Women's Basketball 22-23

[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.

[billhoward]

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.

[mountainred]

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.

[billhoward]

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.

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.

[RichH]

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?

[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.

[scoop85]

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.

[billhoward]

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.

[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.

[Ken711]

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.

[billhoward]

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. https://www.golocalprov.com/sports/brown-cuts-11-varsity-sports-mens-track-and-cross-country-among-eliminated  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

[Weder]

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.

[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. https://www.golocalprov.com/sports/brown-cuts-11-varsity-sports-mens-track-and-cross-country-among-eliminated  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.

[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.

[scoop85]

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.