Lee Lowenfish

The sports world is abuzz with the soaring popularity of women's basketball. Iowa's remarkable Caitlin Clark has developed a national following. She led the Hawkeyes this past weekend to victory in the Big Ten's post-season tourney at Minneapolis in front of a sold-out arena. By contrast, there are still plenty of seats left for the men's tourney in the same venue starting Wed Mar 13. 

Another example of the growing interest in the women's game came when Steph Curry eagerly engaged in a three-point shot competition with Sabrina Ionescu during the NBA AllStar Game festivities last month.  The WNBA's New York Liberty star held her own against the Golden State Warriors superstar who needed a bevy of late shots to narrowly win the contest.    

Women's college basketball in the New York metro area is also having a banner season. With identical Ivy League records of 13-1, Columbia and Princeton seem destined for a Sat aft Mar 16 5P rubber match for the right to earn the qualifying bid to the NCAA tourney.  (The Ivy League as a whole hasn't yet earned the respect of the tourney selection committee to get a second bid in addition to the league champion.)

The Ivy League tourney this year will take place at Columbia's cozy Levien Gym on 120th Street just east of Broadway.  On Fri Mar 15 at 430P Princeton will have to dispatch 4th place Penn and then Columbia will try to beat Harvard for the third time this season at 730P.  These games will be televised on ESPN+ with the Sat Mar 16 5P final being broadcast on ESPNNEWS.

Based on past record, Harvard is a more formidable opponent than Penn, but if the dream final matchup happens, it will mark the final appearance of Abbey Hsu in her home gym. The great thing about following women's basketball is that you can see the growth of a player from "the kid" - what coach Megan Griffith affectionately called Abbey early in her career - to the polished all-around veteran and candidate for national awards. 

Hsu gets plenty of help from the Henderson sisters from Australia, junior Kitty and first-year Fliss; the versatile junior transfer from Bucknell Cece Collins; and the emerging sophomore front court threats of sophomores Perri Page and Susie Rafiu. Heralded first-year Riley Weiss is also showing signs of becoming an important contributor off the bench. 

Perennial champion Princeton, coached by former UConn star Carla Berube, is led by the formidable powerful rebounder and passer Ellie Mitchell and sharp-shooting guard Kaitlyn Chen. Both, from the standpoint of this Columbia partisan, are fortunately seniors.  Madison St. Rose is another dangerous guard and she is only a sophomore.  

(ESPN2 is televising all the Ivy League men's games from Levien.  Sa Mar 16 at 11A, top-seeded defending champion Princeton plays the refreshing new blood from Brown, and at 2P Yale and Cornell tangle. The final will be on Su Mar 17 at noon.)   

Division III basketball, neither men's nor women's, gets very little press or TV coverage, but coming up this Thursday Mar 14 at 730p is a titanic matchup of undefeated teams, the NYU Violets (29-0) versus the defending D-III champion Transylvania Pioneers (31-0) from Lexington, Kentucky. The Pioneers are carrying a 64-game winning streak into a game that will streamed on NCAA.com/game/6285164.  (Smith from Northampton MA and Wartburg from

Waverly, Iowa, meet in the 5P semi-final but it seems likely that the true championship game will pit the Violets against the Pioneers.)  

The last time NYU lost a game was to Transylvania in last year's Elite Eight, 73-69. It is a testimony to NYU's perseverance that they have remained a constant title contender even though they were without a home gym near campus for almost eight years - the new Paulson Center on Bleecker and Mercer Streets was finally opened for this season on the site of the demolished Coles Field House.

I had the pleasure last weekend of seeing the Violets ease into the Final Four with convincing victories over the Hardin-Simmons Cowgirls from Abilene, Texas and the University of Scranton Lady Royals. Before the first game of the Friday doubleheader, a Brass Quintet from the NYU music school gave a no-frills but stirring rendition of the National Anthem.  They went two better before the Saturday final by delivering a septet version of the Anthem.  

If you are wondering where I got the title for this blog, it came from the saying on Scranton's warm-up T-shirts:  "Every Rep Every Drill Every Time". 

The slogan worked well on Friday when they eliminated the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays from Baltimore.

The Royals needed more than a slogan on Saturday when they tangled with NYU.  After a tight first period, NYU pulled away to a 14-point half-time lead and eased their way to a 73-55 victory.

Confident coach Meg Barber, a 2002 NYU graduate now in her 6th at the helm, is proud of her squad's versatility on offense and defense.  Don't blame her when she can send out such potent front court players as shot-blocking whiz senior Natalie Bruns; graduate transfers point guard Megan Bauman and forward Morgan Morrison; and sharpshooting junior guard from Mendham NJ Belle Pellecchia.  

Once again you can stream the game Th Mar 14 at 730P on ncaa.com/game/6285164.  And here's one more shout-out to NY metro area teams having great seasons:  The Fairfield Stags (yes, a women's team named Stags!) went 20-0 in MAAC conference play as they head to their conference tourney and beyond. The Sacred Heart Pioneers, winners of the Northeast Conference, are also heading to playoffs with dreams of more March Madness and beyond. 

