A text popped up on Brown senior forward Alyssa Moreland’s phone right after the Bears qualified for the Ivy League Tournament on Feb. 27. “Another week of basketball,” her dad, Tim, wrote.
“That’s all you want in life,” Moreland told reporters after Brown’s win over Cornell that night. “You just want that to keep going … and it’s been a long four years coming.”
That win was the Bears’ eighth in conference play, their most since going 12-2 in 2005-06. And they erased some of the demons of the last two years, when they’d tied with Penn for fourth place but missed the four-team tournament on tiebreakers.
Head coach Monique LeBlanc had given her staff firm instructions heading into the Cornell game: though the Bears needed both a win and a Penn loss to qualify for Ivy Madness that night, they were not to check the Penn score midgame.
Once Brown closed out its win, LeBlanc headed to the back of the handshake line. “Do you want to know now?” operations coordinator James Logan Hatch asked her. As he delivered the news that Harvard had beaten Penn, a graphic flashed across the Bears’ video board reading, “Clinched.”
“It was all at once, and it was perfect,” LeBlanc told The IX Basketball on March 5.
This will be the Bears’ first Ivy League Tournament appearance since the inaugural tournament* in 2017. LeBlanc wasn’t at Brown then; she arrived in April 2020, following two straight losing seasons.
LeBlanc brought a two-three zone defense that had worked well for her at Merrimack, and she set out to recruit players who could elevate Brown’s talent and contribute to its new culture. She knew it wouldn’t be an immediate turnaround, but she asked each class to inch the program forward.
“It has been the whole idea of ‘shavings make a pile,’ and continuing to focus on growth, as opposed to just the destination,” LeBlanc said. “So I guess it’s … like a series of data points that all kind of are trending upward.”
Defense and rebounding are two of the data points that have moved the needle the most. In LeBlanc’s first season, the Bears ranked in the 26th percentile nationally in points allowed per 100 possessions. They finished the next three seasons in no higher than the 65th percentile. But this season, they rank in the 90th percentile with 82.9 points allowed per 100 possessions.
Similarly, Brown finished LeBlanc’s first four seasons ranked in no better than the 50th percentile nationally in rebounding rate. Each year, the Bears grabbed less than half of all available rebounds. But this season, they’re getting 53.7%, which ranks in the 84th percentile.
Some of that improvement can be traced back to LeBlanc switching to man-to-man as the team’s primary defense ahead of the 2023-24 season. The analytics showed that the Bears’ zone was very effective at defending opponents’ first shot, LeBlanc said. The problem was how many offensive rebounds and second-chance points opponents got.
But changing defenses didn’t immediately fix the rebounding issues. So LeBlanc and her staff doubled down on rebounding this season.
“If we thought we focused on it in the past, we didn’t,” she said. “We’ve tried to just outdo that this year, and I still think we can be even better.”
Brown has also leaned on Moreland and senior forward Ada Anamekwe, who missed half and all of last season, respectively, with injuries. This season, they’re combining to average 15.3 rebounds per game. But the other three starters are having strong rebounding years, too.
“I think it’s a combination of just being veteran, like understanding how to not get punked,” LeBlanc said, “… and we’ve really focused on improving our physicality.”
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LeBlanc also named assistant coach Devon Quattrocchi as her defensive coordinator this season. LeBlanc previously didn’t have offensive or defensive coordinators, but she’s found that it’s given her “a built-in thought partner” on each side of the ball. For Quattrochi, the defense is now “like her baby,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc has a veteran team heading into the Ivy League Tournament, with a starting lineup of four seniors and a junior. Two of those seniors, Moreland and guard Grace Arnolie, were named to All-Ivy teams on Tuesday. But the only person in the program with tournament experience is Hatch, who spent the previous two seasons in operations roles at Columbia.
So leading up to Ivy Madness, LeBlanc planned to have a team meeting to discuss the itinerary, logistics and anything that would feel different than a regular-season conference game, like the abbreviated shootarounds and the giant Ivy League logo at midcourt. She wanted her players to start visualizing it, so it would feel a little familiar. (Some of them also saw the large crowds last season, when Brown hosted the tournament but didn’t qualify.)
LeBlanc’s message leading into the tournament will focus on how the pressure is off the Bears now. And as the No. 4 seed playing in the first semifinal, if they can spring an upset, they’ll even get a few extra hours of rest than if they were the No. 3 seed.
“We have felt for a couple of years the harsh part of the Ivy League Tournament,” LeBlanc said. “… The upside is, once you’re in, it’s two games. All these other conference tournaments are, you might have to go win three or four games. … There’s a lot of opportunity to spin it positive.”
The Ivy League Tournament semifinals will take place on Friday at Cornell in Ithaca, New York. No. 1 seed Princeton will play No. 4 seed Brown at 4:30 p.m., and No. 2 seed Columbia will play No. 3 seed Harvard at 7:30 p.m. The championship game will be on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. Harvard is the defending champion, but Princeton had won the previous five.
Here’s what else to know and watch for in Ivy Madness. Read every section or skip to your favorite:
- Princeton is still relying on offense, but its defense is improving
- Columbia’s hunger for a title
- Can Harvard channel the magic from a familiar spot?
