Trey Phills and Nick Victor are different people. Really.
Phills is a sophomore at Yale and stands 6-foot-2. Victor graduated from Yale last year and stands 6-foot-5. He currently plays in Norway and last week was named Player Of The Week in his league, scoring 24 points and grabbing 14 rebounds.
Now let the comparisons begin.
Both players are or were the top defenders on their respective Yale squads. They both covered the top guard or forward on the opposing team. Phills has guarded Devin Cannady of Princeton (two field goals), Matt Morgan of Cornell (three field goals) and Tavon Blackmon of Brown (one field goal in Providence) and held them all well below their scoring averages.
Neither Phills nor Victor are big scorers, but both are exceptional on-the-ball defenders. They are both instinctual athletes who play a lot longer than their respective frames.
Princeton sits atop the Ivies and will make a trip to New Haven on February 17. The Tigers have five scoring options from the outside and Phills will have to neutralize whomever he is guarding in order to give the Elis the strongest shot at a victory. Victor was able to do the same last year against Princeton and Columbia, and then Baylor in the NCAA Tournament. Time will tell whether Phills and the Elis can attain the same level of success.