And here's an idea to broaden women's basketball interest.  How about all you teams with Pioneers nicknames start a contest to come up with more original and livelier names.  Say you heard the idea here. 

More on baseball and movies and music next time.  But I wanted to give women's hoops deserved love.  Here's to good health for every team and some great competition ahead.   And as always, stay positive, test negative, and take it easy but take it.

At this time of year, I often muse about what I would have done if I had been a parent with a child born on February 29. What would I tell him/her during the other three years? I hope without being too heavy about it, I would explain that keeping the equinoxes and solstices in sync with the calendar is important and you don't want to start summer in July.

I couldn't ask, of course, long gone figures how they dealt with Feb 29.  People like Pepper Martin, sparkplug of the Gashouse Gang Cardinals, or Al Rosen, Cleveland's sllugging third baseman & later MLB general manager, or songstress Dinah Shore. I didn't have the access to call Tyrese Halliburton, 23, breakout star guard of Indiana Pacers, or Bligh Madris, 28, trying to make the Tigers in spring training and with that delightful name I hope he does. 

Happily, I think I'll remember the Feb 29, 2024 Leap Day as a special day. Because I went down to New York University's dormitory-athletic facilities building in the former Palladium Theater on E 14th Street for the official opening of the Branca Family baseball training facility.  

After a 40-year lapse without varsity baseball, NYU started playing Division III ball in 2015 but the team lacked convenient space to train. They had been traveling all over the city to find places to practice.

Enter John (Gregory) Branca, a prominent Hollywood entertainment lawyer who represents Bob Dylan, the estates of Michael Jackson and Otis Redding. Smokey Robinson, and many other notable artists.  John is the nephew of Ralph Branca, the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher and NYU baseball star who also played on the school's basketball team.

John's father, John R. Branca, two years older than Ralph, was a good athlete too, but he served four years on an aircraft carrier during WW II and never enjoyed a pro career.  John R. instead went to NYU on the G.I. Bill and wound up getting two degrees from his alma mater. 

He stayed close to baseball by running local athletic programs in the Branca family home town of Mount Vernon.  Among the future stars who profited were Ken Singleton, originally a Met and then a great Oriole, and basketball's stalwarts Gus and Ray Williams, the former Knick, and Rodney McCray. He was the kind of community-oriented person who saw that lights were put on the playground courts so kids could play at night.  John R. also served as a state assemblyman and later was New York State Boxing Commissioner. 

When John Gregory Branca learned from his son Dylan Gregory Branca, a sophomore pitcher, of the team's travel woes, he acted swiftly. The result is a handsome state-of-the-art 4,400 sq. ft. facility with 3 mounds, 2 batting cages, and also the analytic prerequisites these days of Rapsodo and Trackman. 

John Branca earlier gifted the UCLA baseball program with similar facilities at the Jackie Robinson Field near the campus.  Ralph Branca and Jackie Robinson were teammates and close friends and John Branca has kept that connection alive as a member of the board of directors of the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Things are looking up for NYU athletics.  The baseball Violets have started the season 4-0 and their home season this year will be played at the handsome independent league Staten Island Ferry Hawks stadium just a short walk from the ferry. 

Both NYU basketball teams are in their Division III playoffs.  The men are hosting Husson College from Maine F March 1 at 645p with a game on Saturday if they win.  The women open on the road also on Mar 1 playing Millsaps College from Mississippi at DeSales College in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. They could host more games the weekend of Mar 8-9 if they win F and Sa.

Meanwhile the Columbia women Lions won a thrilling 67-65 victory over their nemesis, the Princeton Tigers, last Saturday Feb 24 before an enthusiastic packed Levien Gym. They are tied for the Ivy League lead with Princeton with 3 games to play The Ivy League tournament this year will be hosted by Columbia starting March 15.

You can always tell a good NYC crowd when it arrives real early - it was Senior Day for the outstanding Abbey Hsu and her teammates Paige Lauder and Nicole Stephens - and the cheers of "De-fense! De-fense!" happened early and often.     

Turning back to baseball, let me close this post with a remarkable quotation from super-agent Scott Boras after the Cubs' signing his client Cody Bellinger to a "measly" 3-year $80 million contract a few days ago.  As reported by Jesse Rogers on a Feb 28 espn.com post, Boras said:  "Free agency is like a turkey and a thermometer.  You have to go in, see what the temperature is, evaluate it."  

Quite a remarkable metaphor from an agent, given how many human turkeys have been lavished with big contracts by panicked owners.  Don't get me wrong.  I wish Bellinger well - after all, his father is Clay Bellinger from Oneonta, NY, home of the late lamented Oneonta Yankees owned by Sam Nader and his talented family. And Clay was the kind of grinder who won 3 World Series rings, 2 with the Yankees and 1 with the 2002 California Angels.

That's all for now.  Always remember:  Take it easy but take it, and stay positive test negative.