Home of the Roundball Poets
Our Richard Kent caught up with Yale junior guard and March Madness standout Makai Mason and talked to him about what Yale fans can expect from next year’s Bulldogs team as the program defends its 2015-16 Ivy championship and much more:
Former Yale men’s basketball captain Jack Montague filed a lawsuit against the university Thursday, arguing that the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct (UWC) unjustly made him a “poster boy” by expelling him in February for violating university policy on sexual misconduct.
Deputy Title IX Coordinator Angela Gleason and Senior Deputy Title IX Coordinator Jason Killheffer are also named as defendants in the lawsuit in addition to the university. The suit alleges that the university’s expulsion was a breach of Yale’s contractual obligations and a violation of his Title IX rights.
It would be easy to point back to last season’s heartbreaking collapse and say that this year’s title run started simmering from the moment Javier Duren’s runner rimmed out at the Palestra on March 14, 2015. Certainly, that would be a convenient starting point for this narrative of redemption that culminated in this year’s seeding upset of the Baylor Bears. But anyone who’s been following the Bulldogs knows that this journey towards a title to call our own started long before that.
How did we get here?
There have been countless close calls since James Jones took the reins back at the turn of the century: the three-way tiebreaker in ’02 with Penn and Princeton, the thrilling up-tempo ’07 squad led by Eric Flato and Casey Hughes that started 9-2, beating undefeated Penn and sparking the only (non-Princeton) court storming I’ve ever witnessed at John J. Lee, the dangerous Greg Mangano-Reggie Willhite-Austin Morgan trio that raced out to fast start in ’12. But it wasn’t until Justin Sears arrived in New Haven that following summer that Jones could finally build around a true superstar in blue. And while getting to the Promised Land required contributions from everyone on this year’s squad from Blake Reynolds to Khaliq Ghani to Makai Mason, this was clearly Sears’ team.
But first, let’s go back to where it all began, back to a time when Yale basketball conjured up images of January hope and February despair, not the March ecstasy that we’ve come to know.
A lawyer for former Yale team captain Jack Montague disputed claims that Montague sexually assaulted another student in a statement Monday morning.
The Yale Daily News confirmed Wednesday what many already suspected: Jack Montague, former captain of the Yale men’s basketball team, was expelled from the university for sexual misconduct on Feb. 10.
The student who filed the November complaint declined to comment to the News for its story, as did Montague, the publication said.
In a statement released by Yale Assistant Director for Sports Publicity Tim Bennett Wednesday, the Yale men’s basketball team apologized “for the hurt we have caused” in its show of support for Jack Montague, who was supposedly expelled from the university last month:
Yale Men’s Basketball fully supports a healthy, safe and respectful campus climate where all students can flourish,” the statement said. “Our recent actions to show our support for one of our former teammates were not intended to suggest otherwise, but we understand that to many students they did. We apologize for the hurt we have caused, and we look forward to learning and growing from these recent incidents. As student representatives of Yale we hope to use our positions on and off the court in a way that can make everyone proud.
The Yale Daily News is reporting another round of posters showing up on campus criticizing the team’s reaction to Jack Montague’s departure from campus last month.
Before their game against Harvard at Payne Whitney Gym on Senior Night Feb. 26, members of the team took the court wearing shirts with Montague’s jersey number and nickname, “Gucci,” on the back and “Yale” spelled backwards on the front, which Justin Sears characterized as a show of support for Montague after the game. The YDN reported posters featuring a picture of the team dressed in the shirts and asking Yale men’s basketball to “stop supporting a rapist” appeared all over campus, including at the entrance of Payne Whitney Gym.
The Cornell Daily Sun reported Tuesday night that Cornell freshman forward Xavier Eaglin was arrested Sunday on charges of rape, sexual assault and strangulation, per the Cornell University Police Department.
Eaglin was charged with first-degree rape, three counts of first-degree criminal sexual assault and criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation. According to the Daily Sun, he was arraigned Monday and remanded to the Tompkins County Jail in lieu of $50,000 cash bail or $100,000 bond. The Daily Sun further reported that, according to university police, a preliminary hearing will be held Friday at 2:30 p.m.
Eaglin played just nine minutes in six games this season, most recently in a home loss to Yale, which is dealing with its own allegedly sexual assault-related controversy in the aftermath of Jack Montague’s departure last month as a student from the university, where posters accusing the team of “supporting a rapist” continue to show up on campus despite that claim not being substantiated by authorities.
The news of Eaglin’s arrest follows the death of Cornell President Elizabeth Garrett Sunday, constituting a tragic and disastrous day and week for the university.
Yale 88, Cornell 64
Yale entered into this game with seemingly little momentum despite having won 15 of its previous 16 contests. The Elis eked out an overtime win at home against lower-tier Ivy Dartmouth with Makai Mason shooting just 4-for-18 from the floor and sporting a gimpy ankle, while the program continues to deal with controversy stemming from the team’s show of support for departed ex-teammate Jack Montague. But in Ithaca Friday night, Yale steamrolled Cornell for 40 minutes, building a 30-point lead late in the second half courtesy of another perfect Brandon Sherrod performance from the floor. Sherrod’s 18 points on 6-for-6 shooting led all scorers and anchored an offense that posted 32 made field goals on 54.2 percent shooting, taking advantage of Cornell’s inferior defense early and often. Robert Mischler, Cornell’s only senior, helped spark an 18-9 run for Cornell midway through the first half that brought Cornell to just a 22-20 deficit, but the Elis finished the stanza on an 18-2 run of their own in the final 7:32. That first half featured some promisingly even scoring distribution, with Sam Downey, Anthony Dallier and Khaliq Ghani consistently joining Sherrod and Mason in the scoring action. Yale was additionally rewarded for its efforts when …
Few Ivy writers and commentators doubted when the 2015-16 Ivy League schedule was released that March 5 would have significance to the Ivy race. Some felt that it would feature two teams tied at the top, Yale and Columbia.
It does have significance but Columbia was eliminated from Ivy contention by Yale’s win over Cornell Friday night. But the Elis now have to face a rugged Columbia team before a sold-out crowd at Levien Gym. The Elis won at Levien last season, 63-59, but there is a lot on the line this trip, which could give Yale its first outright Ivy championship since 1962 after a Princeton loss at Harvard Friday night that gave the Bulldogs their second consecutive share of a league title. A playoff at the Palestra on March 12 to determine if Yale or Princeton receive the automatic NCAA Tournament bid will take place only if the Bulldogs lose Saturday night and Princeton wins its final two contests, at Dartmouth and hosting Penn.