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They needed a win badly, both to improve their record and to stop a two-game skid. And something had to give with their shooting woes.
The Yale women got what they needed Wednesday afternoon. defeating Boston University on the road, 57-51.
It wasn’t easy, as the Bulldogs (4-2) trailed the Terriers (2-3) entire first half.
But the second half and especially the last quarter were a different story.
Yale opened the Rocket Mortgage Fort Myers Tip-Off with a tough 88-85 loss in overtime to worthy Big Sky foe Southern Utah in Florida Tuesday afternoon.
The Bulldogs (3-3) led for much of the game, but the Thunderbirds (2-3) kept clawing back.
Southern Utah senior forward Maizen Fausett made three free throws with 13 seconds to go in regulation to tie the game and force overtime, and redshirt senior guard John Knight III made another three from the charity stripe with 0.8 ticks left in overtime to seal the victory.
Yale led 39-33 at the half. The Thunderbirds went on a 16-2 run early in the second half to tie the score at 51. Yale then went on an eight-point run of its own, but Southern Utah rallied to send the game into overtime.
All five Yale starters scored in double figures, led yet again by senior guard Azar Swain with 21. But Swain was only 1-for-9 from three-point range.
Yale was outrebounded, 42-36.
Yale will face Milwaukee in the consolation game Wednesday at 11 a.m. The Panthers feature freshman sensation Patrick Baldwin, Jr. (son of Milwaukee coach Pat Baldwin), who apparently suffered a slight ankle sprain Tuesday.
The Yale men fell on the road to a strong Vermont team Friday, 61-53, before a crowd of 2,188.
The Elis clung to a one-point lead at the half, and the second stanza was nip and tuck the whole way.
Senior guard Azar Swain led the way with 22 points, while senior forward Ryan Davis paced the Catamounts with 18.
The Bulldogs were ranked No. 20 in the CollegeInsider.com men’s mid-major top 25 entering the contest, while Vermont was perched just below them at No. 22.
Announcers and writers around the nation focused a lot of attention to the 600-plus days between games for the Ivy League. While many expected the teams to be a bit rusty out of the gates, the Ancient Eight acquitted itself quite well in the season’s first week.
Thirteen of the league’s 16 teams had at least one win, with the Princeton and Columbia women notching three victories each. The Brown men almost upset No. 19 UNC without their top player, and the Princeton men just missed out on winning the Asheville Championship.
Check out some of the highlights from a very successful and welcome week of Ivy hoops:
Yale had an up, then down weekend.
it has James Jones and a system. Bingo on both.
Editor’s note: Ivy Hoops Online contributor Erica Denhoff caught up with former Princeton hoops great Will Venable, who just finished his first season as Boston Red Sox bench coach and reflected on a remarkable two-sport career and Ivy League basketball’s place in it.
Will Venable, Princeton ‘05, shines brightest on the biggest stages.
Against JJ Redick-led No. 5 Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Jan. 5, 2005, Venable, a senior guard, played 39 minutes and put on an offensive skills clinic. He scored 21 points, dished out three assists and collected four rebounds in a 59-46 loss for the Tigers. Venable’s athletic defensive play came to the fore as he stole the ball three times from the Blue Devils.
“Venable was terrific tonight,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. ” … He is a heck of a competitor, in the Ivy League or any league.”
“As we go into our league play, I know that Will Venable is going to give me that 100 percent effort for 40 minutes every single night,” then-Princeton coach Joe Scott said.
Almost one month to the day later, Venable demonstrated both coaches described him accurately.
Two days after the Media Day for Ivy women’s hoops, the men had their turn at the virtual podium. A day prior, the results of the preseason poll were released. While five different teams earned top votes, the overall totals showed no changes from the last day of competition in 2020.
Yale, two-time defending Ivy champion, was again picked to come in first with 115 points and seven first-place votes. Harvard, the 2019 co-champion, was close behind, tallying 110 points and four first-place votes. Princeton, the 2017 title winner, closed out the top tier with 108 points and two first-place votes.
Penn, the 2018 co-champion, secured the last slot in the upper division with 93 points and two first-place selections. Brown, which last held the title in 1986, again found itself behind the Quakers for fifth place with 79 points and a pair of title votes.
Dartmouth, which last entered the winner’s circle in 1959, was tabbed in the six slot with 43 points, four points more than Cornell, which last held the top spot in the Sweet Sixteen season of 2010. Columbia, the 1968 champion, was projected to finish last with 25 points.
One day after releasing the conference’s preseason poll, the Ivy League moved one step closer to normal by hosting the 2021-22 Media Day for women’s basketball Tuesday. For the first time, the league used a Zoom format to create a stronger connection between the coaches, players and the media.
In Monday’s poll, three-time defending champion Princeton was again picked as the top team with 122 total points and 12 first-place votes. Penn, the 2019 co-champion, was selected No. 2 with three first-place votes and 108 points. The next three teams were close, with only six points separating Columbia, Yale and Harvard.
The Lions, which earned their first Ivy League Tournament berth in 2020 before the tourney was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved up to third with 87 points. The Bulldogs, a third-place team in 2020, dropped to fourth at 82 points. The Crimson, which finished fifth in 2020, received one first-place vote but missed the upper division by one point.
Cornell, the 2020 seventh-place squad, moved up to sixth for 2022 with 41 points. Dartmouth and Brown, two teams with new coaching staffs, ended up with the last two spots, with the Big Green’s 29 points two ahead of the Bears.
Tuesday’s Media Day revealed the four tiers apparent in the preseason poll. But there could be a slight reordering near the top.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ were looking up at the end of last week, but more importantly, it’s a good time to be bullish about Ivy League basketball. There’s going to be an actual Ivy hoops season this year, and we’re here to herald its return together. Here’s how Ivy Hoops Online contributors feel about some of the storylines within that greater, happy story as the 2021-22 campaign approaches.
The Ivy League conference schedules were released last month, but official releases of the Ivies’ nonconference slates have been trickling in and reveal that after the season that wasn’t, the Ancient Eight aren’t shying away from trekking throughout the country for out-of-conference competition. Meanwhile, the coaching carousel continues: