Big Red Leads Ancient Eight with Four Games Remaining

With the end of the season a short two weeks away, this weekend’s games further established the Cornell Big Red women’s basketball team (9-1 Ivy) as the dominant leader of the conference.

Winning against Yale (5-5 Ivy) 74-64 on Friday, and routing the flailing Brown Bears (1-9 Ivy), 65-41, on Saturday, the Big Red continued on its eight-game winning streak, making it an increasingly difficult task for any team to surpass it in the coming weeks.

The Columbia Lions (6-4 Ivy) split games this weekend, defeating Brown handily on Friday, 81-55, before falling to Yale on Saturday, 76-59. Against the Bears on Friday, the Lions were at their best, leading by up to 26 points in a game that saw 10 different players score. Going into Saturday’s game against the Bulldogs, with a 6-3 record in the Ivy League, the Lions had matched the best record in conference standings in the history of the program.

Their second loss of the weekend, though, dropped Columbia to fourth place in the standings, now at 6-4 in the Ancient Eight, behind the Dartmouth Big Green (7-3 Ivy), who defeated both Penn (1-8 Ivy), 62-47, and Princeton (2-7 Ivy), 72-60, in two away games this weekend.

Closely matching Dartmouth’s dominant performance this weekend was the Harvard Crimson, who defeated Princeton, 65-51, on Friday, and Penn by 22 points, 76-54, on Saturday. The Crimson’s dominant play was greatly aided by junior Katie Rollins, who won Ivy League co-player of the week by shooting an impressive 76.2 percent from the floor and averaging over 20 points in each of her two games.

Rollins shared her title with Yale sophomore Melissa Colborne, who also had a remarkable week, posting 20 points against the dominant Big Red and 22 points against the Lions.

While the weekend brought no real upsets, it did create tension within the ranks of the league, as it will be increasingly difficult for any team to surpass the Big Red in its bid for a conference championship and in its quest to get automatic entry to the NCAA tournament, which is awarded to the conference champion.

Harvard will need to defeat the Big Red this weekend to put it into a tie for first place. Dartmouth, like Harvard, will need to beat Cornell, but will need some help from another team.

In order for the Lions to have a shot at the title, they are going to have to depend on their two other biggest foes in the conference, Harvard and Dartmouth, to stop the Big Red’s winning streak next week in away games in Cambridge and Hanover. Then, all three of those teams will have to lose the rest of their remaining games. The Light Blue will then have to win its final four games against Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Penn.