. After starting the season 1-3, Cornell has won 5 out of 6, losing only to Rutgers of the Big Ten.
Hartford, meanwhile, is making the transition from Division I to Division III, but is still playing in Division I this season. It was a controversial decision to do so, especially since the announcement was made two years ago after the men's basketball team qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time. The coach who led them to the NCAAs, John Gallagher, resigned the day before Hartford's season opener this year after claiming that the school refused to let the team bring an athletic trainer with them to an away game.

I don’t think our women’s team will be much of a factor in the Ivies, and frankly Dayna Smith is a mediocre (at best) coach. She struck gold when Meduka came to campus, but the team hasn’t been especially competitive in the league since she graduated.

scoop85
I don’t think our women’s team will be much of a factor in the Ivies, and frankly Dayna Smith is a mediocre (at best) coach. She struck gold when Meduka came to campus, but the team hasn’t been especially competitive in the league since she graduated.

This may be one of the goals of the new athletic director: If men's basketball, lacrosse, ice hockey and soccer make the NCAAs, then the women's teams should have the equivalent opportunities to reach those levels of success.

billhoward

scoop85
I don’t think our women’s team will be much of a factor in the Ivies, and frankly Dayna Smith is a mediocre (at best) coach. She struck gold when Meduka came to campus, but the team hasn’t been especially competitive in the league since she graduated.

This may be one of the goals of the new athletic director: If men's basketball, lacrosse, ice hockey and soccer make the NCAAs, then the women's teams should have the equivalent opportunities to reach those levels of success.

Yes, the women’s teams, with a few notable exceptions like hockey and to a lesser extent, lacrosse, have not performed well over the past decade.

billhoward

scoop85
I don’t think our women’s team will be much of a factor in the Ivies, and frankly Dayna Smith is a mediocre (at best) coach. She struck gold when Meduka came to campus, but the team hasn’t been especially competitive in the league since she graduated.

This may be one of the goals of the new athletic director: If men's basketball, lacrosse, ice hockey and soccer make the NCAAs, then the women's teams should have the equivalent opportunities to reach those levels of success.

I hope another of her goals is for the men's football to reach some level of success.

Ken711
I hope another of her goals is for the men's football to reach some level of success.

a) That goes without saying, so it wasn't noted.
b) The very thought of a new athletic director arriving perhaps led the football team to increase its win total in 2022 by 150%. No other Ivy football team can make that claim. My friends at Princeton are more distraught at (going 8-0 then) losing its final two games by a combined 5 points. It was not Princeton that carried the flag of the Ivy League into the NCAA lacrosse title game. It was however Princeton not Cornell that made the 2022 NCAA women's tournament.

I don't think any athletics department leader, any gender, is going to last long by cutting down sports programs. Players and alumni will lobby for reversal. See what happened at Brown in 2020 when Bruno eliminated 11 sports (some reduced to club status) in order to be more competitive, more men's than women's, including men's track, field and cross country (3 sports to the NCAA). They were reinstated, in part because the cuts were seen as disportionately affecting Black students. [www.golocalprov.com] IIRC, Brown won somethning like 3% of all Ivy League championships, when simple math dictates it should be 12.5% in an eight-team league.

#threaddrift

scoop85

billhoward

scoop85
I don’t think our women’s team will be much of a factor in the Ivies, and frankly Dayna Smith is a mediocre (at best) coach. She struck gold when Meduka came to campus, but the team hasn’t been especially competitive in the league since she graduated.

This may be one of the goals of the new athletic director: If men's basketball, lacrosse, ice hockey and soccer make the NCAAs, then the women's teams should have the equivalent opportunities to reach those levels of success.

Yes, the women’s teams, with a few notable exceptions like hockey and to a lesser extent, lacrosse, have not performed well over the past decade.

Softball had a really good run in the late '90s and '00s, and volleyball seemed to be putting it together in the early part of the '00s as well. It'd be great to see those two teams be successful again. Volleyball in particular is drawing huge crowds at the big schools.

billhoward

Ken711
I hope another of her goals is for the men's football to reach some level of success.

a) That goes without saying, so it wasn't noted.
b) The very thought of a new athletic director arriving perhaps led the football team to increase its win total in 2022 by 150%. No other Ivy football team can make that claim. My friends at Princeton are more distraught at (going 8-0 then) losing its final two games by a combined 5 points. It was not Princeton that carried the flag of the Ivy League into the NCAA lacrosse title game. It was however Princeton not Cornell that made the 2022 NCAA women's tournament.

