The "heavies" of Ivy League men's basketball played their first conference contests of the season last weekend, with predictable results.
Penn and Princeton spent last Friday night dissecting Columbia and Cornell. They then swapped opponents the next nigh and won again, albeit by much narrower margins.
Also on Saturday Brown and Yale rematched their game from a week before that Yale had won 67-53 in New Haven. This time the venue was Providence, and once again the home team emerged victorious.
Penn 63, Columbia 37
The gang from West Philly came to New York City and gave Columbia an old fashioned beating. The Quakers mugged the Lions 10 times, stealing that many balls among the 15 turnovers their defense created.
Penn took a remarkably one-sided 32-9 lead into the locker room at halftime and finished the job with an even second half. The Quakers opened the game with a 16-0 run, not allowing their overmatched opponents to get on the board until 11:02 had elapsed in the first half.
Senior guards Michael Jordan and Matt Langel led the Quakers with 13 and 10 points on combined nine-for-16 shooting. Freshman forward Ugonna Onyekwe also scored 10 points and pulled down 11 rebounds and center Geoff Owens had 12 boards.
For the Lions -- who were outrebounded 38-20 and outshot .471-.311 -- Craig Austin led the scoring with 13 points. No other Columbia player dropped more than six points.
The loss was the Lions' first Ivy defeat of the season.
Princeton 59, Cornell 44
The Tigers traveled to Ithaca and, like Penn, parlayed a big halftime lead into a big victory. Princeton led 30-15 at the break and would not allow the Big Red back into the game, winning by the same 15-point margin.
Junior guard C.J. Chapman -- an unlikely star with a 7.5 point per game average -- led the Tigers with 19 points on seven-for11 shooting. Freshman guard Spencer Gloger scored 11 points though he did turn the ball over five times.
For the game Princeton shot .556 from the floor to Cornell's .290. Although the Red outrebounded Princeton 37-23 and made 12 steals, they could not overcome their poor shooting.
Point guard Wallace Prather led Cornell with 14 points, but had four turnovers and no assists. Forward Keirian Brown scored 10 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in another solid performance off the bench.
Brown 76, Yale 68
The Bulldogs wasted a 29-point, 13-rebound performance by Neil Yanke in dropping their first Ivy contest of the season. For Brown, Earl Hunt also scored 29 points and three other players finished in double digits.
The difference in the game was the success of the Bears' outside shooting, as they made seven of 15 three-pointers while Yale failed to connect on any of its seven trey attempts. The extra points made up a deficit in rebounding and field goal percentage.
Brown's Josh Meyer scored 11 points. Alaivaa Nuualiitia and Jesse Wood had 10.
For Yale Onaje Woodbine poured in 16.
Yale's loss dropped them into a third place tie with Brown at 3-1 in the Ancient Eight.
Penn 50, Cornell 47
Although Penn led throughout the first half and early in the second period, Cornell came back to take several leads and put a scare into the League-favorite Quakers.
An 11-4 run after halftime gave the Big Red their first lead of the game with 16:30 left. Cornell led with just over four minutes remaining, but Penn held its hosts scoreless for the rest of the game while making free throws down the stretch to pull away.
Michael Jordan scored a game-high 18 points.
Cornell's Prather had 10, as did Keirian Brown. The Red's leading scorer for the season, Ray Mercedes, led the team with 12 points.
The loss dropped Cornell into a last place tie in the Ivy League with Dartmouth at 0-4. Penn's 2-0 record is good for a first place tie with Princeton.
Princeton 53, Columbia 46
Penn and Princeton mirrored each other's play on Saturday just as on Friday -- the Tigers gave up a small halftime lead early in the second half, but came back to win behind a command performance by its star player.
The Tigers' king of the jungle, sophomore center Chris Young, knocked down 21 points and added seven assists, six rebounds and five steals. Young hit two hook shots among a 14-2 Princeton run midway through the second half that put his team in the lead for good.
Craig Austin again led the Lions with 24 points, but it was not enough as Columbia trailed by no fewer than four points in the game's last minutes.
C.J. Chapman came back to earth after his Friday breakout, scoring seven points in 39 minutes. Gloger only scored nine points, but only turned the ball over twice.
Columbia fell into fifth place at 2-1 Ivy, a half game ahead of 2-2 Harvard.