- Which type of experience will prevail?
- Tournament odds
Princeton is still relying on offense, but its defense is improving
Heading into this season, Princeton head coach Carla Berube talked about getting her defense back to its usual level of smothering. Since she was hired in 2019, the Tigers have finished in the top 10 nationally in points allowed per 100 possessions three times. But they ended last season ranked 98th, which wasn’t good enough for Berube.
However, the strength of this year’s Princeton team has indisputably been offense. The Tigers are scoring 107.7 points per 100 possessions, which ranks 22nd nationally and first in the Ivy League. They are one of only seven teams in the country to have five players average at least 9.8 points per game and start at least 23 games each. Every starter earned All-Ivy honors on Tuesday, led by first-team selection Madison St. Rose and second-teamers Skye Belker and Fadima Tall.
Princeton’s defense, on the other hand, is allowing 89.4 points per 100 possessions, which ranks 163rd nationally and fifth in the league. The Tigers don’t have the rim protection they’ve had in past seasons, and opponents are shooting 41.1% against them, which ranks 243rd nationally.
Yet Princeton’s offense has largely covered up its defensive struggles. Timely scoring and experience helped the Tigers go 12-1 against a brutal nonconference schedule. In Ivy League play, their defense was exposed in two losses to Columbia, but it did enough to push the Tigers to a 12-2 conference record, an outright regular-season title and the No. 1 seed in Ivy Madness.
“Obviously defense is so important, because at the end of the day, it does win games,” St. Rose said on Princeton’s “Get Stops” podcast on Tuesday. “But [we’re] just recognizing that, you know what, even if our defense isn’t the best, we can still be confident in our offense, knowing that … we can score and still be in the game. I think that brings us a lot of confidence. Also, knowing that everyone on the team … can just go on a heater and go on a run and just cause trouble and havoc for the other team.”
The defense has also progressed late in the season. Between Feb. 6 and March 10, Princeton’s defensive rating dropped by 3.2 points per 100 possessions — a significant improvement in just a month. And since Jan. 1, its national ranking on that metric rose from 286th to 163rd.
If Princeton defends at Ivy Madness like it has over the last month, that could be its ticket to continuing to dominate in March. Under Berube, Princeton has gone 19-5 in March, including three Ivy League Tournament titles and two NCAA Tournament victories.
Columbia’s hunger for a title
Columbia has achieved nearly every milestone possible since head coach Megan Griffith was hired in 2016. She has turned a program that was one of the worst in Division I when she arrived to one that won three straight Ivy League regular-season titles from 2023 to 2025. She has also led the Lions to their first two top-25 wins, both over Princeton, and their first NCAA Tournament win as a Division I team.
Yet an Ivy League Tournament trophy has eluded the Lions. That has motivated them all season, along with trying to send seniors Perri Page and Susie Rafiu out with four regular-season championships.
The dream of another regular-season title evaporated on Saturday with a loss to Harvard in the regular-season finale. A frustrated Griffith told reporters postgame that the loss was self-inflicted because her team didn’t play with its usual aggressiveness and cohesion.
“We went to fear,” she said. “So you have to choose in that moment where it’s like, ‘Am I gonna do the hard thing? Am I gonna do the easy thing?’ And the easy thing is to play in fear.”
That defeat was Columbia’s third in conference play, following a shocking home loss to Cornell in its Ivy League opener and a loss at Penn in late January. Columbia didn’t play like itself in those games, either. But Griffith is confident that her players will respond well to the Harvard loss because that’s what they did after both previous losses.
Specifically, they’ve kept sight of their goals but adjusted their expectations of how the path would look. After the Cornell loss, the Lions let go of being undefeated in Ivy play or matching past teams’ accomplishments and just focused on how to make this year’s team championship-caliber.
One challenge was getting basically every player comfortable in new roles. In 2025, Columbia graduated guards Kitty Henderson and Cecelia Collins, who were its leaders and two of its top scorers and passers. Even junior guard Riley Weiss, who led the team in scoring last season and won Ivy League Player of the Year on Tuesday, has had to adjust to getting fewer catch-and-shoot opportunities and facing more defensive pressure this season.
Page, the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year, has stepped into a starring role. Rafiu has had to score more, too. Junior guard Marija Avlijas has taken on more point guard duties without Henderson, and classmate Fliss Henderson returned after missing all of 2024-25 with an injury. Sophomore guards Mia Broom and Nasi Simmons also have bigger roles off the bench.
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When Columbia is clicking, it’s applying pressure on defense and racing back downcourt on offense. It’s getting scoring from multiple people and feeding off its own momentum. But it’s played to that identity only 80% of the time, Griffith believes, which feels familiar from previous seasons.
“To me, 80% ain’t good enough,” she said. “… That [additional] 20% — to 100% — is always the hardest percent. … We always get stuck in this 20%, trying to figure out who we are when our backs are against the wall.”
So the million-dollar question is, can Columbia show its identity for 80 minutes in the Ivy League Tournament? Or will Harvard make Columbia blink again?
