The recently named 2022-23 Yale basketball captain is junior Michael Feinberg, a native of Hidden Hills, Calif.
Feinberg played for three seasons for Sierra Canyon High School, a national powerhouse. In his junior season, he played on a team with Marvin Bagley III, a former Duke player who is now with the Detroit Pistons, Cody Riley who played at UCLA and Remy Martin who had a great career at Kansas. Feinberg spent his senior season at Viewpoint School.
Going to Yale was a no-brainer for Feinberg. He wanted a strong academic school with a strong basketball program and chose the Bulldogs primarily over Dartmouth and Cornell. His brother Robbie played at Harvard, seeing little court action before graduating in 2019.
Feinberg was named to the 15th European Maccabi games held in the summer of 2019 in Budapest, Hungary.
The 6-foot-4 guard took a gap year in 2020-21 when the Ivy League canceled basketball, working out in California with Harvard’s Spencer Freedman, one of his closest friends, and a number of NBA players which included Aaron Holiday of the Phoenix Suns and Kyrie Irving of the Nets.
This season, Feinberg started 13 games for the Ivy League champions. Feinberg cited the growth of Bez Mbeng and the coaching staff’s move of Jalen Gabbidon to the three position in the lineup as two of the biggest reasons for the team’s Ivy title run.
Feinberg learned plenty about leadership throughout his three years at Yale.
“I would not be the person nor player I am today if not for the invaluable lessons and knowledge I’ve gained from those before me at Yale,” Feinberg said, citing former Yale captains Blake Reynolds, Eric Monroe and Jalen Gabbidon.
Feinberg averaged 1.7 points and 1.5 rebounds in 8.1 minutes in 23 games last season after making 11 appearances off the bench in the 2019-20 season.
Feinberg said he didn’t think about a possible captaincy until about two weeks before the actual votes in April. The new captain indicated that he would handle the role with “dignity, grace and respect.”
Feinberg refuses to embrace expectations as a person or a player but noted that both August Mahoney and John Poulakidas could enjoy breakout seasons next year at Yale as guards. And he’s certain that Yale will field a very strong team again in the 2022-23 campaign.