King of Prussia native Megan Griffith readies Columbia’s return to the NCAA women’s tournament
Since taking over the reins at her alma mater, Griffith has become one of the best coaches in the Ivy League, winning three straight Ivy regular-season titles and has the Lions back in the Big Dance.
For the second season in a row, Megan Griffith’s Columbia Lions have earned an at-large bid to the NCAA women’s tournament.
That’s a historic achievement in the Ivy League — it’s just the third NCAA Tournament to feature more than one Ivy team and the first, men’s or women’s, to feature three. Third-seeded Harvard edged out Princeton in the Ivy tournament semifinals and then beat Griffith’s Lions, 74-71. Harvard, as the Ivy champ, earned a No. 10 seed, while No. 11 seed Columbia, the Ivy League regular-season champ, will play in the First Four on Thursday night in Chapel Hill, N.C.
That’s just fine for Griffith, a King of Prussia native who was a three-sport athlete at Villa Maria Academy. Her Lions will face Washington for the opportunity to take on No. 6 seed West Virginia in the first round of the Birmingham Regional on Saturday (2 p.m., ESPNews).
“This is what you want in March,” Griffith said last week. “We’ve never seen Ivy League women’s basketball look like this before. We’ve had great teams, but we have two teams that should both be in the tournament right now. For us, we were outright Ivy League regular season champions. We won the best mid-major conference in America.”
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What’s behind the Ivy League’s improvements? Griffith noted the improved recruiting across the league, dating back to Courtney Banghart’s hiring at Princeton in 2007. She’s been credited with elevating the league’s recruiting into a “different stratosphere.” Griffith worked under Banghart, who’s now North Carolina’s coach, in various roles from 2010 to 2016 before being hired at Columbia, her alma mater.
“You’re seeing just an influx of great creative minds that are really working hard on the recruiting trail,” Griffith said. “It’s something I’m really proud of. I can probably say that more than anybody here because I’m an [alumna], and it’s great to see. But we need to keep pushing, one through eight [in the Ivy League]. This can’t be a top-three league. I want one through eight to be in the top 200 of the [NCAA’s] NET [rankings]. That’s really going to help us in the longevity of only having eight teams when there’s super conferences everywhere.”
Since taking over the reins, Griffith has become one of the best coaches in the Ivy League and won three consecutive Ivy regular-season titles in 2023, 2024, and 2025. She is the winningest coach in Columbia history with 145 victories entering Thursday’s game — at age 39.
Now, it’s back-to-back women’s tournament appearances after the Lions made the first NCAA Tournament in school history in 2024.
Griffith said the competitive nature of Ivy Madness, which included a 60-54 win over Penn in the semifinals, gave the Lions a good test of what they needed to do to survive and advance in March — even if they didn’t play their best basketball. Right now, she’s focused on knocking off Washington and moving into the first round. However, Griffith admits that she’s still hoping to win an Ivy League tournament that, mainly to bring a championship to her school.
But also? To avoid sweating it out on Selection Sunday.
“We come here to win the [Ivy] tournament,” Griffith said. “We didn’t come here to try to get an at-large game. We did that last year, and that’s great, but I came to win the tournament. My team came to win the tournament.”
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