Griffith believes the Lions are ready to break through.
“I’m confident we will win, and I’m confident we’ll go to the championship game and win that, too,” she said. “This team is meant to do the next thing. And we just have to believe that we can do it, and we have to stay together.”
Can Harvard channel the magic from a familiar spot?
Harvard is the No. 3 seed for the fourth straight season, which feels like both a blessing and a curse for the Crimson. Over the past three tournaments, they’re 3-2 in that spot, with upset wins in the 2023 semifinals and both rounds in 2025. Those are the only three upsets by any women’s team in the modern Ivy League Tournament.
So Harvard knows how to win a championship from that spot, and maybe it can channel last season’s magic again.
“I try to just kind of keep it steady,” Harvard head coach Carrie Moore told reporters on Tuesday. “You don’t want to do too much, you don’t want to try to change too much, and [you want to] just allow them to have some fun with it. …
“The three seed allows us to just kind of have that chip on our shoulder, be the underdog, show up at our best, give it everything we’ve got, surrender to the outcome and see what happens.”
This year’s team doesn’t have Harmoni Turner, who graduated in 2025 as the Ivy League Player of the Year. Turner scored 44 points against Princeton in the tournament semifinals last year and 24 against Columbia in the final.
But it does have first-team All-Ivy guard Karlee White, who has made one of the biggest scoring jumps in the conference this season; second-team All-Ivy forward Abigail Wright; and the unanimous 2026 Ivy League Rookie of the Year, guard Olivia Jones. It also enters the Ivy League Tournament confident after beating Columbia on Saturday.
That win showed the Crimson they could close out a game against the top two teams after losing nailbiters to Columbia and Princeton in January and having a disappointing showing in the February rematch with Princeton.
“[Moore] always says, ‘Poise through the noise,’” White told reporters after Saturday’s win. “And we’ve been repeating that every single game, every close game that we have. … That sense of control of our emotions, and not reacting but responding, really helps us get through that.”
But Moore, who is in her fourth season at Harvard, is also frustrated to be the third seed again, rather than being able to pass Princeton and/or Columbia. Even with Saturday’s win and past Ivy Madness upsets, Harvard is 6-16 against those two teams in Moore’s tenure.
“I know we’re up against some tough competitors,” Moore said on March 4. “But I think for me, it’s like, I’ve got to do some evaluating after this season of, how can we as a program really take that next step? Because, yeah, there is some frustration on my end of we’ve had these teams, all very different teams in my first four years, but yet we end up in the same spot. … And I think that’s on me as the head coach to really ask those questions and to reflect.”
At the same time, Moore knows she can’t let her players feel that frustration entering the tournament. Instead, she wants them to feel free.
“I don’t want them to feel defeated by any means,” she said. “That wasn’t a feeling that we felt at all last year as a three seed. … You have nothing to lose. No one’s expecting you to win it. And I think we’ve played our best basketball in that position.”
Which type of experience will prevail?
Brown has much more veteran experience than any other team in the field, with six seniors who combine to score almost two-thirds of the team’s points. No other team has more than three seniors or gets as much of their scoring from the class of 2026.
| Number of seniors | % of team’s minutes | % of team’s points | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Columbia | 2 | 25.8% | 32.5% |
| Princeton | 2 | 21.4% | 23.3% |
| Harvard | 3 | 31.4% | 28.5% |
| Brown | 6 | 55.2% | 64.5% |
However, Columbia, Princeton and Harvard all made the NCAA Tournament last season, and they’ve each played for at least one Ivy Madness title in the past two seasons. So they’re stocked with players who have postseason experience.
It sets up an interesting question: Which type of experience will win out?
Griffith took a Columbia team full of postseason rookies to the Ivy League Tournament in 2022, and the Lions have been to every tournament since. She believes that having postseason experience is “absolutely huge.”
“Having been there and taken many players through that, I can tell you that there’s an emotional roller coaster that you go on,” Griffith said on March 3. “And we’re just not going to ride that roller coaster. … We’re going to be ready to attack it just like business as usual.”
But Moore, whose Crimson had less postseason experience than Columbia and Princeton last year, isn’t so sure.
“I would like to say experience matters,” she said on March 4. “But it’s March. March doesn’t care about any of that. …
“As long as [you] show up connected and on the same page and play inspired for 40 [minutes], it’s like, anything can happen. And I think that’s why March is so wonderful, right? … Because stuff like that happens all the time.”
Tournament odds
| Odds that … | No. 1 Princeton beats … | No. 2 Columbia beats … | No. 3 Harvard beats … | No. 4 Brown beats … |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. 1 Princeton | – | 43.6% | 32.6% | 13.0% |
| No. 2 Columbia | 56.4% | – | 38.4% | 15.9% |
| No. 3 Harvard | 67.4% | 61.6% | – | 22.2% |
| No. 4 Brown | 87.0% | 84.1% | 77.8% | – |
*Ivy League women’s basketball also had a postseason tournament from the inaugural season in 1974-75 through 1981-82. The formats varied, but none were the four-team format that the league has today, and none led directly to the NCAA Tournament.
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