I don't think any athletics department leader, any gender, is going to last long by cutting down sports programs. Players and alumni will lobby for reversal. See what happened at Brown in 2020 when Bruno eliminated 11 sports (some reduced to club status) in order to be more competitive, more men's than women's, including men's track, field and cross country (3 sports to the NCAA). They were reinstated, in part because the cuts were seen as disportionately affecting Black students. [www.golocalprov.com] IIRC, Brown won somethning like 3% of all Ivy League championships, when simple math dictates it should be 12.5% in an eight-team league.

#threaddrift

Sorry Bill, that's incorrect. Penn went from 3-7 in 2021 to 8-2 this Fall. Also, look at Archer's record in actual Ivy League play. From 2021 to 2022, a record of 1-6 to 2-5, compared to Penn's 1-6 to 5-2. Archer's overall record in Ivy League games is a horrid 17-45.

Cornell women's basketball is 173 - 351 in the Ivies. That is really bad. But Columbia is probably even worse.

God bless Columbia: the Mississippi of Ivy sports.

Trotsky
Cornell women's basketball is 173 - 351 in the Ivies. That is really bad. But Columbia is probably even worse.

God bless Columbia: the Mississippi of Ivy sports.

But Columbia dumped their ineffective coach a few years ago and now they are the 2nd best team in the league behind Princeton. Unless we massively outperform expectations, it’s time for us to do the same.

In Dayna Smith's 18 years, Cornell has finished in the top four in the Ivies five times. After watching some of Cornell's games this season, and then watching Princeton, which hasn't lost an Ivy game in 3 seasons, nearly upset UConn on the road last night, there is no comparison of our program and Princeton's. Talent-wise, we're not anywhere near the same level. Princeton hired former UConn player Carla Berube as their coach, after she had been a successful coach at Tufts. And she will probably have her choice of higher D-I jobs over the next few years if she chooses to go that route, although I'm sure Princeton is paying her pretty well. So I guess what qualifies as a successful tenure at Cornell is relative compared to some other schools (we could probably say the same for football).

At Cornell
Smith was named the seventh head women’s basketball coach at Cornell University on June 19, 2002 and became the first Rebecca Quinn Morgan ‘60 Head Coach of Women’s Basketball when the position was endowed in the fall of 2003.

In her 18 seasons at the helm of the Big Red program, Smith has led Cornell to unprecedented success. The winningest coach in the history of the program, and the second-longest tenured active women’s basketball coach in the Ivy League, she has raised the bar for the Big Red, making success an expectation among its players, alumni and fans.

During her head coaching tenure, Smith’s players have earned 31 All-Ivy honors, including one Ivy League Player of the Year award and one All-America selection (Jeomi Maduka '09).

A coach that also stresses excellence in the classroom, Smith's players have been named Academic All-Ivy on 11 occasions, while four student-athletes have earned CoSIDA Academic All-District honors, including Allyson DiMagno ’14, who was a three-time first-team honoree, and Laura Bagwell-Katalinich '20, who received first-team accolades in 2018 and 2019. DiMagno '14 and Bagwell-Katalinich '20 were also named candidates for the Senior CLASS Award in collegiate women's basketball.

