Yale men’s basketball bows to Gonzaga in battle of the Bulldogs, 86-71

Yale junior guard Bez Mbeng played a team-high 34 minutes in his team’s loss at Gonzaga Friday, notching 10 points on 4-for-10 shooting, three assists and three steals. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Statistics don’t lie, and two of them stand out in Gonzaga’s 86-71 home win over Yale Friday night.

The Zags outrebounded Yale 42-28, and they outscored them 44-20 in the paint.
Yale punched the other Bulldogs in the mouth at the start, building a 16-6 lead. But the Zags clawed back to gain a 47-42 halftime advantage before a raucous McCarthey Athletic Center crowd of 6,000.

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Yale men outlasted by No. 16 Kentucky, 69-59

Yale senior forward EJ Jarvis (15) notched 12 points on 6-for-12 shooting and seven rebounds in just 23 minutes against a physical No. 16 Kentucky squad at Rupp Arena Saturday. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

John Calipari had a halftime message for his Kentucky Wildcats against Yale Saturday afternoon at Rupp Arena.

With his ‘Cats clinging to only a six-point lead, Calipari told them in no uncertain terms to get the ball inside to reigning Associated Press National Player of the Year Oscar Tshiebwe.

They did.

Tshiebwe answered with 22 second-half points to lead No. 16 Kentucky to a 69-59 home win before a crowd of 20,264 over pesky Yale. The Bulldogs actually held a 35-33 lead with 17:26 left before Tshiebwe took over underneath. He finished with a season-high 28 points and added 12 rebounds.

Yale (8-3) played without its leading scorer Matt Knowling, who was out with a bicep injury.

The score was knotted at 6-6 early. Kentucky went on a 9-0 run consisting of three treys to grab a 25-13 lead. Yale then went on a tear highlighted by a Jack Molloy triple to cut the Wildcat advantage to 28-25. Kentucky (7-2) led by 33-27 at the half. Yale shot 40% in the first half and only trailed the physical hosts 20-18 in rebounds. Senior forward EJ Jarvis posted eight first-half points.

Yale rung up the first eight points of the second half, culminating in a John Poulakidas two from close range.

Calipari then shifted to a full-court press, and Kentucky finally succeeded in getting the ball inside to Tshiebwe. The Democratic Republic of the Congo native scored 12 straight points to give Kentucky a 53-47 lead which it never relinquished.

Yale received a far more even whistle than it did at Colorado or Butler, getting whistled for 13 fouls to 14 for Kentucky.

Yale coach James Jones called the outing ”a great effort by the team.”

Calipari called Yale a NCAA Tournament team.

”Harvard and Yale are going to be battling,” Calipari said. “They’re both really good teams.”

Molloy finished the game with a career-high 14 points, and Jarvis registered 12 points and seven rebounds.

Kentucky finished the game with a narrow 31-30 rebounding edge. Yale shot 43% for the game.

This was the second all-time meeting between Yale and Kentucky. The Wildcats beat Yale 79-58 in 1961, a year in which Yale won the Ivy League at 13-1 and received an NCAA bid.

Yale was supposed to play Gonzaga instead of Kentucky, but Zags coach Mark Few ran into a scheduling conflict because of a Gonzaga game against Kentucky and assisted in getting Yale a game at the latter.

It was the third of six straight road games for Yale. The Elis do not have a home game in December. They play at Fairfield in the brand new Leo D. Mahoney Arena on Monday night.

Yale men welcome rare transfer in Casey Simmons from Northwestern

For only the second time in the 23-year tenure of James Jones as Yale’s head basketball coach, the Elis are adding a transfer student. Casey Simmons, a 6-6 swing from Milton, Mass., will join the Elis for the 2023-24 season. (Dominick Martin in 2002 marked the first such occurrence.)

As a senior at Milton Academy, Simmons was rated as the No. 1 prospect in Massachusetts and the No. 92 player in the country by 247Sports.

Yale recruited him out of high school, but he chose Northwestern over Yale, Penn, Boston College, Georgetown, Miami and Penn State.

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Should you root for Harvard?

Don
Don”t you just love watching Harvard celebrate? Oh right, you probably don”t. (gocrimson.com)

With Harvard set to take on North Carolina Thursday in the Crimson’s fourth straight NCAA tournament appearance, Peter Andrews and I debate whether non-Harvard Ivy hoops fans should root for the Crimson to win their third straight opening NCAA tourney game.

MT: Look, I know you probably hate Harvard. And you have every reason to.

The cheating scandal that forced Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry to withdraw from the team in 2012-13 only to win another Ivy title the following year.

The loosening of academic standards for basketball players.

The sending of an assistant out on “unethical recruiting trips.”

The way Harvard teases Ivy fans every year by getting entangled in close games against underdog conference competition only to emerge victorious almost every time. (The Crimson have won five straight games this season decided by three points or fewer.)

But Harvard beating UNC wouldn’t be so bad.

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