In the second game of an Ivy League back-to-back weekend, the Yale men’s basketball team put aside Friday night’s loss to Cornell and gutted out a 60-54 victory over Columbia at Levien Gymnasium on Saturday night.
“Great teams respond to adversity,” senior forward Nick Townsend, who led the Bulldogs with 18 points, seven rebounds and four assists, told SNY’s Lance Medow after the game. “It’s good to get a win after that long ride from Cornell.”
The triumph for the conference leaders, coupled with Harvard’s 64-61 loss to Penn at the Palestra, gave the Bulldogs (22-5, 10-3 Ivy) at least a share of the Ivy League regular season title.
With wins by the Quakers and the Big Red, as well as a loss by Dartmouth, the Lions (16-11, 5-8), which have never appeared in the Ivy League Tournament, were officially eliminated from tournament contention.
Even if the Bulldogs and Crimson end the regular season tied for first, the former will have the No. 1 seed for Ivy Madness based on a better record against Penn.
Yale looked ready to put this one away early, scoring the first 12 points and opening up a 15-2 lead by the 13-minute mark, but Columbia wasn’t going away without a fight.
The Lions scored eight of the next 10 points, featuring a four-point play from senior guard Kenny Noland, to cut the deficit to seven.
Nolan later connected on a driving layup and a step-back triple from the right elbow to trip the Bulldogs lead to 23-20 with just over five minutes left in the half.
Townsend aced his own step-back three on the next possession to ignite a 9-3 Yale run to extend the advantage to 11, but an underhand layup from rookie guard Miles Franklin ended the first half scoring with the Bulldogs ahead 34-25.
While both teams struggled mightily in the opening part of the second half, the Lions were slightly better and made it a one possession contest, 36-33.
Columbia started off 4-for-13 over the first six-plus minutes, but Yale went 1-for-5 from the field, turned the ball over three times and committed five fouls during that same stretch.
Up four, 42-38, the Bulldogs found their shooting touch, connecting on three of four inside shots and one of two from the beyond the arc, to extend the lead to nine, 51-42.
With Yale ahead by nine, 53-44, and a little over three minutes left in their season, the Lions made one last push.
Senior guard Blair Thompson stole a Townsend pass near the Yale basket, took it coast-to-coast and hit a layup while barreling into junior guard Trevor Mullin. The Yale bench thought there was an offensive foul on Thompson, but the referee called a foul on Townsend, who was nowhere near the play.
Thompson sank his free throw and finished the old-fashioned three.
A minute later, Noland tipped a pass from Mullin and was fouled as he tried to get the ball for an uncontested layup. After making both free throws, the Bulldogs lead was down to 53-49.
Junior forward Samson Aletan missed the front end of a one-and-one, giving the ball back to Columbia, but Noland turned it over with 1:10 left on the clock.
The next time down the court, sophomore guard Jordan Brathwaite drove the right side of the lane and hit a bank shot over Thompson to make it a two-possession game.
After the teams sent each other to the free throw lines on the following three possessions, the Yale lead grew to 58-50.
Thompson tipped a missed three from Columbia first-year big man Connor Igoe, but it was too little, too late, and the buzzer sounded.
Joining Townsend on Yale’s leaderboard were Simmons with 16 points, Celiscar with nine and Brathwaite with eight.
“That’s one of the best parts of our team, how balanced we are, how unselfish we are,” Townsend told Medow from courtside. “Any given night, it can be a whole lot of different guys that can go off. We’ve just got to keep looking for each other, as we did tonight and good things will come.”
Noland continued his impressive season, leading the Lions with 20 points and five steals.
Despite entering the night No. 3 in the country in three-point shooting percentage, the Bulldogs had difficulties from the outside, shooting only 4-for-13 (30.8%). They made up for it from two and the free throw line, shooting 18-for-27 (66.7%), and 12-for-17 (70.2%), respectively.
While the Yale offense was a mixed bag and Columbia grabbed an 18.1% advantage in rebounding rate, the two-time defending regular-season champs won Saturday’s battle on the strength of a defense that limited the Light Blue to 4-for-21 (19%) from downtown and 17-for-37 (45.9%) from inside the arc.
James Jones’ squad looks to become the undisputed Ivy regular season champs next Saturday when they take on Princeton and Kevin Hovde’s Lions will try to close out the 2025-26 campaign with a win as they head to Harvard, the No. 2 seed for the upcoming Ivy League Tournament.