Smith Notables
• Smith has coached six of Cornell’s 15 1,000-point scorers, including Samantha Widmann '20, while her former players have set the school records in career points, career rebounds, career assists, career blocked shots, career steals, career 3-point field goal percentage, career free throws made, career free throw percentage, career offensive rebounds, and career defensive rebounds.
• Smith has also coached Cornell’s single season record holders in field goals made, free throws made, free throw percentage, 3-point field goal percentage, rebounds, defensive rebounds, offensive rebounds, and assists.
• With five top-four Ivy League finishes, Smith has surpassed the number of top-half finishes achieved by Cornell in the 20 years prior to her arrival.
• Cornell, chosen to finish eighth in the 2018-19 Ivy League Preseason Media Poll, placed fourth in the conference to advance to the Ivy Tournament for the first time in the three-year history of the league's postseason play.
• With its 7-5 record in non-conference games during the 2019-20 campaign, the Big Red secured a winning non-conference record for the seventh time in the last eight seasons. The team recorded a winning non-conference slate for five-straight seasons from 2012-13 to 2016-17, the longest streak in program history.
• The 2016-17 squad also matched the school record for the most non-conference wins in program history (9), set twice before, both during Smith’s tenure (2007-08, 2014-15).
• In total, the Cornell women's basketball program has posted eight or more non-conference wins 10 times, more than half (6) have come during Smith's time on the bench.
• Led the 2007-08 team to the most successful season in program history, as the Big Red closed out the year with a school record for wins (20), as well as setting records for most conference wins (11), points scored (1,889), 3-pointers made (200) and assists (436) in a season.
• After winning its first-ever Ivy League title in 2007-08, the Big Red earned its first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament.
• The Big Red faced No. 1 Connecticut in the first round of the 2007-08 NCAA tournament. Cornell fell to the Huskies, 89-47, but managed to score more points against UConn than 12 schools during the regular season, including postseason participants Hartford, Old Dominion, Rutgers, South Carolina, Villanova and Virginia.
• Led the Big Red to its only undefeated conference home slate in school history in 2007-08.

dbilmes
In Dayna Smith's 18 years, Cornell has finished in the top four in the Ivies five times. After watching some of Cornell's games this season, and then watching Princeton, which hasn't lost an Ivy game in 3 seasons, nearly upset UConn on the road last night, there is no comparison of our program and Princeton's. Talent-wise, we're not anywhere near the same level. Princeton hired former UConn player Carla Berube as their coach, after she had been a successful coach at Tufts. And she will probably have her choice of higher D-I jobs over the next few years if she chooses to go that route, although I'm sure Princeton is paying her pretty well. So I guess what qualifies as a successful tenure at Cornell is relative compared to some other schools (we could probably say the same for football).

At Cornell
Smith was named the seventh head women’s basketball coach at Cornell University on June 19, 2002 and became the first Rebecca Quinn Morgan ‘60 Head Coach of Women’s Basketball when the position was endowed in the fall of 2003.

In her 18 seasons at the helm of the Big Red program, Smith has led Cornell to unprecedented success. The winningest coach in the history of the program, and the second-longest tenured active women’s basketball coach in the Ivy League, she has raised the bar for the Big Red, making success an expectation among its players, alumni and fans.

During her head coaching tenure, Smith’s players have earned 31 All-Ivy honors, including one Ivy League Player of the Year award and one All-America selection (Jeomi Maduka '09).

A coach that also stresses excellence in the classroom, Smith's players have been named Academic All-Ivy on 11 occasions, while four student-athletes have earned CoSIDA Academic All-District honors, including Allyson DiMagno ’14, who was a three-time first-team honoree, and Laura Bagwell-Katalinich '20, who received first-team accolades in 2018 and 2019. DiMagno '14 and Bagwell-Katalinich '20 were also named candidates for the Senior CLASS Award in collegiate women's basketball.

Smith Notables
• Smith has coached six of Cornell’s 15 1,000-point scorers, including Samantha Widmann '20, while her former players have set the school records in career points, career rebounds, career assists, career blocked shots, career steals, career 3-point field goal percentage, career free throws made, career free throw percentage, career offensive rebounds, and career defensive rebounds.
• Smith has also coached Cornell’s single season record holders in field goals made, free throws made, free throw percentage, 3-point field goal percentage, rebounds, defensive rebounds, offensive rebounds, and assists.
• With five top-four Ivy League finishes, Smith has surpassed the number of top-half finishes achieved by Cornell in the 20 years prior to her arrival.
• Cornell, chosen to finish eighth in the 2018-19 Ivy League Preseason Media Poll, placed fourth in the conference to advance to the Ivy Tournament for the first time in the three-year history of the league's postseason play.
• With its 7-5 record in non-conference games during the 2019-20 campaign, the Big Red secured a winning non-conference record for the seventh time in the last eight seasons. The team recorded a winning non-conference slate for five-straight seasons from 2012-13 to 2016-17, the longest streak in program history.
• The 2016-17 squad also matched the school record for the most non-conference wins in program history (9), set twice before, both during Smith’s tenure (2007-08, 2014-15).
• In total, the Cornell women's basketball program has posted eight or more non-conference wins 10 times, more than half (6) have come during Smith's time on the bench.
• Led the 2007-08 team to the most successful season in program history, as the Big Red closed out the year with a school record for wins (20), as well as setting records for most conference wins (11), points scored (1,889), 3-pointers made (200) and assists (436) in a season.
• After winning its first-ever Ivy League title in 2007-08, the Big Red earned its first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament.
• The Big Red faced No. 1 Connecticut in the first round of the 2007-08 NCAA tournament. Cornell fell to the Huskies, 89-47, but managed to score more points against UConn than 12 schools during the regular season, including postseason participants Hartford, Old Dominion, Rutgers, South Carolina, Villanova and Virginia.
• Led the Big Red to its only undefeated conference home slate in school history in 2007-08.

