Two teams with strong revenge motives met at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday.
Brown had defeated Yale on the last day of the regular season last year (84-81) to prevent Yale from sharing the regular season Ivy title with Princeton.
But then Yale overcame a six-point deficit with 27 seconds left to defeat Brown in the Ivy League championship game in March, 62-61.
It was Yale that prevailed Saturday in the rematch, 79-58.
“Really good team win for us. We got contributions from everyone,” Yale coach James Jones said.
Yale (8-6, 1-0 Ivy) led by 34-28 after a nip-and-tuck opening half.
Brown (8-6, 0-1) closed the gap to 51-48 on a Kino Lilly Jr. trey and then Yale went on a 21-4 run to put the game out of reach at 72-52 with 2:55 remaining.
Throughout most of the run, Jones used freshman guard Riley Fox, freshman forward Isaac Celiscar and sophomore guard Trevor Mullin.
“We did it with some bench guys,” Jones said.
Brown held Yale’s and the Ivy League’s leading scorer, senior guard John Poulakidas, to nine points. But the scoring slack was picked up by vastly improved junior forward Casey Simmons and junior forward Nick Townsend, both of whom finished with 18 points. Townsend chipped in with a team-high eight rebounds.
Brown pressed much of the second half, and Yale had a season-low four turnovers. Brown committed 14 turnovers.
Yale notched 10 steals.
Jones had experimented with line-ups throughout the out-of-conference schedule and has settled on a rotation of eight players.
Senior guard Lyndel Erold led Brown with 15 points on 5-for-8 shooting.
Senior guard Bez Mbeng held Lilly to 13 points. He had been averaging 18.9.
Yale is at Columbia next Saturday at 2 p.m. Brown hosts Harvard on Saturday at 2 pm.
Good article. Even with the two seniors having off nights for scoring others picked up the slack. Yale dominated inside. Aletan is starting to show the skill set that made him a prized recruit. It is surprising to see Coach Jones playing first years , but they are really contributing