Thirty-six minutes,15 points, four blocks, four assists, 11 rebounds. Not bad. But fairly typical of the glue of the Yale team, 6-5 Nick Victor, in leading his team to a 77-68 win over scrappy Brown Saturday at home.
Need a key bucket? Victor will score it. Want a player in position for an offensive rebound. That’s him? How about a steal? Count on Nick.
Victor is the everything for a team trying to win its first outright Ivy title since 1962. He is shooting 53.3 percent from the floor to lead his team.
Brown associate head coach T.J. Sorrentine agrees that Victor makes it all happen for the Elis. So does Victor’s veteran coach, James Jones. He marvels over Victor’s play this year, noting that he was playing better than any other Yale player in preseason last year before he got the injury bug.
The Dallas native chose Yale over American, Lafayette, Penn, Northeastern and Davidson. He averaged 16.7 points per game in high school and after a good sophomore season, was hampered last season by injuries. He only saw play in six games. A healthy Victor and Yale might have been dancing instead of Harvard.
Victor is healthy this year and primed along with his three fellow senior starters to bring the title to New Haven.
The parallel x factor for Columbia would be Alex Rosenberg coming off the bench for 22 minutes for Columbia and scoring 14 points. Grant Mullins is the y factor, but he has not missed a game and one almost forgets that he was not there for last year and much of the year before.Yale lost Duren, Cotton, Kelley, Kreisberg and Pritchard from the 2013-2014 squad that basically was equal to Columbia. Columbia lost Osetowski, Lyles and Frankoski. If you compare the two curent rosters and take into account the additions and subtractions from both rosters, I believe Columbia on paper is better. But the games between Yale and Columbia are always closely contested and it should be a great battle, with Columbia the strongest it has been in the recent 3 year rivalry.