Bottom line: without Meduka there’s very little success in 20 years.

dbilmes
In Dayna Smith's 18 years, Cornell has finished in the top four in the Ivies five times.

Thinking of Ivy League success disparities, one reason Brown tried to dump 10 sports, more men's than women's, was if I read the numbers right, Brown won 2.8% of Ivy League championships. The odds should be closer to 12.5%.

billhoward
Brown tried to dump 10 sports

Who stopped then?

Trotsky

billhoward
Brown tried to dump 10 sports

Who stopped then?

Title IX. Despite attempting to drop mostly men's sports, the athletic department is still so imbalanced* it pretty much violated Title IX if they cut ANY women's sports, IIRC.

* football, natch, but also probably budget disparities for sports like hockey and basketball too

Trotsky

billhoward
Brown tried to dump 10 sports

Who stopped then?

Among the sports that were defunded were men's track, field (separate sport) and cross-country. Brown adminstration was attacked for defunding sports that drew a strong Black constituency, thus Brown was deemed insensitive, and so Brown reinstated them. Some sports remained reduced to club status, which is a big fall from varsity. Brown appears to be the school that really doesn't do much in sports. It did have that amazing run to the men's lacrosse final four in 2016, then Tewaarton winner Dylan Molloy got hurt.

ugarte

Trotsky

billhoward
Brown tried to dump 10 sports

Who stopped then?

Title IX. Despite attempting to drop mostly men's sports, the athletic department is still so imbalanced* it pretty much violated Title IX if they cut ANY women's sports, IIRC.

* football, natch, but also probably budget disparities for sports like hockey and basketball too

I thought the factory schools got football a carve out of Title IX, and that the ratios were determined from all other sports?

Trotsky
I thought the factory schools got football a carve out of Title IX, and that the ratios were determined from all other sports?

That has been the fond hope of many college football fans because there's nothing on the women's side to offset football. The majority of FBS (Alabama class) do not make money but it's unclear if half don't or 90% don't. If all did, it would help the argument for a carve-out. There is no carve-out for football (that says: equal funding for men and women, except leave football out of the equation).

billhoward

Trotsky
I thought the factory schools got football a carve out of Title IX, and that the ratios were determined from all other sports?

That has been the fond hope of many college football fans because there's nothing on the women's side to offset football. The majority of FBS (Alabama class) do not make money but it's unclear if half don't or 90% don't. If all did, it would help the argument for a carve-out. There is no carve-out for football (that says: equal funding for men and women, except leave football out of the equation).

I meant number of athletes, not budget.

Trotsky

billhoward

Trotsky
I thought the factory schools got football a carve out of Title IX, and that the ratios were determined from all other sports?

That has been the fond hope of many college football fans because there's nothing on the women's side to offset football. The majority of FBS (Alabama class) do not make money but it's unclear if half don't or 90% don't. If all did, it would help the argument for a carve-out. There is no carve-out for football (that says: equal funding for men and women, except leave football out of the equation).

I meant number of athletes, not budget.

Women's Sports Foundation
Under Title IX there are no sport exclusions or exceptions, so football is included under the law. Individual participation opportunities (numbers of athletes participating rather than number of sports) in all men’s sports and all women’s sports are counted in determining whether a school meets the Title IX participation standard.

[www.womenssportsfoundation.org]

Also, Title IX does not require equal total funding for men's and women's sports. It requires proportional spending on scholarships.

scoop85

dbilmes

In her 18 seasons at the helm of the Big Red program, Smith has led Cornell to unprecedented success.

Bottom line: without Meduka there’s very little success in 20 years.

I guess coaching the only league winner in school history makes that statement technically true. But it really is more of an indictment of the program than praise for Smith.