For the Ivy League, winter has officially ended, as the three teams left dancing in their NCAA Tournaments—Yale and Cornell men’s hockey and the Big Red men’s basketball —all bowed out last weekend. So now, we at The Back Page can turn our attention to the spring season, with renewed rivalries, national powerhouses, and rainouts. Lots and lots of rainouts.
Let’s take a quick look around the Ivies.
MEN’S LACROSSE
Two weeks into Ivy play, the men’s lacrosse standings look just as predicted. Powerhouses Cornell and Princeton sit atop the standings with identical 2-0 records, Brown is third at 1-0, and Harvard is in the middle of the pack at 1-1.
The Crimson takes a break from the Ancient Eight this weekend, hosting Duke in Friday’s night game, but a pair of unbeatens—the Tigers and Bears (oh my!)—will clash at Gillette Stadium as part of the New England Lacrosse Classic on Saturday. The Big Red and Dartmouth will also tangle in Foxborough, while the Bulldogs and Penn, both winless in Ivy play, meet in New Haven.
WOMEN’S LACROSSE
With four games left in conference play, a narrow 11-10 loss to Brown on Saturday has put Harvard women’s lacrosse in a four-way tie for fourth place. The Crimson is headed to rival Yale—another 1-2 Ivy team—on Saturday, and the victor gains some important ground towards making the Ivy Tournament at season’s end.
The Quakers continue to be a powerhouse, sitting sixth nationally and atop the Ancient Eight standings with a 3-0 conference record. But the Big Green, which shocked then-No. 6 Syracuse with a 17-10 win last week, has now cracked the top 10 as well, landing at No. 9 in the polls.
BASEBALL
The five-week Ivy marathon opens on Saturday, with each team playing in a pair of non-division doubleheaders. Heading into the conference season, only one squad has a winning record—the Bulldogs, sitting at 11-6-1 after going 2-1 in their weekend series with the New York Institute of Technology. Yale opens Ancient Eight play at Columbia and Penn this weekend.
Meanwhile, Harvard—currently 6-11, a vast improvement over the last two dismal preseasons—heads to Cornell and Princeton for its weekend set. The Big Red, last year’s Gehrig Division champion, dropped three of four at Army last weekend, while the Tigers lost three of four at Santa Clara.
SOFTBALL
Ancient Eight softball also heats up this weekend with the beginning of conference play, and like their male counterparts, the Crimson women come into the weekend fresh off a pair of Sunday wins. Harvard will hit the road to take on Princeton on Friday and defending Ivy champion Cornell—12-7 on the season so far—on Saturday.
Crimson co-captain Melissa Schellberg, who is also a Crimson sports editor, was named the conference Player of the Week today.
But there’s one other team in Ivy softball that boasts a winning non-conference record, and that’s the Bears, a squad that finished in the basement of the North Division a year ago. Will Brown have the juice to make noise in Ivy play? The team faces the Quakers and the Lions this weekend.
