Injuries plague Ivy basketball

While all of the Ivy League women’s basketball teams likely have dealt with injuries this season, some squads have been hit harder than others. Three in particular—Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale—stand out from the rest.

The Champion Suffers a Loss
Princeton went 14-0 in league play last season and returned all of its starters this year, giving the Tigers a clear path to another Ivy title—a clear path, that is, until Princeton lost its superstar.
Sophomore forward Niveen Rasheed, Princeton’s best player and arguably the Ivy League’s best player, suffered a season-ending knee injury on Dec. 29. According to a Jan. 11 press release from Princeton Athletic Communications, Rasheed tore her right ACL in the Tigers’ 67-61 victory over Davidson.

“The loss of Niveen is clearly an obstacle,” Princeton head coach Courtney Banghart said in the Ivy women’s basketball midseason media teleconference on Jan. 11. “Niveen is so full of talent and dedication and is such a fierce competitive spirit.”

Rasheed, the reigning Ivy Rookie of the Year, was averaging 16.4 points and 7.3 rebounds per game—marks that would rank second in their respective categories among Ivy players were Rasheed still healthy.

Though Princeton is an impressive 6-1 without Rasheed, its one loss came in Ivy play. The Tigers dropped a 73-67 decision to Harvard (5-0 Ivy) on Feb. 4. The defeat was just the fourth of the season for Princeton (15-4, 4-1 Ivy) and was the Tigers’ first conference loss since Feb. 21, 2009.

Rasheed’s injury was a major blow to Princeton and to Ivy women’s basketball, but it was not the first injury to a top Ivy player this season. Dartmouth, not Princeton, holds the unfortunate distinction of being the first team to lose an Ivy superstar.

The First Star Falls
Dartmouth senior forward Brittney Smith suffered an injury against Northeastern on Dec. 1, and has been sidelined ever since. Smith was the 2007-08 Ivy Rookie of the Year, the 2008-09 Ivy Player of the Year, and a 2009-10 first-team All-Ivy first team selection. This season, she was averaging 13.1 points and what would be a league-leading 9.7 rebounds per game.

In a Jan. 15 email, Dartmouth Athletic Communications confirmed that Smith had sustained a knee injury and that it was unknown when she would return.

“This is not the team that we expected to have,” Dartmouth head coach Chris Wielgus said in the teleconference.

Wielgus had not only described Dartmouth’s situation at the time but had also, unknowingly, foreshadowed another setback. According to Columbia head coach Paul Nixon, the Big Green lost another starter—freshman point guard Nicola Zimmer—to an injury at Harvard on Jan. 15. Zimmer has not played since that game. Dartmouth Athletic Communications did not respond to emails inquiring about Zimmer’s injury.

Dartmouth struggled when Smith and Zimmer were healthy, opening the season with four straight losses. The Big Green then won three consecutive games, however, the last of which was against Northeastern. Dartmouth is 2-10 since that game. The Big Green is 1-4 in Ivy play, with its lone win a 68-65 victory over Penn (1-4 Ivy).

One Team, Several Setbacks
Yale may not have lost a superstar to a season-ending injury, but the Bulldogs have been ravaged by injuries and illnesses this year. In the teleconference, Yale head coach Chris Gobrecht said that her team had competed without two or more of its starters in nearly half of its nonconference games.

One of Yale’s starters—senior guard Yoyo Greenfield, the Bulldogs’ captain—missed 13 games due to a concussion. Greenfield sustained her concussion in practice, when she collided with Yale’s starting point guard, sophomore Megan Vasquez. Vasquez, who was hit in a different part of her head than Greenfield was, missed only two games due to the incident.

Yale’s players have sustained injuries from which recovery entails not only not playing basketball, but also not exercising in general. In a Yale-Brown game televised on the YES Network on Jan. 14, a broadcaster noted that Greenfield was not even able to ride an exercise bike at that point.

“That’s just standard protocol for concussions,” Gobrecht said in a Jan. 27 telephone interview. “It wasn’t necessarily Yoyo’s injury—it’s just that that’s how they treat concussions, that you have to totally rest. And if you have exercise, which causes blood to be pumped to the brain, then that hinders healing.” Greenfield returned this past weekend, but was only able to play 19 minutes.

Freshman starter Janna Graf missed most of Yale’s preseason, as well as its first three games, due to mononucleosis. Like Greenfield, she was unable to stay in shape. Vasquez had surgery over Yale’s winter break to remove her adenoids, which Gobrecht said left her unable to exercise for five days.

While Gobrecht has seen a lot of injuries to her players in her 30-plus years as a college head coach, including a torn ACL in each of the past two years, she had never experienced anything quite like this season.

“Injuries are part of the game,” she said, “but this was kind of a flurry.”

Where Columbia Stands
So, how does Columbia fit into the Ivy injury picture? Fortunately for the Lions, they hardly have a place in it. Senior guard Kathleen Barry suffered concussion-like symptoms after colliding with a UNLV player on Dec. 29, but the injury affected her for only two games. Barry played only 13 minutes against Cal State Bakersfield on Dec. 30 and did not play at all against Lafayette on Jan. 5.

Freshman forward Courtney Bradford became nauseated at halftime in the Lions’ second game against Cornell, but missed only the second half of that game due to her illness. Freshman guard Brianna Orlich banged up a knee against Harvard on Jan. 28, and Bradford sprained an ankle against Dartmouth the following night, but neither one has missed games due to those setbacks.

Still, Nixon acknowledged after the Dartmouth game—the game in which Bradford went down and had to be helped off the court by Nixon and Columbia’s trainer—that the fear of major injuries is always present.

“Any time I go out there, I’m just hoping and praying that it’s not a knee,” Nixon said. “So I’m very, very thankful that it [Bradford’s injury] was not that.”

Ivy League Reaction
Gobrecht perhaps best summed up the sentiment around the league in the teleconference.

“I was just sick to my stomach when I heard about Niveen and Brittney, and that’s really the truth,” she said. “For the league to lose kids of that caliber just makes you very, very sad. It’s just not something you want to see happen to the league, much less their teams.”