Yale men’s basketball played out the second leg of a rare home-and home series with an out-of-conference mid-major at John J. Lee Amphitheater Sunday, 13 months after the Bulldogs fell at its opponent, Illinois Chicago, by a 91-79 tally.
But on Sunday, the Bulldogs evened the score by running all over UIC, 80-66.
“It was a really good win over them,” coach James Jones said. “They try to slow you down.”
Yale (10-1) led UIC (4-5) narrowly, 35-32, at the half and went on a 12-0 run to open the second half. The Flames did not score until the 13:36 mark. Yale hatched a revised game plan entering the second stanza.
“We tried to get the ball inside,” Jones said.
UIC cut the Bulldogs’ lead to 50-44, but a trey by senior guard Devon Arlington put Yale up nine.
Yale was led in scoring by junior guard Trevor Mullin with a career-high 22 points on 6-for-11 shooting. The team’s leading scorer, senior forward Nick Townsend, added 16. Junior center Samson Aletan hauled in a career-high 13 rebounds.
UIC freshman guard Andy Johnson notched a team-high 15 points. Graduate student and former Harvard starter Sam Silverstein also started for the Flames.
Jones would like to play a team like UIC as part of a road swing at a Big Ten school, like Illinois, but despite more than 70 requests for high-major games over the last few years, he usually comes up empty. This year, Yale travels to No. 12 Alabama on Dec. 29, largely as a result of his relationship with Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats.
Yale is No. 3 in the College Insider Men’s Mid-Major Top 25 poll, behind only Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s.
Yale next plays Albany at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday in the opener of the MGM Springfield Basketball Hall of Fame Classic. Albany was handed a 93-65 loss by Columbia at Levien Gym Saturday.
UIC used a match-up zone defense to stymie Yale for much of the first half. Jim Boeheim was renowned for using a highly effective match-up zone at Syracuse for decades, and I played against Brown teams that used it in the ‘70’s. Very tough to figure out and counter it. Coach Jones and his staff did a great job in doing so for a nice win against a tough team.