Revenge was certainly on the docket for Yale when it hosted Columbia at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday.
The Lions had upset Yale 62-60 on New Year’s Eve at Levien Gym in what remains their only Ivy win. Yale returned the favor Saturday with a resounding 99-68 win.
“We certainly wanted to avenge the loss,” Yale coach James Jones said. “I told them that I didn’t have to motivate them.”
”We certainly wanted to win this game. We let them go there (Levien),” senior forward EJ Jarvis said.
Yale (17-6, 7-3 Ivy) has now won six straight games.
Columbia (6-19, 1-9) opened the game up on a 7-2 run, and Yale held only a 41-36 lead at the half.
But Yale has been a second-half team all season, and last night was no different. The home team outscored the Lions 58-32 in the second frame.
Columbia got no closer than seven points in the second half. A lay-in by sophomore guard Bez Mbeng put Yale up 60-48 and a jumper from sophomore guard John Poulakidas expanded the lead to 79-56. Yale never looked back.
Junior forward Matt Knowling was 8-for-8 from the field and had tallied 19 points at intermission. Knowling finished with 22 points on 9-for-10 shooting in only 27 minutes of play.
Jarvis contributed 17 points on 7-for-14 shooting. Sophomore guard Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa led Columbia with 17 points.
Yale has now won eight of the last 10 meetings with the Lions.
Yale travels to Penn this Friday and then plays at Princeton on Saturday night in what could be a battle of first-place teams. Columbia hosts Harvard on Friday.
“We have a lot of depth,” Jones said, addressing the rigors of the upcoming back-to-back.